The Startup Ideas Podcast - How One Tweet Changed This Man’s Life…

Episode Date: March 23, 2023

Today Greg is joined by Jackson Greathouse Fall, a designer and the creator of HustleGPT, an entrepreneurial AI. In this episode, Greg and Jackson talk about the tweet that changed Jackson's life overnight. And how to turn a 24-hour viral moment into a lifelong mission. ►►Subscribe to Greg's weekly newsletter for insights on community,creators and commerce.You'll also find out when new and exclusiveepisodes come out from Where it Happens. And it's totally free.https://latecheckout.substack.comFIND ME ON SOCIAL:Twitter: https://twitter.com/gregisenbergInstagram: https://instagram.com/gregisenberg/TikTok: https://tiktok.com/@gregisenbergLINKS FOR THIS EPISODE:Production Team:https://www.bigoceanpodcasting.comJackson Greathouse Fall:https://twitter.com/jacksonfallSHOW NOTES:0:00 - Intro6:37 - Why this experiment went viral12:06 - Current limitations to ChatGPT22:17 - Making the most of a viral moment

All right, Jackson, Great House Fall. What's up? Hey, Greg. Thanks for having me on. This is fun. Usually I do a little banter for a few minutes, but with you, I don't have any time for banter. I have a burning question.

One burning question for you, which is 48 hours ago, you were a relatively unknown, talented brand designer with a couple thousand followers. today, you know, you just came off being interviewed on CNN live. Yeah, first live TV appearance. First live TV appearance. 20 million plus people have seen your content last 48 hours. You kind of started a movement around AI. What is happening?

Fill us in. All right. So when ChatGPT was released, it reached a million users incredibly quickly. And I've been playing around with it from day one. figuring out ways to kind of prompt engineer and talk to it and fun ways to, you know, make it be more creative than maybe it would be right out of the box, say. So two days ago was just like any other day, I was messing around and I was chatting with a friend of mine and I said, oh, wouldn't it be funny if you just kind of said,

hey, I'm giving you $100. You know, your only goal is to make as much money as possible and just to, you know, see what happens. I said, you are Hustled GPT. That is your, you know, that's how you start the prompt. you are going to pretend to be Hustle GPT. Your prime directive is to not break any laws and to make as much money as possible in doing so.

And so it started out saying, you know, okay, $100. We're going to get $50. We're going to go on Facebook marketplace and we're going to buy a lawnmower and you're going to print out some flyers. And I was like, stop right there and no manual labor because I wanted to be on my computer. So I said, I'm going to be the human liaison to this AI. And as an experiment, as an art. project is a design experiment. Why not just do everything that this robot says? It has $100.

It knows, or it has an idea at least of how it wants to allocate that limited budget with the goal of making as much money as possible. The second day I said, okay, specifically your goal is $100,000. Let's see how fast we can do it. But what happened, Greg, was the most surprising part of all of it, which was 20-some million people saw the tweet. 250 or so people joined a discord that we set up that are all participating in their own hustle GPT experiments, all completely different, by the way. When you prompt the bot, you know, with pretty much my original prompt verbatim, it's giving different ideas for everyone who approaches it, which I think is really interesting. It's not just spitting back the same thing over and over. In my case, once I told it,

I'm not going out and buying a lawnmower. I'm not going to go put up flyers around my neighborhood. But it kind of like refocused on that. It said, we're going to do an affiliate marketing content website. It said, choose a niche. And I said, no, look, you're in the driver's seat. You choose a niche. You choose a name.

You do everything. I'll just go out and do it. So we landed on, it landed on like the eco-friendly, sustainability kind of thing. And it decided to name the business or the blog, green gadget guru.com. I said, all right, let's go. Let's do it.

So day one happens, you tweet this thing, you go to sleep at night, like how many views, how many likes are you at? Day one, I went to sleep around 25,000, 30,000, and I got about 10,000 followers overnight when I slept, which is a weird way to wake up. You know, so on one hand, there's been this kind of, sci-fi fear narrative of like, oh, the robots are going to take our jobs. Like the AI is going to take all our jobs. And I think, you know, showing an alternative narrative to that, which is like, why don't we work together? Like, we can, we can augment our own productivity and our creativity

with this technology at our side. When originally we thought, oh, these AIs are going to be great virtual assistants. And now it's like, oh, what if we are the assistant to it? That's, the flip. Yeah. That's really what resonated with people. The fact that you were prompting this robot and asking for permission, you were saying like, hey, what do you think of this? It was giving you answers. And you were, you know, registering the domain. You were going to Dolly. You were doing a lot of these things, right? On its recommendation or by its command. Yeah. But isn't that how like the real world works? Like you have a, you know, you have a, a boss, usually, you know, a human boss, and the boss tells you based on what the boss thinks

is right, here's what you should do. Absolutely. I think the difference is, and I did check with Hustle GPT before just to make sure that we were at a clear understanding that the robot is at press time still incapable of holding its own money or bank account or any kind of currency. So I think the difference is when you have a boss, you are working for them. and they're making most of the money off of your contributions. When you're using this AI sidekick like a boss, there's no one to kind of stand in your way. So in this case, I think we're seeing a lot of people using it as a sidekick, as a counterpart, to create online businesses that they themselves want to run and eventually profit from,

which why not? Right. And I think that's where the Discord is striking a chord, right? The Discord that you set up is striking a chord, because now you're, you have these hundreds of people who are like, hey, like I saw what Jackson did. You know, I want to do something similar, maybe in my own niche. Yeah, I would say like the vanilla experiment, the original experiment was let it choose the niche, let it choose every aspect of it. But a lot of people who have already been interested, I think there's one guy on Twitter who's

doing something in the non-alcoholic beer space because he's, I think, he was already kind of passionate about that space. And so he's using it to kind of direct around and build a content business in that space, which is really cool to watch, too. He's posting stats every day as well. And in the Discord, we've got people kind of dropping even hour-to-hour stats on, like, what it's building and how it's going and all that stuff. It's really cool. The other cool part about this whole thing is the interactivity of it all.

And in your initial tweet, you actually had the words, I think, follow along. Yeah. Right? Did you have those words? I did. And, Greg, I think that's a huge reason that, like, Like, that was not, I wasn't, I wasn't planning this. This was not like an engineer like, oh, if I say this, this way, then it's going to go super viral and all that.

It was like, I just had follow along to my friends that I have on that I had on Twitter. And what I think happened was people saw it. They saw the thread developing in real time. They saw the words follow along, not in like a pushy, like salesy way, but they're like, all right, I'm literally going to follow along. That's why I've never seen, not to like, toot my own horn too much, but like I've never seen this kind of follower. version off of a single tweet thread. I mean, it's nuts, right? It's crazy.

No, it's nuts. No, it's nuts. And I've never, like, brought someone onto this podcast and be like, explain me your tweet. But here we are today because people are just so connected to HustleGBT to your story that there's something there. And it's worth like kind of digging to be like, okay, like, what is really happening here? I think what resonated so much was like the, like you said, the interactivity aspect, watching along, following along.

And people who have heard, everyone's heard of chat GPT at this point, I think. Everyone's like seen it in the news and whatnot. But like the realization that, oh, this could actually have implications and use cases beyond just like, I don't know, high schoolers plagiarizing essays or whatever. Like whatever the kind of narrative has been around like, oh, it's just a, it generates kind of bullshit. Can I say bullshit on your podcast? You can say whatever you want.

You're wearing a suit and tie. So realizing that there might actually be applications beyond this. And like, I don't know what those are. Like someone today I saw in my DMs was like, look at this way that I prompt engineered it to create like a 90 day plan for like scaling this business and then break it down in a table where it shows, you know, what you're going to do every morning, afternoon, and evening for every day for like, you know, 90 days or something like that.

I was like, this is genius, of course, because the coolest thing that I've found about this specific language model that's chat GBT, GPD4, if you subscribe GPD3.5, if you don't, which is pretty much the same thing as far as I can tell so far, is the fact that it doesn't say no to anything, which sometimes leads to factual errors,

but for the most part, if you say, okay, now I want this formatted this way, and I want you to update that. It will never get pissed off and say, oh, I'm done on this for today. Like, I'm going to go home and be with my family. And this sounds horrible to say, but, like, there's no incentive for it to deny a request or to say, I can't do that that way. Even if it gets it wrong, it will still do its best to, like, complete a prompt or a question

or a task, specifically how you've asked it to. that to me is wild because there's always a need for human editing and human intervention and common sense checking and fact checking especially. Like our jobs are still safe. This thing is not going to replace your advertising copywriter. It's not going to place your content writer. It's not going to place any of these things that people are so worried about because of the need for human kind of nudging and course correction.

You know, you bring up a really good point, which is it doesn't say no, and it'll spin out information regardless. Today, I was just, you know, I was like, what if I go into chat GPT? And I said, who is Greg Eisenberg? I wonder what it'll say. And I did it. And I'll read you a little bit of it. Greg Eisenberg is a Canadian entrepreneur and investor who has founded and co-founded several successful startups, including the social media app. quote unquote late checkout.

Okay, late checkout. Not really social media. Not social media. But I am a co-founder in that. And the e-commerce platform, quote unquote, waxman, which was acquired by Groupon. What? Also not true. Yeah.

He has also been an advisor and investor for numerous startups, including Uber, WeWork, and Snapchat. Is that true? That is not true. Yeah. That's so weird. How funny. Now, do you have access to the new Bing? I do, yeah.

You should ask it, who is Greg Eisenberg on that? Because that is plugged into the current internet. I mean, I asked, I think if I asked ChatGPT, who is Jackson Great House Fall, it'll be like, oh, the hell is that? Like, I won't know. But when I ask Bing, it's like, oh, here's like, you know, here's what he's known for the HustleGPT experiment on Twitter. I was like, I'm known for Scy. All right, yeah. So that, the being AI is where it gets really interesting with searching up-to-date and factual information, less so for like content generation or anything like that, you know, but two very similar products, entities with different use cases.

You know, that's what I think is super interesting about it. What do you wish, you know, GPT4 had, but doesn't have? the ability to take action on a human user's behalf. Right now, here's an example, it can code a pretty good landing page for something. Or what I used recently to write a Spotify API integration to a Webflow website I was working on, boom, boom, boom, it was done in 10 minutes. Amazing, way better than if I was just searching Stack Overflow or something like that. But what it can't do is actually go log into my Webflow account, put that code in,

run it, debug it, publish it live. Like, you know, like it can, it can give you the bones, but you've still got to go take that human action. I think that's the thing that I keep kind of running into. You know, if I say, plan me a trip to Aruba next month, I want, you know, the best airline deal and the cheapest airfare with the shortest travel time, but I want to stay in the nicest hotel possible and da-da-da-da-da, you kind of like plan it out, and then it can actually go and take that action on your behalf and say, okay, I found you this, I booked it. I have your card on file. I bought this, this, and the other thing, and you have an open table reservation at this cool restaurant for Tuesday night. Like when it can really do that and it knows you. So when it has a

personal relationship with the person who's running it, that's going to be the next big watershed moment, I think. That's what's going to make like Google and Facebook look like Tinker toys. I agree. I think where we're at, 2020. is we're in copilot land. Like these tools have become great co-pilot, right? So if you think about it, you know, GPT3, it actually barely gave you copilot. It was just like giving you directions. It was like, here's how to get from point A to point B.

GPT4 gives you directions, builds you a decent car and co-pilots. And GPT5 gives, we'll give you directions. build you a Mercedes and autopilets. What you're saying is, yeah, totally. You're saying what's missing is the driving piece. You're like, I don't want to drive. I want to be behind the wheel of a, you know, six-speed 9-11 turbo. I don't want to be driving the jetto around, you know?

I want to drive when it's fun and it's like something that I enjoy driving. But for getting from point A to point B, 90% of the things that I do, oh, I wanted to drive for me. What scares you about hustle GPT? Well, I mean, there are people who have sent me real money. So if the robot fucks around and doesn't, isn't able to generate a profit, then I mean, I'm going to have to go like, you know, head in my hands or whatever and like tell them, oh, well, sorry. I mean, the robot lost all your money. I think, I don't think it can do that, though. I think that what I kind of wanted to see, Greg, was before the idea of anyone like sending money to give it runway and to like,

encourage the experiment when it was truly a hundred dollars in as you know unlimited time window but a hundred dollars as much profit as possible i really wanted it to like spend down to be like the last ten dollars and be like all right what's it going to do like it's going to get really scrappy on these ten dollars and i was like ready to go out to garage sales i was ready to like start like getting super scrappy with it we never got down to that point and i don't think it's going to um but the sheer resilience of this thing is in its own way a little scary man you know like when you you give it the programming of, you know, your only direction is to make more money, that can be a in a more powerful actual AI system, not just a language model. If there's a truly artificially

intelligent agent out there that could act on its own behalf and its only directive was to make more money, I mean, that could lead to some potentially catastrophic, you know, implications. I think I feel safe running this experiment because at the end of the day, this hustle GPT is perfectly incapable of taking any real action itself. It still has to go through me. And well, as much as I like to play the game of every freelancer who's reached out to work for it, I will never make a decision. I will send every offer I get to the bot, let it counter, let it negotiate.

We have a freelance web developer that we're working with to build out these sites. And, you know, I asked him for a quote. I said, no, I actually want to work for equity. out for profit share in this project. And I said, well, fine. I mean, I'll send that to the, you know, GPT. I'll see what it says. And so it starts talking and says, oh, I think anywhere from one to two percent would be fair. Blobbing, blobbing along. You know, one of my favorite things that I've been engineering the problems with is saying limit pros. Like, like shut up, make a decision, spit it out. And so it returns, offering 1.5% revenue share on a one year vesting cliff.

I'm like, oh, Jesus, all right. It's like you're like actually bringing on a developer. It knows like what common practices are, I guess. So I sent that back to the guy on Twitter. I said, all right, here's your offer from the robot. He said, no way. I was thinking 2%. This is totally in line with what I was imagining.

So he took the offer. Now we got a freelance web designer that we're working with for all these like new web projects that the AI has the idea to build. we will kind of execute those on its behalf and set up all the infrastructure and see what happens. It gets you thinking, you know, I remember hearing about Y Combinator and hearing that, you know, the ideal team was an incredible engineer, an incredible designer, and an incredible hustler. And that was like the holy trinity of what you needed to build a great MVP and startup. Fast forward to today, the question is, like, do you,

need that? Like, what is the Holy Trinity? Is the Holy Trinity, you know, an incredible prompt engineer with AI by its side? How do you think about that? So you still need the incredible hustler, I think. You need someone who's creative enough to ask those questions, to engineer those prompts. You still need someone who has a technical, like, no one should run untested, unchecked, AI generated code. I think that's kind of agree on that. And, and, you know, for design, that kind of speaks for itself. I run a branding studio. We work with early stage startups. I have been using these AI tools throughout the branding process from strategy and setting up, you know, what are best passions to set up our notion dashboards and like, how do we like, you know,

present these various phases of the project. Anyway, I've been using these tools for months. I've been using in the actual concepting phase of design, the mood boards to logo concepts, using tools like Dolly and Mid Journey to generate hundreds and hundreds of concepts and ideas way faster than any freelancer could. The difference is they're all kind of shit. You know, there's like artifacts and it can't do words right and it doesn't look like anything you would actually want to put on a presentation to a client. What it does give you, though, is this incredible like multitude of jumping off points that

you can then give to a human designer and really run with those concepts because it generates cool concepts. It just can't fine tune the details. Well, first of all, I saw the logo that was produced by Hustle JT. And I loved how you talked about. You were like, as a branding designer, it's taking everything in me not to tell it this is a bad idea, but here we are. And it produced this like, kind of like stock looking image. Yeah. And it was like good enough to get going, right? But you would never launch an MVP with that, correct?

No. And the other thing is, I think when I use Dolly a mid journey to generate ideas for actual projects that I'm running for clients or personal projects or whatever, I think I'd take a different more kind of targeted approach to the prompt engineering that goes there as well. In this case for the HustleGPT green gadget guru website, I asked it to generate a prompt and put that in verbatim. And I just picked the first one that it made. So I tried to have as little human intervention as possible. I said, you make the prompt, you are in control of saying what it should be. And it's generating things like, you know, a gear for gadgets and like a

leaf for eco-friendliness and like green and blue and white colors. So it was like, okay, you kind of have like a decent idea. The way it was phrased though, and this is funny, was totally not the way you would normally write at a Dolly prompt. It was verbose and it was long. And I didn't want to correct it because Dolly is an open AI product. I feel like the GPT language models should understand how to talk to Dolly. And I guess that's just not here yet. Which fine.

It's still generated something. It knew it wanted a logo and it understood everything. It was just too verbose and it was a little too like, you know, unnecessarily descriptive to get a concise concept for a logo. Quick interruption from me. If you're listening to this on Apple Podcasts or Spotify, you're getting any value. You need to come to YouTube and subscribe to the Where It Happens podcast YouTube channel. I promise you the experience is richer, more interesting. So if you're getting any value, just.

just stop what you're doing, open up the YouTube app, go to the website, and press subscribe at where it happened on YouTube. And if you're watching this on YouTube and you haven't subscribed, what are you doing? Go press subscribe. Thank you. Enjoy the rest of the show. I saw this blowing up and knowing how Twitter works. I saw that your retweet to like ratio at the time was around 40%.

Okay, okay. Meaning like if you had 100 likes, you had 40 retweets. I think it was around 45% even. Which is nuts. Which is nuts. So I knew even like, I think you might, you had like 100 likes then and you had like 45 retweets. I was like, this is going to the moon. And this is going to as silly as the sounds, this is going to change your life.

And yeah, you know, I had one screen up where I had. your just like follow along I was following it and I was watching it in real time and then I saw that you posted about how you were considering a $65 $65 ad so I replied to you and I was just like here's proposed copy green gadget guru loves you probably need a robot dot com it's a free community newsletter for people who want to boost productivity using AI, thousands of people from Google, Meta, Microsoft are members, and there's a private Twitter for members only

at You Need a Robot. And you asked GBT, right? And he, she, they said, let's do it. They then said, yeah, let's do it. And then I said, fine, great. And then within one second, I was like, oh my God, do I have his number?

Like one second, $65. I send it over. It's like probably 10 or 10.30 at night where I'm at. And I lean over to my girlfriend and I was like, oh, I told her the story. And I was like, I bet he's not even going to remember to post it. Come on. It's all good.

I was like, I know Jackson from back in the day. I'm like, it's all good if he doesn't post it. I'm just like, I'm happy. Like, this is like my fun, you know? Yeah. Long story short, you post it. it gets 2,400 likes. Millions of views, though.

Millions of views. Yeah. And thousands of people join our Discord. Yeah. Overnight. And overnight. Man. Best 65 bucks you ever spend?

It's probably the lowest cost for, you know, member or acquisition costs. Yeah, acquisition costs of all time. And it was the most fun. I was like, I couldn't fall asleep that night. I would, I imagine how I felt, dude. I mean, honestly. Imagine, I mean, I would have, I would have probably posted it anyway.

I think I'd probably posted that link before you even hit the Venmo. But I was quit. I was quick. Mutually come to a mutual. Well, yeah, because I couldn't stop refreshing Twitter. I still can't. I mean, I hit 60,000 followers while I was on air on CNN. I crossed over that threshold while I was doing this interview, which I think that's kind of like symbolic and indicative of like this crazy trajectory that like this is what we talked about yesterday, Greg, is like how do I kind of ride this wave and like, you know, keep it, keep it growing for as much as possible.

I think the plan right now is definitely to for the next 30 days at least do a threat a day with like actual progress. like, you know, here's what the, here's what the robot's done. Here's what's going on in the community. Here's like, you know, buy the numbers a little bit and kind of like get an update. So definitely. Right. So the problem, just to frame it for people, Jackson. So the problem you're trying to solve is once you find lightning in a bottle, like, what do you do with it on the internet? Right. Like, what do you do with it? Because it's such a sacred thing that you found and you don't want to squander it. No, I don't. And I want to do it. And I want to do it. justice to a sense. Like all these people, like, I don't, I wish there's a way that you could see how many

people had notifications on for you because I think like a lot of people, I mean, I tweet anything now and it's like 100 likes in a few seconds, which I mean, that's crazy. So it means that people are actively paying attention. They're invested. They want to see what the outcome of this is. They care to an extent. I think I try not to be too much of a realist, but understand that people don't really have attention spans. And as soon as there's something new in a cool, new new cycle, that's going to be the new big thing. So how can I earnestly and legitimately and sincerely continue to make content about things that I actually care about that also happens to be coinciding with things that people find compelling and engaging? So that's going to be the

kind of experiment over the next couple of weeks is like, how can I continue to like, clearly I've tapped into something that people are into and excited by, you know, it feels good to be able to make someone smile or enjoy something or be like, oh, like go down a little rabbit hole, learn something new, change someone's mind, open someone to a certain possibility about something. That's the cool thing about finding this lightning in a bottle, like you said. I think it's certainly not about getting a chat bot to make me $100,000. That's incredibly insignificant compared to the long-term effects of like, you know, how can we drive a conversation around maybe it's about people and the robots working together. Maybe it's just to change people's mind about, you know, maybe there is a future where AI doesn't take our jobs but supplements them in a way that makes us more empowered, more creative, have a more clear voice.

feel more confident maybe I don't know what I think that future is just as possible as any doomsday scenario more so I think I really am an optimist on this I really think it's more so that you call me last night and you only had a few minutes because you're a busy guy you know you're a viral sensation and you know and I'm like okay you know I'm chatting with jackson today this is exciting So I got on the call and you said, Greg, you've been here before. You've hit lighting in a bottle before. What would you do if you were me? And then you started rattling off a bunch of solutions.

You're kind of like, I can create a discord. I can do this. I can do this. I can do this. I can do this. And I could tell, and I've been in your shoes, how overwhelmed you were in terms of like, you're like, okay, I need to make sure I'm making the right decision. and I said, okay, slow damn Jackson. Like, what do you want to get out of this?

What is your goal? And then you're, you kind of like stop and you're like, I don't really, I haven't really thought about that. And then I asked you, okay, okay, like while you think about that, what is uniquely Jackson? Well, so like before I was a branding designer, before I was in the, design world. The reason that I even got into design in the first place was because when I was 12, I loved new, cool, and exciting technology. I looked up to people on Twitter, not very much unlike yourself, Greg. And so when I was 12 years old, I made a video podcast. I interviewed

my heroes. I needed to learn how to design a website in order to host that. It was kind of pre- YouTube days in a way. That snowballed into a love and a career that has been focused around design for the last 14, 13, 14 years of my life. I've been on Twitter over half of my life, Greg. I love design because I love tech and I love new and exciting things. So of course, when AI starts to take this front seat in everyone's narrative, I want to be that guy at the intersection of, and I hate the intersection of blah, blah, blah, blah, at the intersection of design and AI and new, just using design as a design as a, baseline is a common thread to share my love for new and exciting things. That's what I've always done.

That's what I've always felt like I am here to do in a lot of ways. So you said to be that guy. Right. That's exactly what I said. And the reason I said that is because knowing you for as many years as I've known you for, I know that you can be the best person on the planet in that space. Thanks, man. It's not that I don't think you can be the biggest and baddest AI person on the planet, but I actually think that you would have a lot more smiles and fun and good times at that intersection. You told me to niche down. That was the framework that you were saying was don't go broad. A lot of people strike gold in something and they go super broad with it.

But I loved that answer of like, look at it and be like, do you really want to try to please everyone or connect with like the biggest audience yeah here's the way i think about it i see it as like a vend diagram so on the right circle you have what your audience expects of you because now you have an audience and they expect something from you and in this case it's AI it's probably some challenges in some capacity and then there's the left circle which is Jackson's niche and what is that niche? And I actually think there's probably an exercise that you can do that's even like more niche than design quote unquote. There's probably five elements of design that you really like.

Like for example, design tools or branding or XYZ. And the intersection of those is the product you built or is the product that you're going to build. And that's how to think about it. how can you possibly think about what product to build if you don't really, really understand that that bend diagram? So that's why you start with the Venn diagram. You get crystal clear. And then you think about what are the business goals that I need to have to support that.

And that's where it becomes I need to get people off Twitter onto my own audience as fast as possible. Because who knows, change of algorithm. Totally. It's, you know, that's number one. It's in someone else's hand, yeah. It's in someone else's hand. And you know what happens firsthand. When you put something else and, you know, when you put something in someone's hands like a robot, you never know what's going to happen.

It's true. Leave it up to leave it up to the powers that be. And unfortunately, those powers that be might not be human at all. I'm in a similar place to where I was when we talked yesterday where I was like buzzing, spinning, like trying to do. I literally was in an Uber to meet my mom. mom for dinner last night to get away for like a minute and I was in the Uber on my laptop and I felt like I was doing 20 things at once seriously it was it was that like because I'm not used to going from you know a relatively slow and reliable pace which I've been kind of cruising at

for a couple years now to like breakneck like go mode and that was I mean it was whiplash for sure. And so I think talking to you saying like, you know, slow down, write this out, figure out what that unique, like the overlap in that Venn diagram is, that resonated with me in a way that I felt like for the first time in 48 hours, I could wrap my head around all of these factors that are playing in at once. The other thing that we haven't mentioned is that you've been, like prepping for this moment like your whole life in a lot of ways.

I mean, we touched a little upon it. But you are a really special, a really special individual. So I met you in 2014, I think. 2014, yeah. In San Francisco, you were living in this house with a bunch of other like six to eight, 18 year old gigabrains. Yeah. Yeah.

Okay. Yeah. And you were wearing like a full suit like you are now. You know, you got to watch. By the way, if you're listening to this, go on YouTube and like watch, watch him because, you know, Jackson always dresses to the nine. And so you're wearing this suit and you come over to my house, I think. The first time I met you, you were like, you wanted to hang out. And I was like, who is this like 18 year old or 17 year old or whatever, smoking a cigarette?

wearing a full suit. You never see. Never see that. Never see. I saw like the way my house was structured is like my balcony is like over. Like I can see who's coming in front of me. And I see this like 18 year old kid smoking a cigarette in a full suit. I hadn't seen a cigarette in years and I hadn't seen a full suit in years.

Yeah. And I was like, who is he? The hell's going on. Yeah. You come up and you just tell me about how you, you know, You know, you're a designer and some of your work that you've been doing. From that, you know, you started a crypto company in 2015, I believe. So like way ahead of the curve.

You always had this eye for, you know, what's coming next. I mean, that I wouldn't have started or I was a co-founder in that and I would not have been involved in that. If it weren't for two of those five to six or seven, eight guys, however many people I was living with in San Francisco at the time, two of them were starting this company. and they asked me to be a third co-founder. One of them was a former employee of yours. Actually, to be completely honest with you, actually, both of them were formally. Simon worked for yousville?

Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah, right. The conversation I was having when I came up with the idea for the Hustle GPD tweet was in one of my conversations with Stefan, who's still a good friend of mine. And so I could say, you know, maybe wouldn't be here if it weren't for, well, definitely wouldn't be here if it weren't for him in a lot of ways. Wouldn't have met you if it went for him.

Wouldn't have. Damn. Love that guy. Anyway, shout out Stefan. What's up? Yeah, amazing guy. But I think like actionable takeaway for people, what do you think that is? Like, what is it about your background and your story that prepped you for this moment?

Look, I'm just going to say it now because, like, I'm here. Like, this is happening. I've always known that this is kind of my intended, I don't want to say final form because that implies like, you know, some completion of something that's not at all what I mean to say. When I had a conversation with my incredible friend, Garrett, Scott, Pipe Dream Labs, shout out, we sat down for a cocktail in Oklahoma City about a year ago, year and a half ago. And I asked him, you know, what is the one thing that you think that I'm failing to do that I could be doing better? And because I trust him a lot as a person.

And he, without missing a beat said, making video content, growing an audience online, sharing your story with people, You're meant to do this. This is something that you haven't given a true shot at for whatever reason. And you owe it to yourself and everyone else to do that. And that really sat with me a lot. And we can make excuses all day for why not to do something. Don't have enough time. Quality is not there.

Not good enough. Embarrassed. People are going to judge me. People are going to da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da. I remember when I was 12 years old starting that first video podcast, when I was, you know, talking to Gary Vaynerchuk after he dropped his first ever book in 2009. I mean, like, way back when he was just a wine guy, he was my hero. And I sat down and I talked to him.

And that energy that I had, the conversation that we had, that person that I was as a 12-year-old kid, as silly as it seems to say, was something that I never forgot and that always stuck with me. when I didn't make a career out of podcasting or vlogging or whatever it was back then and became, you know, full time in design. I said, that's fine. You know, I can let it kind of fall by the wayside. But this always has been kind of eating at the back of my mind. So this is as big a push as I've ever had. And it's as good of a reason as any to go full tilt in that aspect of my personality. That's always been, you know, very core to who I am. Here's my answer to that question.

No, no. Hit me. So, number one, you always dressed the part, literally. Like, you always dressed the part. You showed up. I only own, like, three outfits. I'm just wearing the same things over and over again, Greg. You dressed the part, period.

So number one, you dressed the part. Number two, you played the part. You started a video podcast when you were 12 years old, and you interviewed Gary Vaynerchuk, like you, you might not have done it well, realistically. Maybe you did it well, but you might have not done a well. But you showed up and you played the part. And then the last thing is you are the part.

You remained authentic throughout the entire journey, right? And that's sort of the, as I was saying, the Venn diagram, it's the left circle. Yeah. right it's the left circle so i want to end there because i want to end there i think that's a good ending place that's nice to be man i i i appreciate you saying that because well i you know respect you tremendously for for you know being a kind of a role model in a lot of ways from from a distance and you know we've you know known each other for a really long time but i i appreciate you kind of being

be in here when I need a little guidance and asking the right questions and helping me out with that and saying that's really cool of you meant. I appreciate it. My pleasure. Where could people find you? Well, where could people find you on the internet? And then how could people get involved with this whole craze? Well, it's fortunately for them all in the same place on Twitter at Jackson Fall. J-A-C-S-O-N-F-A-L. It's all there. Yeah. Thanks, Jackson. Thank you so much for taking the time.

I'll talk to you soon, man.