The Startup Ideas Podcast - Brainstorming $1M Business Ideas with Tiago Forte

Episode Date: January 31, 2024

I'm joined by Tiago Forte, Founder at Forte Labs and bestselling author of ‘Building a Second Brain’ and The ‘PARA Method’. We talk about the necessity of building credibility online, the role of gatekeepers in information sharing, and why the B2B market could be a goldmine for online course creators.We cover the benefits (and drawbacks) of being an independent creator, how to leverage the media platforms of the world to your advantage, and why you need lead magnets.00:00 Why Creators NEED to diversify.08:09 Cool non-Internet business ideas.11:41 Using a dumb phone - the ultimate productivity hack.22:30 The future of tech in 2024.25:15 Is Tiago Forte really creating a TV show?34:37 Multi-million dollar opportunities in B2B markets.38:00 Free B2B business ideas.44:02 Why you should stop building businesses in competitive spaces.51:15 Book recommendation: "Signs: Secret Language of the Universe" by Laura Lynn Jackson.

I think sometimes internet creators worry too much about capturing every little bit of value that they're creating. I mean, I do this with books too. I have two traditionally published books. But before that, I released seven self-published e-books on Amazon. And the amazing thing is, as an independent creator, you can do both. You're not signing exclusive contracts. You know, they're like, oh, let's leave Gumroad and go to some other platform because we can pay 3% instead of 5%. Or they're like, oh, we can self-publish this e-book. We don't have to pay the publisher all this percentage and we can keep it for ourselves.

I love that sort of self-reliance, but I think sometimes it really makes online creators be blind to huge opportunities to essentially leverage the media platforms of the world to spread their message. So before we begin, I must say you did one of the smartest things that I've seen an author do in your book building a second brain, which was you said in your book that if you want the bonus chapter, you'll email it to people. So you essentially, you put a lead magnet in your book. Totally. Oh, yeah. That was essential. That was essential. It makes no, you know, the whole project doesn't almost doesn't make sense, at least financially, unless you can use it to grow your audience and, you know, sell them courses and other things.

So that was, that was an important part. Yeah. And I think about that often because I think about like lead magnets and I call them community magnets, which are basically lead magnets. which are basically lead magnets where you're bringing someone into a free community in exchange for their email address. And I was like, man, this Tiago guy, that's when I realized. I was like, I need to get this guy on my podcast because this guy knows what's up. And so I'm excited to talk to you.

We talk about business ideas here. So I'm excited to talk to you about business ideas. And I knew you were one of us when I saw you put that lead magnet in. Yeah. I feel like we've been sort of orbiting in the. very much the same circles. I mean, I've come across here, especially on your, your content on X so many times. So this just seems only natural. I appreciate it, man. I appreciate it. And I actually reached out to you, which I encourage other people to do. Like I saw your book

in a bookstore here in Miami called Books and Books. And I think I just sent you a message. And I was just like a picture of the book. And I was just like, like, great book or something like that. And you responded. I was like, whoa, this guy responded. It just goes to show you that, you know, people have their DMs open a lot of the time. And it's sort of worth reaching out to people. And you'd be surprised who responds. Oh, absolutely. So many things have come into my life, both professional and just personal from that. I mean, it's kind of crazy if you think about it. We all have mostly direct messaging access to each other and to almost anyone. And we barely, we really barely use it. I feel like. That's right. And that's kind of a good segue into one of your startup ideas, which is acquiring a small business and growing it using your, what do you've got, a few hundred thousand followers

at this point? So what do you mean by that? And what type of business would you consider acquiring? Yeah. This is one of my little kind of side projects, at least for now. I guess I've been bitten by the bug. This is kind of like a, you know, like a trend. I've come across a number of times, you know, people like Cody Sanchez and Michael

Gerley and others. And, you know, for the longest time, I couldn't even fathom that possibility because my one business takes up 100% of my bandwidth and more. And I was like, how are these people like running multiple businesses? But now I'm starting to see, you know, it's a combination of like having operators that you hire to run them or, you know, using the same team for one business or some of the same team as another or having them be mostly, you know, sort of passive businesses. I kind of get it a little more now. And what's driving it is basically, I mean, it's, it's partly a desire to diversify. You know, I have, we worked recently with a financial advisor. It was a funny story, like an independent financial advisor that charges you a

flat fee for like three or four calls. And he did this comprehensive analysis of our entire financial life, like your, your total net worth and everything. and he had the software that he used that you input like every single asset you had, every credit card, every debt, everything. And at the bottom of it, if you don't include the business, like just include everything else but the business, our net worth today, my wife and I, in our late 30s, is a big fat nothing. It's like our debts, which is we have no personal debt or credit card debt.

It's just like our house, but we live in Cal, you know, Southern California, cancels out every other asset that we have, which essentially means that we're, you know, the business is everything. I have all of my financial life in this one business. And the way the world is going with pandemics and wars and different things, like, you know, it's dangerous, dangerous to live that way. So I'm just interested in moving into something that is complementary or even like counter cyclical to an internet-based business.

You know, should the internet go down or should online education, go down, I can, you know, survive, basically. Yeah, you know, you want to hedge. Not that you really want to hedge, but like obviously we hope I think your business is only going to compound, but the hedging piece of around like you want to hedge and diversify basically is what you want to do. You want to, you want to earn, you want to buy something that has cash flow that is not related to your current business, but that could be supercharged by the asset that you built,

which is your audience. Exactly. Exactly. That's the thing, too, is with an audience, because an audience is just relationships, right? They're not single purpose. They're not single use. So you could conceivably diversify away from an internet business, but using the asset of your relationship with that audience as the means of diversification. So it's not like you have to go and start over completely from scratch, right? And also, I've seen all these people, you know, like Kevin is Speedy to and others who are like, basically. basically getting this fire hose of attention you have as an online creator and just like plugging it into even an established business that already has operations that just needs more clients. That is a really powerful model, I think. So I think the way to, I would think about it if I were you is you've got like, you know, a few hundred thousand YouTube subscribers, 129,000 Twitter subscribers, followers. It's like you basically have this ecosystem of almost half a million, if not more of people, interested in the same stuff that you're interested in, productivity,

you know, unlocking your potential, that sort of thing. And the thing is half a million people is a lot of people. That's a lifetime of people to sell them things. Now, the question is, what are you going to sell them? Is it books? Is it courses? Is it paid community? And then there's this whole other, what you're saying,

saying is there's this whole other area and, you know, what Cody Sanchez and other people are saying, there's these boring businesses, these SMBs that your audience might want, that you're, today, you're not selling them that. So my question to you is, you know, Cody Sanchez talks about, like, laundromats and stuff, you know, like, you're not going to buy a laundromat and just, like, start posting about it on Twitter. And if you are, it's pretty funny. If you are, I think you need a first brain, not a second brain, you know, you got to get that checked out. So I think, I think what, what, if you have an internet audience like yourself, like let's just jam for a second, what is a more brick and mortar or boring business that you could, you know, buy? That's what

I'm trying to figure out now. I would love any ideas you have. I mean, I don't know, I have trouble with the idea of a completely boring business just because I just, I mean, even a laundromat, I'm sure, is a lot of work to manage. And I have a hard time imagining, like, that I would even care enough about a business like that to even be willing to do that stuff. So I feel like it should have at least some aspect that I'm curious about or interested in or that will teach me something. And it would be nice if it was sort of not internet-based. I really think in coming years we're going to see, we're going to see disruptions to the internet.

I don't know why I have this sense, but I feel like the internet is, is in this like open, free era that may be ending or maybe getting less dependable. We're having like different like the great firewall in China and different countries like erecting different, you know, barriers and all sorts of things. So I would like something like land,

you know, something that's land or that's physical and solid that could be valuable, even if, God forbid, the internet was, you know, was turned off. But beyond that and being profitable and having cash flow, I'm just doing kind of a wide sweep of the possibilities. So why I think you shouldn't buy land and why I think you shouldn't buy something like real estate is because anyone could do that. But you have this unfair advantage where you've now built this audience of these people who now trust you. You have the, which is rare. And so I'm trying to think, okay, what could, you know,

what could you do and which movement could you sort of latch onto? And have you seen, have you heard of the brick? Hmm. The brick device. So it's actually this, I have one right here. It looks like this. So literally it's a brick. So if you're listening to this on Apple podcast or this is, you know, check it out on YouTube. And it's this really, really cool idea. And it's a way, it's a device for people who have smartphone addictions. Okay. So basically it removes distracting apps and their notifications from your phone. So it turns your phone into like literally like focus mode.

And you can set up, you know, different modes for it. You can set up these custom modes. So I have a couple of them. It's completely magnetic. My business partner uses it. Jordan Mix uses it. He puts it on his fridge. He just leaves it.

And the way it works is you tap the device to turn your phone into a literal brick. The way to unbrick your phone is to get up, walk to whatever the brick is and then tap the brick to unlock it. So it creates this physical barrier. And it creates this friction. How does it do that? Is it a software? Like the software is disabling the phone? Yeah.

I think that's how it works. And it's, I'm sure you've seen people who, who carry like a smartphone and a dumb phone. Yeah. Like, and I think it just makes it a lot easier to do this. So I look at this and I'm like, if I'm Tiago Forte,

I'm reaching out to these guys who are like, it's really, it's really early for them. And I'm being like, how can I buy 50% of your business? Because wouldn't, wouldn't, wouldn't,

this product, the brick, be interesting for your audience? Oh, yeah. I mean, I just got one of these a few months ago, the light phone, a dumb phone, and my wife got one too. We've been trying it, but it's too extreme. You know, with two kids and needing to just do all the things that we use smartphones for, it was too much of a jump. So we've now reverted back to iPhones, but I'm still personally in search of a solution.

And I like the, I like the physicality of that. I like that it's this artifact in your environment that is reminding you that you can create that that bubble of focus. Exactly. And the thing I've noticed with the brick is if I ever go, let's say it's on my fridge, if I ever go up to the fridge and I grab it and I unbrick my phone, like I feel stupid doing it, you know? I'm like, I check Twitter or I check my, you know, I check Instagram.

I'm like, what a waste of time. And so it reinforces this really good habit. And I think why the brick would be so cool for your, for your audiences, a lot of this stuff is stuff that you're already telling to your audience. Like you can live, you can live this, right? Like you would, you'd probably promote the brick. I mean, you'd probably promote the brick regardless. Yeah.

So that's a good framework for thinking about. It's like, you know, number one, would my audience be into this? Number two, what's a non-obvious thing that they would be into? So, like, of course you can build a course. Of course you can go build a paid community. Of course you could sell some digital asset. But like, this is like a pretty non-correlated asset. Yeah.

That's non-obvious. Yeah. And I think just like brainstorming from there. I really like this line of thinking. Because it's true. So we make, we make a, not big, but a fair amount of, of revenue from as an affiliate, but it's all either Amazon stuff, which is mostly books, every time we recommend a book. It is other people's courses, and it's SaaS tools, mostly

productivity tools. But the problem is all those things are so similar and also similar to what we ourselves sell, that it's like kind of a lot of noise. There's just like this barrage of courses and tools and apps that they're just constantly being faced with. Um, That, the physicality of that would, I think you're right, would really stand out just for the fact that it's so different. I also think, I saw this in my Slack today, that one of our team members has like a young sister who, you know, she's, I think like 17 or 18. She came home from college and she came, she came with her friends just to like hang out at their family house. And they, they're all like sitting in the living room reading magazines. So like this guy who works for us like walks into his living room, his family living room, childhood has, and see all like these girls reading magazines.

Magazines is 2024. And so he goes like, well, why are you doing this? Like what, why magazines? And apparently it's like the cool thing to like touch a big physical. Yeah. No kidding. Yeah, we recently, along these lines, we recently got the, we took the TV out of our living room. we just took it off the wall and stored it because we noticed we were a three-year-old.

Our oldest is a three-year-old and he was just spending, I mean, maybe just like an hour a day, all combined. But we started noticing behavioral issues. We noticed that it was almost like he's addicted to it. He always wanted to watch it. We noticed that we were watching it a lot and therefore modeling it. And it was a rough week or so, but it's been awesome. Like we talked to each other more.

and my wife and I have like our reading of physical books has picked up. It's really, really an amazing like one time decision that then has, you know, infinite future benefits. But so let's explore this. I'd love to get basically free consulting, but how would you think about this? Like, like in theory, that sounds interesting for me to reach out to them. I'm sure they'd be open to a conversation. But then like, do I straight up just like ask for a.

certain percentage and then offer certain things in return? Or like, what is, it's hard for me to even imagine what that conversation would look like. I think you go to them and you say, hey, I love the brick. I love this product. I think my audience would love it. Sure, I can be an affiliate, but there's something about being like, I'm a co-owner in this product that is going to make it feel different when I promote something that, you know, has my stamp of approval.

So I'm looking for a partnership. And I would say, you know, I'm sure that you're looking for more customers. I can help you get more customers, but I can also bring friends of mine. You know, you can bring Greg Eisenberg. You can bring Sean Porry. You can bring, you know, Justin Welsh, like people in your circle. So it's not just you. It's the multiplier effect of your, like, crew.

And I would say, how could I own 30 to 50% of your business? What would, like, why that range? Why is, what is it about 30 to 50? I think that you want. them to you want the team to have the majority of the business at the same time if you're going to be a partner in this business and when i say partner i don't mean just like someone who's going to be allowed like a co-founder creator like my prediction is there's a lot of co-founder creators that are just going to like tweet about a business once and then forget about it like no you're

going to actually be there you're going to you know you might have product product feedback that you can give that might be really relevant you know you might write another book and you you might include it in that book. Things like that that are super, super valuable to someone like that. And I think that, sure, could you own 2%? Like, yeah, but if you own 2%, I'd imagine it's not that interesting. And I'd imagine something like the brick is probably doing like, it's probably, it probably has product market fit with a very small group of people like me and my partner

Jordan. But probably has, if I had to guess, less than $2 million of revenue. And so it's early enough that you probably can own a big chunk of the business. And they might say like, yeah, you can own 50% of 30% of this, but I want a million dollars. In which case, you say, no problem, no problem. You get their financials, you get their vision, and then you raise that money privately if you don't want to invest. So you're not putting any of your own money.

You're actually going and raising from because now you have the deal, right? So now you go to someone like me, let's say, and you say, hey, Greg, I found this amazing company. It's perfect for my audience. The business is, we're going to run it as a profitable business. And there's going to be dividends every year. And you model it out, would you be willing to give me half a million dollars and could you find someone else to give me half a million dollars at this valuation? So now you have a deal. So you're connecting.

And I'm sure people in your network. would be willing to back you because now all of a sudden, you're creating a lot of value because you're going to be promoting it. You have this great business that aligns with it. And so you're also creating value. Interesting. Interesting. Yeah, I like that idea. But now, so these investors, they would have themselves now equity proportional to how much they invest, right? Yeah. So the way you would structure it is and we're getting into the details but like I think this might be interesting for people honestly. Yeah.

Is you would you would you know, let's say they wanted a million dollars for 30% of the business and all the advisory stuff that you're going to give. You have to come up with a deal with your, your investors. Let's say I'm the investor where you say like, okay, of my 30% I'm going to give 5% to Greg because he's putting in the actual capital. So that's my deal with you. So some minority share. And then I could also put in some money, right, just to have skimming the game.

But then I think you should. Honestly, I think you should. Like, I think the creators should put, that's another thing. I think creators should put money into the businesses that they're partnering with. Fascinating. Fascinating. This is genuinely interesting, man, and very timely. In fact, I was just last week, I was exploring a deal.

My first one that I ever even started. of investigated and at at on the surface it looks so good so compelling and then as soon as I like talked to the broker signed an NDA got the actual financials and it was just such a disaster and I was like oh this is why people get paid to like find good deals exactly exactly yeah so I think this is this is interesting for you but it's also interesting for people who have there's a lot of people listening to this who have products that have product market fit or a little bit of product market fit with a devout audience. And they're thinking to themselves like, how do I, how do I grow this thing? I wish I can have a creator help promote this. So understanding how you think about it is

interesting to them too. Yeah, I almost want to, I want to speak to those people for for a minute, like to tell them what it looks like from my point of view and why I'm even exploring this is like, it's like I spend all my time and my team spends all our time creating content and building our audience. Like that is my job is to add email addresses to our email list, right? But I've kind of recently, this has been a recent realization, you know, we have like 140,000 people on our email list. We send a newsletter every Tuesday and we have 50% open rates. So we have the weekly attention of 70,000 people. but we have hardly anything to offer them right like i have a couple courses i have a couple books

that's about it and you know that audience will buy some of those things or not or whatever but then we're just continuing to send them incredible free value every week week after week after week all year never asking or rarely asking for anything in return i almost feel like i'm under valuing i'm under utilizing this audience who tells us they would like to buy things also. They're like, can you recommend this or that? And we're just like, no, sorry. We're just going to continue to send you massive amounts of free value just because it's fun. Yeah, I also think that people like you are looking for things to write about and things to

film about. So, you know, using the brick as an example and talking about that lifestyle and talking about the pros, you know, the pros and cons of taking, you know, 48 hours off or taking time where you're not looking at your phone. And so it doesn't even need to feel like you're, you know, you're, you're subtracting. Like a great product should subtract from, like it shouldn't feel like you're asking, you know. Gary B. It famously talks about the Jab, Jab Jab, Hook, right? Like, you give value, give value, give value, and then you take. And I just don't think that. that in 2024 that that's relevant.

To me, I think that it's just jab, jab, jab, jab, jab, jab, jab. Jab. Just another jab. Like, your product should be a jab. And I think that was something like the brick, some product that is just so relevant to your audience, that it just gives you something to talk about. That's interesting to them. Yeah.

Yeah. I mean, it makes so much sense. Like, distraction is the, it's the 500. What's the expression, 500 pound elephant in the room? If you haven't figured that out and mastered that, no productivity tip or technique or framework is going to make any difference whatsoever. It's like the stepping stone to even being able to have the space to even think about your productivity. That's right.

Exactly. So I'm glad we talked about this. I want to shift gears to another space that you're interested in, which was interesting that you're talking about this, especially considering you recently removed a TV from your host, but you're interested in producing a TV show and sort of thinking yourself, how can I get involved in the entertainment business? My question to you is, what do you know about the entertainment business, the TV business, and why is it interesting to you? Why do you think there's opportunity there? Yeah, good question. It all started when someone

from a one of the big Hollywood agencies reached out to us. I think if it wasn't for that, I, I have no contacts or network there. I have no idea how to even get started. It was the, the possibility of someone sort of taking us by the hand there. They reached out through my, my literary agent, and they were interested in the material in my, in my two books, and potentially making that into a TV show, basically. One of my favorite things to do in, like, the whole world is enter new creative media. I just love those that first, it's like a frontier. It's like the wild west. You just like enter this new creative domain and you're like, you have to question all your assumptions and learn so much and really come in as like a novice with a beginner's mind.

And so over the past maybe seven or eight months, I've done that, just talking to different people in the industry, reading articles, watching things. And I still wouldn't say I have a good understanding of the industry, but I have enough understanding to know that it would be so powerful from the perspective of spreading an idea. I think that's what I'm most interested in. Like, when you look at what are the highest leverage ways of getting an idea into the hearts and minds of the most people in this world, TV is just, it's it. That TV is the medium that runs the modern world. So it could also be, you know, cool financially. It could also be cool for other things. But I'm most interested in in just distilling and simplifying and making entertaining these second brain

ideas, which I really, I really believe and know change people's lives if they only find out about them and learn them. So I have a saying, which is capture hearts first, then capture carts. Yes. So I think that's what you're saying too, which is, If you could spread your ideas wide and far and people resonate with them and they are connected to these ideas, then you're gravy, right? Then there's, like, you'll find products to sell. You'll, you know, they'll take out their wallets. But what interests you about television is you think that it's not a hack, but a great way to spread your ideas faster. And it's interesting because you come from the internet.

Like to me, you're an internet content creator first, even though you wrote a book or books. To me, you're, you know, you talk about your newsletter. Like your core metric is email. So to me, it's interesting that you think that TV, like, why would you spend that time doing TV when you could spend that equal time double downing on YouTube, which is like the new TV? To me, it's both. And they will leverage each other, those two avenues. I mean, I do this with books, too. I have two traditionally published books, but before that, I, I released seven self-published e-books

on Amazon. And they're not in any way in competition with each other. In fact, I just am constantly getting lessons from one of those routes and applying it to the other. I think, I think this sometimes gets lost in the, uh, the very contentious debates around like, oh, self-publishing versus traditional publishing. There's like this ideological battle going on. And the amazing thing is, as an independent creator, you can do.

both. You're not signing exclusive contracts ever, right? So, I mean, so, so it's interesting. You can look at this from Hollywood's perspective. Like, let's look at it from where they're sitting. We're in the midst not only of a TV golden era, or like it's, it's widely agreed upon that this era right now is like the best TV that's ever been created, right? But we're also in the midst of streaming wars. We have all these mega corporations spending billions, like tens of billions every year losing billions to try to gain market share, right? And you look at, you read about some of these, it's kind of insider publications you have to go to, but they're competing. Like there's a, there's shows that, that are having like multi-way bidding wars. It's like

Amazon studios and Netflix and Hulu bidding against each other, right? And it's a lot of big names that get that much attention. But once in a while, you see people who are quite early and quite small really benefiting from that. So I'm, I'm just like, okay, I would love to be, you know, the one, the IP that these huge studios are fighting over. I'll be the talent, you know, that is the one actually on camera presenting it. And I just see no downside. I mean, there is time and energy involved, but I'll continue to do all the other stuff I do and run my business. I do really, I think sometimes internet creators worry too much about capturing every little bit of the value that they're creating.

And, you know, they're like, oh, let's leave Gumroad and go to some other platform because we can pay, you know, three percent instead of five percent. Or they're like, oh, we can self-publish this e-book. So, like, we don't have to pay the publisher, you know, all this percentage and we can keep it for ourselves, which is, I love that sort of self-reliance. But I think sometimes it really makes online creators specifically just be blind to huge opportunities to essentially leverage the media platforms of the world to spread their message. At the very least, people should have an open mind, right? Like, in general, like you should never be, I always, I always think, I talk a lot about not raising venture capital because I spent my 20s raising a lot of millions of millions of dollars and I'm turned off.

That being said, last week I had a great meeting with a venture capitalist. You know, he reached out someone I respect. I'm not saying I'm taking his money, but I think it's important to not. let yourself as a founder as a creator get attached to an identity. Oh, I'm the not, I'm the not VC guy, therefore I can't have a meeting with a VC person. I'm an internet creator, therefore I can't have a meeting with a Hollywood producer. Totally. Totally. That's such a good perspective. Yeah, it depends on the situation. If, you know, what's that quote? If the facts change, I change my mind. What do you do?

Yeah. Absolutely. I will say on the TV, thing. I think that the number one reason to go on TV is to get the clips. So, like, I noticed this with, like, people like, Bill Ackman and Chimoth. I was, like, asking myself, like, why are these guys going on CNBC so much? Like, they have to, you know, Chimov lives in Palo Alto, you know, it's like, he has to, like, get on a plane, go land at, like, LaGuardia or Newark or JFK, you know, spend an hour to get into the city. stay at some like midtown hotel. You know, it's like he's got kids.

Like probably doesn't want to like do it. You know, it's freezing cold. I heard in New York's like 20 degrees right now. It's like probably doesn't want to do it. But he does it because like five minutes later, he takes that clip and he posts on Twitter and it gets millions of views. Or Bill Ackman does the same thing. I noticed that like, he'll go on TV and then all of a sudden,

right after clip is live. And the clips because you're on TV, because like it looks like TV. Everyone knows what TV looks like. There's more credibility. It spreads quicker and it's just more viral. Totally. Totally.

Yeah. There's another kind of bias of online creators. They seem to think sometimes that markers of, markers of credibility or status don't matter or are bad. That's crazy. You know, credibility and status are more important than they've ever been because of the flood of information. No one knows what to believe or.

who to trust. I think, I think, I mean, you got to have both. You should sort of, you know, have your own platform that you control and also take advantage of the gatekeepers when and if they come calling. I agree, man. I agree. Okay, you have another idea on here, which I'm really interested in, which is certifying other people to teach, facilitate, consult on your IP. So you've spent years building this incredible IP, multiple books, so much content. For free content, YouTube, whatever, created a system. And I've noticed that more and more people are doing this where they're creating a system and then like the EOS system.

Are you familiar? Totally. So maybe you can tell people what EOS is and if you're familiar with the facilitators, that they have, maybe you can explain that and then explain what you would do to license your business and your IP, sorry, and why that's interesting. to you. Yes, this is so timely. This is what I'm in the midst of right now. I just got back from a, I'm like a B2B, which is sort of the category I would put all this in, B2B education, B2B training. I've just joined a mastermind and I was in Atlanta on Monday for that. But basically, so basically,

how did I get on this on this track? You know, at one point a year or two ago, I was like, I was like, how does an idea actually reach its full potential? This is a, This is a question that really interests me. A new idea comes into the world. Let's just pick one, like, I don't know, agile software, right? That's an idea. How does it fully capitalize and manifest like the full potential of that idea, reach everyone who could possibly benefit, give them the maximum benefit.

Yes, make the most money. Of course, that's part of it. And what's so fascinating is, you know, the world of like online course creators, which is the one that I'm a part of, we are totally focused on B2C. That's our whole world. We're all about building our lists and our platforms and, you know, selling products and even selling a course. But that's all B2C, all of it, right? Is finding the customer, acquiring the customer, selling them something. But what I'm learning, and I'm going to, I'm going to be writing about this in creating content because I feel like this is like this big undiscovered secret

is the B2B market, from what I can see, has the potential to be far more lucrative, far more lucrative. It's the world of, yeah, corporate trainings, whether you deliver them yourself, or you have in-house on-staff facilitators deliver them, or you certify external independent facilitators, or you license it, or you give them access to your self-paced program, like whatever it is, there's a lot of models. But these businesses that I'm starting to study, I mean, they just assume thousands of dollars per person. You know, every person, say on a team that they're doing a training for, they're going to estimate like 3,000 to 5,000 that they're going to make per person.

Whereas as online course creators, you know, we're like afraid to charge a couple hundred bucks. That's right. And with internet economics, like it's not uncommon to acquire an email. address for one to two dollars exactly exactly yeah so so it's kind of what we were saying before we have these huge audiences but the we're monetizing them so poorly in general right and then i'm going over to the b2b world which honestly feels like a different like a different culture it's like it's like flying to a different country and like you don't understand anything like the acronyms being used you know they're like what is it uh i can't remember the acronyms right now but like the terminology

they're using the assumptions that they make like for example in our world, bigger email list is better, right? The size of our email list is like our calling card. In their world, it's all about the quality of the lead. They don't care how many people. They'd rather have one qualified lead than a thousand random people kicking the tires. So I'm really having to like sort of compare and contrast these two different mindsets and learn how to operate in both of them. But the purpose of the whole thing is just basically, I mean, what I really want is my ideas to become part of culture, to become part of organizations, become part of companies, be part of schools, be taught to kids. That's just my mission. And there's no other way to do that

besides, you know, entering the B2B markets. And EEO specifically, so I never heard of EOS up until recently. It stands for entrepreneurial operating system. And it's basically, I met with friend for dinner and he was like I was like how was your 2023 and he goes well it was completely transformed thanks to EOS and I thought like he was talking about like a drug or something I was like what is that is that like a is that like a sister drug to OZMPIC or something like that and no he's like no I actually hired this facilitator who did this workshop and he works with our company to implement EOS which is basically these it's like a framework for how to how to run a productive organization for companies

I think under 250 employees and he was saying that there's like so there's a sort of a licensing play there as well so someone had created I don't know the exact story but basically someone created this this way of doing things they'd license it out to people who do consulting or run workshops and stuff like that. So I think you're onto something around people are going to create IP more, license it out to and then focus on B2B. I think that's a really astute point. I think that's really interesting. I have an idea that I want to run by you in the B2B space. So I had lunch with a friend of mine who works for one of the largest banks in the world. And he was telling me, he just got this job. And he was telling me, I was like, how's your first week? He goes, well,

know i've been doing training all week oh what's training like you know i don't know if you've ever worked out of a like big corporate job but it's like it's you know what happens is you know on day one or something they make you watch a lot of videos and like slides about a bunch of different topics like how do you be ethical and like oh you can't give like a contract to your body or something and it's like a video explaining it and there's sexual harassment things like that The problem with it is people just skip through the trainings. They're actually not going through it. So my idea is Applevision Pro training trainings.

So you put on the Applevision Pro and we're not there yet. It's not ubiquitous. Applevision Pro isn't ubiquitous. But at some point it will be. And maybe what you can do is actually you rent it to employees or something like that. but you basically say you join, you know, Wells Fargo, like on your first day. It's like, okay, hey, like put on these glasses and oh, like all of a sudden you're in this world where, you know, there's a real, real ethical case and you actually have to play it out. And it's almost like a game.

And it's this real world immersion. And you do it with other people too. It's like the social thing. So like, let's say it's your first day too. You're there. What do you think of this reimagining training? and I'll end that with training is low-key, a multi-billion-dollar industry. Oh, yeah.

Yeah. Like, especially like safety training and stuff like that. Oh, my gosh, the money these corporations spend on training, on certification, on upskilling, on professional development, it's staggering. It's staggering. I think it's interesting. I mean, definitely everything I've learned about existing training is that it is God-awful. It's like a punishment. It's like torture.

because it's not done it's just done to comply with some regulation or or policy or something it's not at all learner centric right and people are used to learner centric now because that's the world of online content you know youtube is education it's edutainment uh x is largely you know depending on who you follow of course edutainment and so people have gotten used to such a high standard of of even educational content that you put them in front of a, you know, hour-long, boring slide presentation and they, I think honestly struggled to even pay attention,

even if they want to. The one thing I'll say that we'll present an obstacle is from what I'm finding, the B2B world is years behind the B2C world. It's like at least five years. Like what is peaking and trending now in the B2C world like today, when you go on X, let's say, will begin to enter the corporate training market in like 2029, 20, 30, 2030. That's interesting.

I mean, yeah, I think that's like really interesting because all you have to do is look at what was trending five years ago to be like, how do I productize something for that market? Exactly. Yeah. Exactly. Yeah. That's a huge. You kind of have to, you have to consciously retreat from the frontier of innovation. You know, like, like you, you go on X.

I know we're both active there. Like, like, go look up what was trending on X. I mean, really, like five years ago, you know, like 2019. To us, that will feel ancient. It'll feel so obsolete and irrelevant and not cool and not interesting. And if we started talking about it, our internet friends would be like, oh, that was, that's, so passe, but then go talk to your friend in the corporation. I am willing to bet they've never even heard of it yet. Yeah. I feel that. Does that, are you, like, does that soul suck

you a little bit? Are you okay with that, you know? I am. I'm kind of, that actually suits me. You know, like with, with even digital no-taking stuff, that's a, that's a technology thing. I really advocate people not adopt any technology that is newer than five years anyway. You know, like I'm on Evernote. There's nothing about Evernote that wasn't present in like 2010. And the reason is, the reason for that is I don't think, so there's a price to pay for being on the frontier of innovation, you know, especially when it comes to technology, you've got to deal with, you're basically a beta tester. You're a guinea pig. So things are buggy, they're janky. They don't work right. They're really complicated and hard to learn. You know, that's fine. If,

if you want to experiment with an interesting new tool, but for your core productivity tools, the stuff that you rely on day in and day out, those should be mature tools, I think, is my opinion. Is there any opportunity to be building new productivity software? You know, so many people have ideas for to-do lists or, you know, Google calendar competitors or Rome competitors. Is this too busy of a space now? Or is there? still opportunity. I think I'm the wrong person to ask because I like from my point of view, I can't. There's nothing I'd less rather do than build software in this in that space. Why? Maybe because I'm just so hyper aware of their limitations. And from everything I hear

when I talk to people who are doing that, it's, it's brutally competitive. You know, there's almost a, there's almost a maxim that productivity tools have no moat. There's no moat. There's nothing preventing every, every year, every few months. there's a new hot productivity app, you know? In fact, my theory is that not only is there no moat, there's whatever you would call like the opposite of a moat. There's actually an incentive for people to leave your product. Why?

Because the favorite moment, the favorite experience of people who use such apps is starting over with a brand new blank slate. It feels good, you know? Like usually the longer someone has been using a no-taking app or to-do list app, the worse it is and the more they hate it because it's just cruffed. And so they love, this is why there's so many productivity app switchers everywhere is moving to the new tool. You get to be like, oh, I'm leaving my old life behind and I'm a brand new person. I heard through the grapevine that Ali Abdal productivity YouTuber is working on a productivity app. I've heard that too. What advice

would you give Ali? I mean, Ali's different because I mean, Izzy, it's like, you know, my pushback is when you're building a startup, when you're building a product, you have to ask yourself, am I building something that's New York or am I building something that's Fiji? And Fiji is, there's not a lot of competition. This is something I grab, you know, this Fiji concept from Andrew Wilkinson from Tiny. You know, there's not a lot of competition. It's sort of an island in its own world. Like, you know, you could, you can be, you know, you can have your own little kingdom in Fiji. Now, New York City, you know, if you can make it here, you can make it anywhere.

Those are very competitive spaces like consumer social apps, productivity apps. These are very difficult. So Ali is about to enter that space. Yeah, yeah. I would say, hmm, I would say he's definitely more Fiji. You know, he's, from what I know of Ali, we've become friends over, over the past year or two. I mean, he's he's not trying to raise VC funding, have software used by 100 million people and like, you know, like build it to a billion dollar company or exit

or anything. He's probably doing it like most of his other projects, which is basically it's a combination of because he's interested in it following his curiosity and learning what he wants to learn, which by the way, he'll create all sorts of content on that will make it worth it, even if it goes nowhere. And he'll do it because he has such a huge audience that is so bought in to what he does. Even if only they start

using the app and paying for it, it's probably worth doing, right? Yeah. But it's difficult for me to imagine him really putting the resources into it that would be needed to be like a massive SaaS platform. One thing I asked myself when I start a new project is, how do I

win even if I lose? Yes, totally. So I think Ali could definitely win even if he loses. Like losing could be like a thousand people are obsessed with this product and he creates some cool content around it. Exactly. Exactly. Online creators are the best example of that because even if we utterly fail, well, that'll be a great piece of content about how we failed. Before we wrap, there's two things I want to cover.

One is you recently went on a desert retreat. with your wife and you did a year-end review and I want to hear about that. And the last thing is, I want you to leave people with a book recommendation. What's something they should be reading. Yeah. Yeah, let's see. So year-in reviews are something I am extremely passionate about. I've been doing them in some form since 2008, so about 15 years.

Starting in 2019, I started publishing them and sharing them on my blog. and that same year I started teaching a virtual workshop called the Annual Review, where we take people through the process that I've kind of halfway developed and halfway just borrowed from all, I mean, there's so many people now online, you know, doing it in various forms. I just think it's just, I think it's so easy to let life pass you by and for the years to just pass by in a blur. I feel like it's this sacred space that I can only do.

I can do it anytime, but it's best to do at the turn of the year because there's a kind of like, there's something in the air around that time where you can really kind of like step back. You know, you're not working as much. You're spending a lot of time with family. Like you can really gain some perspective on what matters in life. And then I just have a series of prompts that I answer, journaling, you know, introspective prompts. I like to collect my favorite things, like my favorite books I read, my favorite photos, my favorite trips that I've taken. and this year just a month ago was, or less than a month ago, was the first time that we did a dedicated trip, which I really recommend. It's honestly hard to find the time to do something like this,

especially if you have a family and stuff. And so we just did, it was like two days, you know, in the desert, a couple hours from here out by Joshua Tree. And in two days, you know, when you have that dedicated time, that focus, like we were saying, you can do quite a lot. And we both came away with such both appreciation and gratitude for everything that's happened over the past year. And like lessons learned and wisdom gained from things that didn't go so well. And then our goals and intentions, which we could like align. That was cool too. It's like it doesn't really make much sense for my wife and I to have completely different goals and intentions that have nothing to do with each other since we're, you know, everything is done as a family.

And so it just let us start the year off with such a level of. intentionality. Like, I don't think I've felt before. A little birdie told me that there's, you know, you've had some, some psychedelics in the last little bit were psychedelics involved in this trip. And yeah. So not the trip. Yeah. Yeah, no, I'm, I'm an open book. So not that trip, but about a month and a half earlier in October, I did my first ayahuasca ceremony. And I have a, I wrote a blog post on it as one does. It's very, detailed and like extensive. I think it's like 8,000 words. And that comes out in my newsletter on Tuesday. Cool. I like that. So I do sure it's way it's way too much to get into here. And it did

it I did sort of recap some of those lessons they kind of fed into my year in review. But I sort of am publishing them in separate pieces. I like it. All right man. And um, how about, uh, yeah, give us your book recommendation and I'm curious what what you're, what you're recommending these days. You know, there's a book that I picked up. It's this one right here. It's called Signs. But it's called Signs, the Secret Language of the Universe by Laura Lynn Jackson. It says it's a New York Times bestseller, but I've never heard of it anywhere online or off.

I think my wife had picked it up and it was just sitting on our bookshelf when I found it. But it's basically about how to notice signs. that the universe is trying to tell you. And, you know, I love books that are highly left-brained and, you know, have a lot of evidence and logic and all those things. But increasingly, I find over time, it's like that left side of my brain is quite well-developed. Like, one more book about, you know, reason and logic is not really going to change my life. What really does change my life, or at least my thinking, is more right-brain things,

things about intuition, about the emotions, about relationships, about faith and spirituality. And so, like, the content of this book violates every single cognitive bias. But as long as you kind of like, I have found, as long as I hold it lightly, that these are sort of, this is not the literal truth, but it's just one lens through which to look at your life. It's quite, quite interesting and powerful. I'll check it out. I love it. new thing I'm doing is whenever someone recommends a book, I just basically go to Amazon,

automatically buy it if it's someone I trust. You can't have, like I just love being surrounded by books. It's just a fun feeling, especially going back to the physical thing, like having a physical book and letting it being a reminder for you is just so good. So yes, absolutely. Thank you for that. And where could folks learn more about Tiago? and get more involved in your ecosystem. Yeah, yeah. Building a second brain.com is our website for everything related to second brain stuff. Elsewhere, our main website is Forte Labs.com, F-O-R-T-E-L-A-B-S, and that has the blog, the podcast, and various other things.

I'd say those two, those two are kind of the portals. I love it. And I will say, I will admit, you have probably the best name. of anyone who's come on to this podcast and we've done 100 plus episodes. So Diago Forte, everyone. I love it. Thanks for coming on, Ed. Yeah, it's been a pleasure.

Thank you, Greg.