The Startup Ideas Podcast - How to meet anyone you want

Episode Date: May 20, 2024

I’m joined by Jonathan Courtney, Co-Founder and CEO of AJ&Smart, to delve into my proven strategy for meeting anyone. We explore the frameworks and techniques I employ when sending cold DMs, offering you actionable advice on how to effectively use these methods to connect with anyone you wish.🚀  My FREE 5 day email course to learn how to build a business of the future using the ACP funnel:https://www.communityempire.co/free-course🎯 To build your own portfolio businesses powered by community you might enjoy my membership.You'll get my full course with all my secrets on building businesses, peer-groups to keep you accountable, business ideas every single month and more!Spots are limited.https://www.communityempire.co/📬 Join my free newsletter to get weekly startup insights for free:https://www.gregisenberg.com70,000+ people are already subscribed.FIND ME ON SOCIALX/Twitter: https://twitter.com/gregisenbergInstagram: https://instagram.com/gregisenberg/LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/gisenberg/FIND JONATHAN ON SOCIALX/Twitter: https://twitter.com/JicecreamLinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jonathan-courtney-4510644b/To improve your rankings your business on Google and using AI for SEO, sign up to boringmarketing.comEpisode Timestamp00:00 Intro02:00 Greg’s Framework for Meeting Anyone07:17 How Jonathan Met NYT Bestselling Author, Jake Knapp08:13 Boring Marketing09:08 The Canvas Strategy12:01 How Greg Met Weezer Frontman, Rivers Cuomo15:16 The With or Without You Strategy19:35 Part 2 of the Weezer Story24:25 The Value-First Mindset29:29 Step 1 of Greg’s DM Strategy34:29 Step 2 of Greg’s DM Strategy36:56 Step 3 of Greg’s DM Strategy40:42 Remember to Follow Up

How the hell do you get in touch with literally everyone on the planet? Like, how do you do networking? This strategy is fullproof. Like, you are able to pretty much meet whoever you want via this strategy and you don't need hundreds of thousands of followers. And most of those relationships began by just me literally reaching out on places like Twitter. I'm sure a lot of people are listening to this and are like, well, Greg, like you have 300,000 followers.

Of course, it's easy for you to like DM people and they're going to respond. But I've literally been doing this my entire life. How do you figure out how to deliver value to someone who's already, let's say, 20 years ahead of you in the entrepreneurial journey? So the first thing is, and we are back. Hey. Hey there. Hi. Hello.

We're doing this again? Are you giving it a name yet? Is it sipping time? It's Siffing Time with Jonathan Courtney and Greg Eisenberg. Hey, everyone. I'm here to ask Greg questions. The things that maybe you've been asking him on comments and Twitter or things you've been wondering about.

And I think this is the show where occasionally, depending on when Greg wants to do it, he's the one being interviewed and not guests being interviewed. You know what I mean? I know what you mean. I watched the episode we did that came out on Sunday and I did, because sometimes I was looking at the comments and I forgot we talked about this constipation thing. We talked about doing the reverse Brian Johnson where you try to get your age markers up as high as possible.

So you like die as early as possible. I think that's going to be game changing for some people. It sounds like something we would talk about. Yeah. Greg, I have a topic for you. I have a question for you. And this is something I actually genuinely have been wondering. And there's probably a couple of different angles we can take on this. But I think one thing that one of the most valuable things I think your audience would love to know is how the hell do you get in touch with literally everyone on the planet?

Like everybody I know, every investor, every entrepreneur, every company owner that I end up working with already knows you before I meet them. how do you do networking? Like, I don't understand it. You're everywhere. You're everywhere all the time. How does it work? So I do a lot of cold DMs. On Twitter or?

Just in general. Email, Twitter, you name it. I'm not afraid to just reach out to people. And I'm sure a lot of people are listening to this and are like, well, Greg, like, you have 300,000 followers. Of course it's easy for you to like DM people and they're going to respond. But I've literally been doing this my entire life.

My whole life just reaching out to people. And when I was in, when I was a teenager, I'd reach out to people and I'd try to add value to people's lives. And I was early 20s, you know, reach out to people and try to add value. Someone asked me the other day, they're like, I heard you talking on the podcast about having a mentor. And I really want a mentor. And which is, by the way, like, I would never call my mentor, my mentor, you know?

That's like being caught with my pants down, you know? Like, it's just. You're my mentor, Greg. Yeah. No, no, no, you know. It's like, no. Too late. Too late.

You're my mentor now. Mentor me. No. Mentor me. Yeah, it's just something that it's an unspoken thing. It's just like you have someone, generally they're like 10, 15, 20 years older. They've been through things that you've been through. And most of those relationships began by just me literally reaching out on places like Twitter

and being like, hey, I see that you're, you know, you've built this thing. Not can I pick your brain for an hour. Oh, fuck that. Fuck that. Yeah. Yeah. I hate that. That's the word.

Dude. Or like, the people, oh, let's grab a quick coffee. I'm like, why, who are you? Quick, quick, let's grab a quick coffee so I can pick your brain. So let me pay $2 so I can pick your brain for 90 minutes and just like, yeah, exactly. Hide back your afternoon. There's a great meme that maybe your team can pull up.

I posted it on my, I don't know if I can share my screen right now, so I'll just kind of post it to you. Exactly. this is what I'm talking about. This is how not to do it. And I'm happy we're having this conversation because so many people don't realize that this is not how you do it.

So the question is, how do you do it? That's what I want to talk about. There's a couple of, so can I pick your brain on a few different angles of this and try to be the voice of your audience here? Yes. Okay, first of all, most people, the first thing they say, as you already said, is, oh, easy for you to say because you have a big audience.

So now let's assume we're both talking about this from the perspective of people who started out doing this without audiences. And then the second thing is, okay, the people you're reaching out to are probably already very successful. Usually in the case that when we're reaching out to people, they're a lot more successful than us. At least I know for me when I reach out to people, they're more successful. And so they don't need a lot of the things you can provide. How do you figure out how to deliver value to someone who's already, let's say, 20 years ahead of you in the entrepreneurial journey, even if you don't have a large audience, for example. What was your process? Well, I think you need to do the work.

So the beauty about today's world is, let's just say you wanted to get in touch with me. There's literally hundreds of podcasts of me talking about things that you know I might be in. interested in coffee. You know that I like Miami. You know that I'm Canadian. You know that I drive a Volvo. There's a bunch of things that you can like grab. And here's like a hack on a lot of people's Twitter's accounts. You can actually go to their likes. So you can actually see what are the things that they're liking. It's kind of stalkery. I didn't know this is public. Oh, God. Yeah, and I literally just hid mine like this morning because I was I was like, I do this to other people. So I was like, I don't want other people to see what I like. But the point is, if you can see what people like and you can watch interviews of them, you could understand how to position it so that you have an offer that connects with them. Yeah. Let's give some examples. I'll give one from a perspective of someone who had actually literally no following.

Back in 2016, I was reading a, so I'm running a design agency. And I was reading a blog from GV, Google Ventures. They had this blog and it was about, they were talking about this thing called design sprints. This guy called Jake Knapp, who was blogging about it. He was kind of like this person who I was like, oh my God, this is like the Silicon Valley designer that I would love to meet who like is doing all the things. I would love to do and et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. Eventually he wrote this book called Sprint, became a New York Times bestseller. And I was still like, oh my God, this is amazing. Like,

I'm reading this book. It's so cool. I'm here in Berlin. I have no internet presence or anything like that. And again, I'm just like this, you know, random person living in Berlin. Quick ad break. Let me tell you about a business I invested in. It's called boringmarketing.com. So a few years ago, I met this group of people that were some of the best SEO experts in the world. They were behind getting some of the biggest companies found on Google. And the secret sauce is they've got a set of technology and AI. I could help you outrank your competition. So for my own businesses, I wanted that.

I didn't want to have to rely on Mark Zuckerberg. I didn't want to depend on ads to drive customers to my businesses. I wanted to rank high in Google. That's why I like SEO, and that's why I use Boringmarketing.com, and that's why I invested in it. They're so confident in their approach that they offer a 30-day sprint with 100% money-back guarantee. Who does that nowadays?

So check it out. Highly recommend Boringmarketing.com. I was trying to figure out what could be a way that I could reach out and hang out with someone like Jake without just being like, hey, can we grab a coffee? And I read this article from Ryan Holiday. It's called a Canvas strategy. Have you ever heard of this?

I haven't. It's like a systematic way to figure out how to deliver value to people who are like ahead of you. And one of the things it talks about is that if you're the person who can clear the path for those in front of you, you can also kind of choose the direction, which is a cool way of thinking about it. And so what I actually did is, first of all, I had to come up with an excuse to be in San Francisco. So I got a, I offered to talk at this kind of design and tech conference in Silicon Valley. This was an offer to do this for free, of course. And then I was in the region.

And what I did is I reached out to Jake and I said, I have an idea of something to pitch you that I think would benefit you spreading the word of sprint all around the world. It would also make you money. And I've taken care of like 90% of the details already. And he was like, cool. So I went to the GV office and pitched him this idea of traveling around the world and teaching design sprints, but I would use my marketing skills to sell out the event so that he wouldn't have to think about it. And I would take on the really annoying part of setting up the locations and doing all of that stuff. He was like, yes.

And this, first of all, we became really good friends. And this opened up so many doors to me that I could never have imagined. A lot of the Silicon Valley clients that we work with today are because of that. relationship that I built with Jake. But initially, instead of just being like, hey, can we grab a coffee? I really deeply thought about what types of things he might find interesting and thought about like what's going to be really annoying if he wants to go and teach this around the world, locations, filling those locations. And so I just presented an option to him that was super easy and cleared the path for him spreading the knowledge of sprint around the world. And that was

a cold, pretty much a cold outreach from me to the team at GV. I didn't even have Jake's email address. I just emailed GV. And this is the kind of thing I do all the time. What's maybe one or two examples from you? So I think that if you want to, if you want your cold DMs to work, you should create content on the internet. Like you should publish content on the internet. Because the hack is publish content on the internet, one in every, 20, 50, 100, even a thousand pieces will go viral. See who likes your content. And then once they like the content, if it's one of those people that you really look up to,

DM them instantly. So I'll give you a non-financial example of this. So I grew up, one of my favorite bands, you know, this is like the early 2000s. Who is it? Yeah. It was Weezer, you know, alternative rock. Yeah, okay, you approve. Okay, great.

He approved. He approved. He approved. Yeah, you know what I'm saying? So, loved it. And I played guitar, as you can see in my background. And you actually can't even see, you can't see it. But on that guitar, there's a strap that is the same strap that is the same strap that

Rivers Cuomo, who's the frontman of Weezer. That's the strap that he used. Get a new name, but it's okay. Exactly. Fast forward to about eight months ago. And I tweet something and it just, it goes ballistic. It goes viral. What was it?

It was. What was the tweet? The internet used to be an escape from reality, but now reality is an escape from the internet. Oh, that's good. Yeah. Yeah. So I tweeted that. That's shit. I don't like it. No. Not shit. I thought about it again. I don't like it.

Well, it doesn't matter if you don't like it because you know who liked it. Rivers Cuomo. Mr. Rivers Cuomo. Yeah, he liked it. So it's like 11 p.m. I'm just about to like close my eyes. I'm like aimlessly scrolling in bed, you know, you know, just like. Oh, I know that problem. My eight sleep hates when I do this. And I see he likes it. So I go and DM him right away. and I say, and this is a tip for whenever you DM someone busy, be short. So I say, I bet you hear this a ton.

Your art has been life-changing to me. Often in L.A. Would be cool to hang out sometimes. Sometimes. Yeah. Sometimes you wrote it wrong. No, I said it wrong. I'm a better typeer than I am sayer of thing.

So let's just break it down a little bit. I bet you hear this a ton. Your art has been life-changing to me. So saying the word art to like a musician, he's like, oh, it's art, you know? It's like, this is something. That's a compliment, I think. Yeah.

Any thoughts? Yeah, I'm with you. You're with me? Okay. Then often in L.A. I know that he lives in L.A. I did the research, right? Do the research.

And then I wrote, it would be cool to hang out sometime. I'm not like would want to pick your brain. You know what I mean? It's like very nonchalant. Like if it works out, it works out. He responds instantly. Let's do it.

I'll be here until June. What part of the world are you in? So then I respond. Love that. I'm based in Miami, often in L.A. I'll hit you up next time I'm there. And let me know if you ever come to Miami. I give him my number.

Then he goes, we'll do. We're in Tampa in a few weeks with Green Day. and he just puts his number in there. Fuck, man. There's so many things you just said that we need to talk to your audience about here. That's amazing. Two things.

One, you did something that I don't even know if you know there's a label for. There's this, when you're reaching out to people who are, let's say, who in this case, you were trying to reach up to this person. There's this concept. And I think it was Daniel Priestley. Again, I keep referencing this guy,

who came up with this concept of with or without you energy. I'm pretty sure that was Bono by you too. With or without you. That's true. I didn't actually think about that. That's probably where it came from. So this idea of with or without you energy,

when you reach out to someone, you don't want to be like, you don't want to be like, what's his name again? Not Bono. What's his name? John Ross, Rossman. John, whatever, the Wheatisus guy, right?

Weisers, Weezer. Weezer, Rivers Cuomo. The guy, Rivers, John W. All right. Like, okay. So you reach out to rivers. And if you were like, hey, love your music, whatever, love your art, can I come visit you? He'd probably be like, oh, go. Like, that's weird. But if you already say that the important thing is you're kind of like, I am there. That is something I already do. And it would be something that is just on my way. It's on my journey. That makes it seem less intense for people. One example of this for me.

It's a bit weird to mention this online, or on the podcast, but I think he wouldn't mind it. I was trying, I really wanted to meet Noah Kagan and just saying, I'm in Austin. Like all not like a week before or two weeks before. Just I'm here right now. And I was also like looking around what he's looking for. He wanted to help with his YouTube channel, not to say that I helped it as a YouTube channel at all. But just reaching out and being like, hey, I am in Austin. What are you up to?

sends me his number, invites me to his house. These types of things are so, like, there's a lot of nuance to it that you did there. You didn't just reach out and say, hey, can I hang with you? You said, I'm already going to be in these areas. And that's a weirdly important thing. The other thing, you and I are, you and I spoke, uh, were speaking to the same person last week, Blake from, uh, who, who is, he actually is my mentor because I pay him to be my mentor. And you somehow we're already talking to him. But we were talking about this topic in the mastermind last week. And he said, one of the weirdest things with people who are very successful and very

powerful is they give out their number so easily. And giving your number and just being like, hey, here's my number, like whatever. That is also something that a lot of people don't do, but it's actually super powerful. And in the background here is someone that I've been messaging with who I never thought I would have the number of. They just, it's, it's so, once you cross that boundary, once you deliver value or a compliment, or in your case, it's content, or it's like figuring out what they want and what they, what they can resonate with.

And then combine that with that with or without you energy. It's not like me not meeting you is going to hold me back or anything. And then a little number on top. Those things seem to be some juicy elements of connecting with people who could be your mentors or it's not even mentor sometimes. It's just people who can connect to you or people who you just really would love to meet. Totally. Yeah. And people are lazy about it, dude. People are so lazy. People reach out. I'm sure people reach out to you every day and they say, hey, can we grab a coffee? Like, you're not trying to be mean. You just, I guess you feel like, how do I even respond to that? Like,

it even feels sometimes a little bit insulting if you're a busy person. You're a busy person, Greg. And if someone just says, hey, can we grab a coffee? And you're like, who are you? What, what's the way? Everyone is, everyone is busy. That's the truth. Everyone is busy. And the people that are going to be lazy with those types of DMs, I don't want to spend my time with them. I'd rather support people who, non-lazy people, because those are the people that I think are going to actually do cool things in this world. And then going back to the river story, what's really cool about reaching out to someone who's like above you is all of a sudden if you show value to that person they give you access to their whole world so all exactly so all of a sudden like forget weaser for a second

green day like i'm hanging out with green day like that's really cool um yeah you know and what ended up happening with that story is i texted him and he's like i'm in tampon a few weeks I was like, okay, great. I'll see you there. And I went to hang out with him at the show backstage in front of like 50,000 people, which was really cool. Dude, you really hold that you keep your story, you really hold stuff back. I can't believe that this is, I thought the end of the story was going to be you messaged him. The whole thing actually happened. Oh, the whole thing happened. So I'm backstage. I brought a friend with me. Thanks for the invite, by the way. I didn't want to go on here.

Well, you're more of a YouTube fan, you know, if I was meeting Bono, I would, I would hit you up. So I'm backstage. And now all of a sudden, I can't even believe that he's hanging out with me. Like he could be hanging out with all these like cool people, but he's hanging out with me. And I don't want to make this conversation about me at all.

Yeah. So 100% of the conversation is about trying to figure out what is interesting to him and how could I add value to him? Yes. And what did I know about the situation? I knew that based on the like of his tweet of mine, like obviously this idea of being too glued to our phones and social media addiction was something that he was thinking a lot about.

So we started talking about that. And from that, I learned that he's actually a bit of a nerd like me and you, and he's really into AI. And he's like, oh, I coded up this like Discord bot. So all of a sudden now, I understood that. And I was like, oh, let me tell. Let's talk about how we can make your Discord bought better. Let's talk about how you can make an interesting community for Weezer.

Oh, hey, we just worked on something for Fred again. That I think might be really interesting for you. And then it was just at the end of the conversation, he was like, oh, dude, I want to hang out with you again. Like, let me know next time we can hang out. I think that another thing here, I'm just trying to break apart the kind of principles here. You also, I sometimes draw this for people when I'm showing them the canvas strategy.

If you're watching this, if you're not seeing this, it's basically a circle. This is where you are. You're at this part of your life. The Weezer guy is here and then hear all of his connections, right? And you like want to move up this ladder or whatever it is. But a lot of people are not humble enough to also realize that they are below somebody. And I think for me, one of the things, and because it sounds weird to say it, it's like, I am below this person. It doesn't mean you're below them as a human. It just means that maybe they're ahead of you in certain parts of your life.

And I think it's very difficult for people to be humble enough to assess where they are. And often, in your case, what would have happened is you would have gone, if you were not humble and you didn't understand the laws of power, you would have gone there and talked about yourself for two hours. but you understood that the dynamic stays in place essentially and that you still have to deliver value. And this is something that once you understand it, once you understand that there is this like dynamic in the world, you can really, really connect with a lot of very interesting people. I think getting too comfy with people,

getting too cozy with people after you meet them the first time, is often away or getting too familiar and overstepping boundaries. that's like next level ninja shit to not do that when you actually get in the door. I mean, this literally has changed my life, this way of communication because now all of a sudden I could literally meet. I want to say this, I don't want to sound like pompous, but like I could meet, I'm pretty sure I can meet almost anyone via this strategy. Yeah. And so what is it? It's content. Throw out content that's applicable to people and attract them, see who likes it, DM them, keep it short and sweet, meet them, go to where they are, add value to their lives. That's it. I think as well, it's just another example is we're doing this podcast right now, which is going to give me extra exposure. We're doing it. because I thought for a long time about how to bring value to you and your content universe.

And I was reading your tweets and I was looking at your show and then I was looking at other people's shows. And I was like, I wonder if there's a way that I can just take some of the heavy lifting of maybe like an extra episode so that Greg can still grow his podcast. He can do his own advertising on the podcast. I can be in the background and I can still bring value while getting connection to you, learning a lot of stuff, but also getting connection to your audience. It would be,

I was joking about this earlier with my girlfriend. I was like, if I didn't understand this world, then like, if you think about how stupid it can be, where like two, like next, right after this episode, I'm like, hey, dude,

I'm just going to send you over, over an invoice for the work I put in for this. Just like, this super short term thinking when people play these games, you know, it's like, oh, hey, yeah, actually now you have to pay me to do this. Even though I am getting a massive advantage because I have no audience. That's also a thing.

If people are wondering like, how do you grow an audience? Nobody listens to my podcast. Greg, like two weeks ago, nobody was listening to my podcast. I went on Greg's podcast and now a lot more people are listening to my podcast. But I also had to think about how to bring value to Greg's life instead of just being like, hey, dude, fuck you, put me on my podcast. There's a level of, like, you just, you have to have some level of understanding your position in the hierarchy of whatever it is you're trying to do. And that's very tricky for people.

Their entitlement comes on very fast when people, like, often someone will meet me. They'll, like, put in some effort. And then they're like super entitled immediately. Why didn't you hire me? Like, what? What's what you talking about? You know what I mean? Do you know what I mean?

I know exactly what you mean. I know exactly. Tell me. Yeah. And I think with you specifically, you send me a message with a loom. A loom video of a pitch to you. I pitched it to you.

Literally pitched it to me. And it was, I don't know, maybe a four-minute loom. And I'm not going to lie. I put it on 1.5X. People listen to this podcast of fucking 10x. You know, at least, I put it on at least 1.5X.

But I was listening to this and I was like, okay, what do I have to lose by recording a 30 minute conversation with Jonathan? A lot. Nothing. 30 minutes, you know? Yeah, your entire reputation. So I was like, you made a pitch to me. You did in a easy-to-consume way for me. I think Lume, by the way, so underrated as like just a great way to pitch people. Yes.

And you're sharing your screen. You're showing visuals. and I was engaged the whole time. We did it. You came to that conversation prepared. It was fun. Of course we're going to do another version, you know, another episode. And I also don't know if you notice this,

but when you asked me at the end of the podcast where people can find me, because we talked about your newsletter and all of that stuff, I actually didn't tell where people can find me. I asked people to go and write reviews for your podcast and your Spotify. and I didn't tell people where to find me at all. And that's like, in my opinion, part of being valuable is also not just fully taking advantage. You don't have to like squeeze every situation dry.

You can just see where things go and enjoy them. Like I think there is something to that as well. I don't need anything to come out of this. It's an enjoyable experience. By the way, side note, in the comments of the last YouTube video, people said something about us not looking at this, like looking everywhere.

and now I'm recording in a camera that's over here. Like it couldn't be, I'm like, hey, how's it going, guys? Well, the problem is I'm looking over here because I want to look at you, but my camera's over here. And we're not professionals, okay, people? You need it more extreme. You need to make it more extreme so that it's clear, you know? You need to put the camera like behind your head.

Yes. But I think it's okay. Just the back to your head. To speak to that person who commented, listen, I will, I'm, I'm, me and you are learning in real time. But at the same time, we're here. human beings. Like the reason why you're human beings and the reason why you listen to this show is because

you want an inside take from two people who are in the trenches, who are sharing how they're feeling, you know, not filtered. And if we're going to, if our eyes are all over the place, like, sue me. My last name is literally Eisenberg. What did you expect? Eyes in Berg. Oh my God. That we got to end it right there.

Do you think people are going to be able to take actionable? Okay, I want to leave you with one thing. I want to, so if somebody today, let's just pick Noah Kagan as an example. Somebody wanted to connect with Noah Kagan today, and they'd love to do it within the next three months, but they do not have, we haven't even talked about the idea of doing free work. We're not going to go into that today, but they don't have content out there. They don't have a social media platform, but they would love to work with someone like, Noah Kagan, Kevin Rose, whatever, someone who's like influential, what would be some actionable

steps they could take over the space of two weeks? So the first thing is their profile, so let's just use Twitter as an example. It can't be empty because if you're going to DM, and you'd be surprised, by the way, how many people have open DMs on Twitter. I mean, my DMs are completely open. Anyone could message me. And I actually read all of my DMs. I don't get back. to everyone, but I read everyone and I get back to the most interesting ones. So I would say your profile is your, you know, your calling card is your business card. So your bio needs to be super tight. Your profile picture needs to be there. You have to have something. You know, real photo. Yeah, great photo. The person should be able to scroll on the timeline and be like,

some of these things are quite interesting. Like I connect with some of this content. So that's step number one. And could that just be retweeting other people's stuff if you're not like. No. It should be the person's own opinion. It's pretty lazy. It's pretty lazy just to do a straight up RT. However, doing a quote retweet.

Okay. Yes. It's a different story. And actually, just if you guys are listening to this and you're like, oh, easy for you guys to say because there's so many, so much activity, I have, I have been tweeting only for the last maybe three weeks. And I get like one like per tweet. Like, I am, I am an example.

of the opposite of Greg where I don't really have a social media presence and reaching out to people on Twitter has been so powerful in the last few weeks. I'm shocked that I have just not been doing it.

So you're definitely, you don't have to be like, it doesn't have to look like people like your stuff for this to work. But I guess it does, it helps if you have a picture and stuff going on.

I would recommend that you change your username. My one? Yeah. From J. Ice Cream. in my mind it was always Jice cream so you know

no someone here I remember one time somebody met me and they thought it was something even worse so wait is my username J. Ice Cream I thought that's like just my handle isn't my name Jonathan Courtney on Twitter yeah but if someone

if someone named Jice cream reached out to me and I didn't know who they were I would be I just I would probably report a spam. Really? Report as offensive. You looking at my...

Wait, so why would it be offensive? Jice cream. Is Jice... Is that like something dirty? It's just something I don't want. I'm not like waking up on a Monday morning being like, you know what I need today? Jice cream.

It's true. I actually... So my name on Instagram is also J. Ice Cream. It's actually my Xbox gamer tag. which, you know, I wasn't ever thinking of becoming a business guy. And so this was my, like, making my Xbox account when I was like 12 or something. Yeah, I don't know if I can change it. I love it too much, Jay Ice Cream.

The thing is, I'm trying to now become successful in spite of my name being Jay Ice Cream. Okay, okay, but I'll, okay, apart from that, okay. Is it okay to have posts which have not many likes? That's totally fine, as long as your take is, interesting. And you don't need to create all the content. You can just quote retweet someone someone else's tweet and add your opinion on it. Yes. Yes. That's what I've been trying to do. Yeah, okay. So that's step one. Sorry. So that step one is like get yourself. And would you start with one platform. Like would you start with X? I would. I would start with X. Because if you're

listening to this, you're in the business, entrepreneurial tech world. That's where a lot of these people are having these conversations. And it's also where you have the ability to DM a lot of people for free because a lot of people have open DMs. Even though Twitter's dead, right? Because I heard two years ago that because Elon Musk took over, it's dead. So it doesn't exist anymore. Crazy that you're using it even though it's dead. Yeah. And I'm not saying that it's the best platform, but I am saying that it's a great place to start. Yeah, I definitely get more responses from people on X than anywhere else. Yeah.

So then I would, what I would do, step two is make a list of the five or ten people you want to meet in the next 12 months. And set tweet notifications for those people. Yes. Do you know the Dream 100 content? No. Okay. I'm not going to talk about it now, but if anyone wants to figure out how to, you can't just. Well, if you want to the Dream 100 concept is a, so you just said like choose 10 people who you'd want to meet and then set notifications for them. There's this concept about growing a business where if you want to grow a business, one of the best ways to do it is by making a list of the 100 people who have access to the audience that you want. And then in that, so you have the list, it's basically a Google sheet you would create. On the left would be their name. Then you would have all of their different social profiles.

And then you would have like, you know, the amount of people who are following them. And then you have like a list of all the things that you think they want. So if you're doing this by yourself, dream 10 is probably better. But you could create a Google Doc here where you're also, when you're watching all their content, you're collecting almost an an archive. of the things that they're interested in. So you're creating your own profile. And I'm sure someone will use AI to do it. But yeah, the concept of the Dream 100 thing

is that you have a way then to track all the people you're reaching out to. And apparently, if you actually reach out to 100 people, then maybe 20, 30 of the people will respond to you. And this is one of the best ways to get in front of the audience that you actually want to get in front of because you can get on their content, et cetera. But Dream 100 is something you can Google

and watch videos about if you want to see like a practical break. down of even how to decide who you would want to reach out to. I didn't want to, I just didn't want to take you off track. I appreciate that. But I also didn't want you to be the person who says, I have a secret, but I'm not telling. Oh, no, I just, I just didn't want to annoy your audience. And they're like, Jonathan keeps interrupting you. Don't be afraid of the YouTube comments, fan. No, there, dude, your YouTube comments are extremely kind and, like, constructive, honestly. It's amazing. Say that to the question.

Honestly, you're... Say it for the camera. Look at the camera. Your YouTube comments are very, very constructive. And I am responding to almost all of them. Yeah. Same here. They're awesome.

So, okay, step three. Once you've got the list, you're going to get a tweet notification from Rivers Cuomo, let's say. And your job now is to reply as soon as possible, but also reply extremely... thoughtfully. Got it. You'd be surprised,

you know, you might look at someone like Rivers. Oh my God, this person has 2 million, three million, four million followers. There's no way this person's looking at his or her replies.

No, most people look at their replies. And if you say something that is smart, some of these people notice it. For example, on Twitter, I notice it's like the same group of people

who always reply to my stuff. So if someone reaches out to me, I'll recognize their profile picture. And I'm more likely to have my brain picked or have coffee with that person because I know that they care about my content and they care about start-up ideas and they care about all the stuff that I care about. So we're cut from the same cloth. Yeah. Yeah. That makes a lot of sense. So you would turn on the post notifications for the people that you would like to get in touch with. and every time they post, you essentially respond. Would you also say that like retweeting and then like quote posting, I don't even know what it's called, like quoting what they did,

would that count as a replying to what they do? Absolutely. Because then you're spreading their message to other people to my one follower. No, I think that's right. Yeah, this definitely, I've been, I'm actually trying to get, I want this guy, A-Man, who used to be the CEO. You probably know him. I should have just asked you.

I want him to coach me, A-Man, the ex-CEO of A-Sumo. And I'm in his, like, waiting list, and I'm, like, replying to all of his. And I'm jokingly saying, yeah, it's because I want you to coach me earlier. And I'm definitely getting noticed. If you know him, tell him to coach me. So, great. You know, I'll calm up. Yeah, call him up.

I want to pay him. I want to pay him and I can't pay him because he won't let me come to. He has got like a waiting list. He's trying. No, I think this is, this strategy is full proof. Like you are able to pretty much meet whoever you want via this strategy and you don't need hundreds of thousands of followers. Now you have to be okay with rejection and you have to be okay with silence.

And that's not easy. And you cannot be entitled. That's the worst because you also don't know. Like sometimes someone will reach out to me, right? On YouTube or LinkedIn or whatever, I'm not on X so much or on Instagram or they'll email the company. And they won't get a response for me just because I don't see it. And then like a couple of weeks later, they'll send me like an angry message. I'm like, are you fucking serious? That's also now the first time I'm seeing an interaction with this person. You know what I mean? Like that's the thing you got to be, you got to be really okay with. silence. When I'm reaching out to, when I'm in LA and reaching out to people who are like way above me, if they ghost me, if they don't respond to me, uh, the best thing I've ever done is just not pushing and not being irritating. And then like the next time I'm there, sometimes I meet them and it's just that they were away. Just don't, uh, I think that's very important to be very okay with silence and to be very okay with rejection, uh, and not be entitled. Because they, they might change their mind a couple of years later if you're doing something more

interesting. I also think it's okay to follow up. So, for example, I'm trying to, do you know Colin and Samir? Do you know who that is? Of course, yeah. I know them personally. No, I don't. Not at all. I do know of them, but I don't know them personally at all. Are you trying to get on their show? So I know them personally. And. Bastert. Of course you know them fucking personally. Of course you do. Greg literally knows everyone. I want to. Dude, I never meet anyone who doesn't know you. That's actually a good story. I cold DMed Colin and Samir. Tell us. Tell us exactly how it went. So I think the way it worked was they tweeted about monetization of their channel and I replied with an idea on how they could monetize their channel. So going back to, I had tweet notifications for them. I replied thoughtfully with an idea for them.

and I just DM them after if you ever want to talk more about this hit me up and I arranged a meeting in New York to chat. I wasn't in New York I just flew to New York, you know? But just were you, they were there and you were like, oh, I'm going to be there anyway?

Yeah. As in you went out of your way to meet them. Yeah, I didn't tell them that, but yes, correct. Yeah, of course, but you with or without you to them. You bonoed them. I bonoed them big time. And it was a great meeting. I was happy I met them.

It was a very inspirational chat. And I was thinking who would be cool to have on the pod? I thought Samir would be really awesome. Colin would be equally as awesome. But I have Samir's phone number. So I sent him a message April 21st. Hey, love you to come on my podcast. it's a top tech podcast, not your typical creator audience.

Because he usually goes on podcasts for creators. So I'm trying to think like how could I, how can I get him excited about the podcast? And I've asked guests include Alexis O'Hanian, Morgan Housel. Jonathan Courtney. Jonathan Courtney. Jonathan Courtney. Jay Ice cream from Twitter. Jay Dot Ice cream. And then I posted a, a two,

tweet of me with when i when kevin rose came on so i had the credibility of kevin rose and then i was like if that sounds fun let me know it's called the startup ideas pod and then he goes happy to come on but the problem was the my smear was impossible to schedule with and impossible just impossible so i followed up one two three four five six seven times And then he just texted me today, finalizing a travel schedule by end of day today. We'll give you a time tonight. But I had to look like an idiot for a lot of times to do it. And that's just the price you pay to use this strategy.

I have a little hack on maybe something different you could have done there. And you're better at this than me. So take this with a pinch of salt, Greg's audience. There's someone who I'm, so I'm running this mastermind. Don't worry, I'm not going to sell it on your podcast already sold out. I'm running this mastermind in L.A. And there's the speaker. I want to, I want him to speak at it.

I won't say his name on the podcast right now because I'm still working on it. He agreed. Like he was like, I'm in. No problem. Let's do this. We agreed on everything. And then he was like, I just need to chat with my wife to make sure that like the dates are good. and I didn't get any response then for a little bit.

And so I followed up and I was like, hey, just, you know, confirming, are you still in? I didn't get a response. And then so I sent, I sent another email just saying, hey, just checking in. And he said, oh, absolutely just I'm still in. I'm still excited. I just need to really make sure of my life. And then I was like, wait a minute, this is an opportunity for me to make this easier for this guy. because clearly he's way, like, he's just got a different life to me.

This person has way more going on. And also, I want him to speak at my event. I actually really need him to speak at my event. It would be amazing for him to speak at my event. And so I wrote him an email, and his response to it was, I love that. And we'll tell you about the email in the next step. No, I'm just kidding. The email I sent him was, okay, how about this?

The event is happening anyway. And how about two weeks beforehand? I'll just reach out to you again and see if you want to come. So you don't have to think about the scheduling. And he was like, that was the thing he was super excited about. A lot of the things that I noticed about people who are very important and who are kind of higher up in this hierarchy, dude, they have so. I mean, the amount of stuff you and I have going on.

And I mean, I am like here in the business world. You're here in the business world and come maybe Colin. Samir here, I don't know, Kevin Rose is like in space. These people have so much going on. It's unimaginable. So if you can just make it so easy and they often, I think, like spontaneous and impromptu ways of doing things. So I wonder two things that I would do if I was trying to get this guest on my podcast. And I had a couple of these bigger guests on my podcast before and I had this challenge.

one is finding out without them even knowing who their assistant is and just going around them and trying to see if I can schedule it with them. The other thing is literally just having a slot, but soon, like a slot that's happening in the same day and reaching out to them in two weeks and being like, hey, I actually have like a slot today, tomorrow the next day, in the next 72 hours. Often I notice that people like this tend to like to do things sort of last minute because it doesn't have to add on to their really chaotic schedule. It's just, oh, I'll just put it in right now.

As it was today with you, right? We were chatting. We were messaging. And I was like, how about like today? It just sometimes works out better when you do these things on a very short scale I have found. Agreed. I think that's a great tip. And I think that's a great place to end.

I want to see who people end up meeting from this. Yeah. before people start reaching out to you, Greg, just to make sure you actually remember the things in the episode. If you just reach out to Greg and say, can I pick your brain? Nothing's going to happen. You know what I mean?

That's not the point of this episode. Like, make sure you didn't listen to it on 10X speed. There's probably some bits in here that would help you get in touch with someone like Greg. But yeah, dude. That's it. I hope that's valuable for your audience. I hope so too. I hope so too. It's another experiment. It's not one of your, it's not like a news topic. It's not like a tweet. It's like a general thing that I see you doing out in the world that I think some of your audience would find valuable.

Well, Jonathan, I think people could follow you at Jice Cream on Twitter. Give me some likes. Give me some attention out there on J. at J. Ice Cream. And if you want us to continue doing episodes like this, comment on YouTube, we are in those comments, and subscribe to the YouTube channel and share with all your friends.

That's all we ask. It's not a big ask. Small ask. It's not a big ask at all. It's barely an ask. It's a micro-ass. It's the only way we know... Very small, barely visible.

It's the only way we know that people are enjoying it. Because if not, we'll stop doing it. Yeah. You know? Yeah. I don't want to do this anymore. Yeah. If no one likes it, we're not doing it.

Yeah, exactly. That's the lesson here. Yeah. The lesson is if no one likes it, don't do it. We're kidding. We're kidding. But I will say, if a lot of people like this, a form of content, you want to do more of it.

So, for example, like, that's how the Startup Ideas podcast came. I started, like, this podcast was called Where It Happens before, and people were just really resonating when I started talking about startup ideas, enter the pivot, startup ideas podcast. So that's, that's the history there. Yeah, I think people should also know that this does not replace the core podcast. This is sort of like a, like Greg. still going to interview people and give you that other stuff you like. This is more like a BTS, you know, behind the scenes of like Greg has a crazy guest on his podcast. How does Greg

contact these people? That's kind of what I was thinking, you know, like in my mind. I was thinking in here. Great mind. I'm trying to like push my temples to show that I'm, it's my brain. All right, man. It's been real. Take care. Later. Bye.