The Startup Ideas Podcast - I'm answering listener questions

Episode Date: April 27, 2023

Today Greg is answering burning questions from the audience. ►►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.com/

Hey everyone. Welcome. So I'm trying something new. This is a solo pod. I went to Twitter and I said, my pod guest canceled. I'm doing the pod solo this a.m. What do you want to hear about me or about our businesses? Like check out please, which is our community holding company, boringmarketing.com, which is an SEO slash AI business. You probably need a robot.com, which is our AI productivity community. dispatch design, which is our design subscription and brand kitchen, which is a new one. And I got some questions. So this is going to be just me going through them. And I think you're going to get a lot out of it because you'll get to peek into my brain into real time.

So Zolt Kakso says, I'm thinking of launching something similar to dispatch. Would love to hear your thoughts on productized design. So the way dispatch works is you pay a monthly fee and you get unlimited design. So that could be decks, websites, apps, you just put it in there. Instead of hiring a design team or a full-time designer, we started charging $5,000 a month. By the time this is live, that price might be increased. But my thoughts in general on productized design is I think it's only going to get more and more popular, especially as companies try to reduce costs, but, you know, want to maintain

output, right? They need products delivered. They need social posts. They need, they need assets. So I think that's one trend of like, we want to cut costs, therefore we're going to use something like dispatch. And I think the other trend is really just the bar for design, products highly designed products is getting higher and higher and i think people are realizing that not only is design important just like from a warm and fuzzy feeling perspective but it actually drives conversions so um having a good high quality design partner i think uh makes a difference so product guys design only getting bigger um boring marketer asked me my favorite food probably pizza my top creators um some of my favorite creators there's a YouTuber named passport

heavy um he does these like honestly pretty long 30 60 90 minute travel reviews but it feels like just like it feels like you're on the trip and so i really really like his perspective i've been following him for a while he's gotten he's gotten big now but um still kind of pretty pretty underrated um something exciting i'm doing this summer i'm actually if you're watching this on youtube you can you can kind of see like the wood behind me and the fireplace i'm i just landed at at my house in the woods in the mountains in quebec and so there's something exciting i'm doing this summer is just spending more time here reading books podcasts being in a place where it's peaceful so last summer, you know, I was in Europe. It was very exciting. Got to meet a lot of cool people,

you know, saw a lot of cool things. And this summer, I'm excited to do the opposite. Just sort of be in my peaceful, happy place and it's very cleansing for the soul. Antonio Nev says, I would think it would be dope to hear some of your personal community of dudes, what they provide you with, the importance of airplane mode. And even in our digital world, how critical and valuable face-to-face time is with your brothers. Not a sexy topic, but important. Good question. So my personal community of dudes, I would say I've got like a few, two, three, maybe four small groups of friends,

four or five people, three, four people each. And I, you know, I've got these group chats with them. And we all kind of check in with each other almost daily. So because I've lived in a lot of places, San Francisco and New York and Montreal and other places, Miami, I do have a few different groups. But I will say that COVID really reminded me how important it is to have these groups of friends. And I actually got closer with my friends I grew up with. So I got closer with my friends I grew up with, you know, during COVID and also just like leaving New York and San Francisco, realizing that, you know, those places, and I might get hate for this, but they're pretty transactional places overall, at least from what I'm used to. And I think that you can have a lot of friends there and feel like they're friends.

but like there's a lot of other reasons why those people are friends with you. So that was a huge lesson learned in my 20s, which is, you know, you could have a lot of, you know, deep friendships in places like New York and San Francisco and these big cities. You know, insert big city here, Hong Kong, London, whatever. But a lot of the time, they're shallow or there's a reason why those people, those people are friends with you. The importance of airplane mode. So I've written about this, you know, going for dinner, put your phone on airplane mode. I'm on DND mode, like 90% of my time.

And I can tell you what a massive productivity unlock it's been, just being, you know, not being pushed around by push notifications, but also just like life unlock it is. So I can't tell you how important putting airplane mode is, especially when you're breaking bread with a friend or you're, you just want to be in the moment. And then face-to-face time with your brothers, like, it's important. It's really important. Like, you can't just be in the group chat. You have to make the effort. You know, I'm flying to Toronto in a couple weeks. And like one of the reasons I'm going to Toronto is like hanging.

with this group of friends that I grew up with. So you got to make the effort really, really important. Aaron Batchelder says, I'd love to hear about you probably need a robot. I have an idea for a community, and I've been curious about how the heck you built it so quickly, what role do you play in it, your future vision for it, et cetera.

So for those of you don't know, you probably need a robot.com was a crazy story. I started it about 50 days ago from a tweet. tweet. I was like, hey, would anyone be interested if I created a free community for people interested in AI and productivity? Like, press tweet, didn't think much of it, went to make a coffee, come back 10 minutes later, hundreds of likes, hundreds of replies. I like scrambled, made a type form. I was like, oh man, this is going to be something. Made the type form to capture some of that demand, asked a few questions about what they wanted to see in the community in the type form

so I can learn how to create and design the community. Fast forward to today, that's a thriving community. Tens of thousands of people are in it. We added a newsletter. So now I think we have 55,000 plus people who subscribe to the newsletter. People are loving it. and how I built it so quickly is, you know, I leverage my own audience. When I first tweeted it, there just wasn't that many communities. So timing played a role into it. I think brand played a huge role into it. If you go to you probably need a robot.com.

Like there's these little, like, robot characters. And it's, it's, they're super cute. And I think like a lot of people saw that and they're like, wow, like, These people actually like invested in brand and aren't just, you know, it's not just like a beehive or a substack. And that's actually why I tweeted out yesterday. This framework that I used that I came up with called the T-shirt test. It's actually something we use at lay checkout. The T-shirt test is a powerful metric for your brand success.

The question is, will your customers proudly wear your company logo on a T-shirt out on a Saturday night? If your company isn't selling out of merch, it isn't a brand. And then I tweeted about the merch method, which we use when you're thinking about moving from a business to a brand. So I'll just explain it to you. So what is the merch method? Meaningful, design merchandise that reflects your brand personality and values. This resonates with your customers and will encourage them to wear it. Exclusive, offer limited edition or unique design merch to create.

rate a sense of exclusivity. Reach, leverage micro influencers, aka I was like the micro influencer here, and creators in your niche to amplify and add credibility. Community, encourage customers to share their stories and experiences with your brand. This fosters a sense of belonging and holistic. Integrate your merch strategy into your overall marketing plan, reinforcing your brand's message and identity. So going back to your question, it's like, how? How did you build it so quickly? I think it was that mix of like essentially partnering with a creator, me, and building brand and being very conscious about that.

And by the way, I'm sure you'll see some merch for you probably need a robot soon. What role did I play in it? Very active role, you know, came up with the idea, was like the creative director on it. The vision for it, you know, we launched an agency around it. So you can check that out. You probably need a robot.com slash agency, helping companies figure out AI and automation. And that's going well. My future vision for it is there's a lot we can build with around it.

Like, you know, it could be we build AI products. It could be, you know, we're building SaaS products. It could be we're building, you know, courses and education. So we've got a lot of ideas and we're having an offside in a couple weeks where we're going to discuss it. And I think like sometimes when you're, you're a bit overloaded with what to do. Like sometimes you just need to get everyone in a room, be in person, and don't leave the room until you figure it out.

A day in the life of both you and your companies in as much detail as possible. Okay. So Ahaun asked that question. I wake up really early. Not because I like want to wake up early, frankly. It's just because like I wake up and I just like have a ton of adrenaline hits me and I'm like it's like five in the morning or six or even sometimes it's like between four and six in the morning. I wake up and I want to get the day started. I grab a glass of water.

Usually chug it while I'm brewing coffee. I love coffee so much. Make a coffee. That's when I like do like in the early mornings is when I do my content. So I'm writing my weekly blog post on my substack. I'm writing a tweet or two. I'm answering people. But it's mostly deep work around writing in the morning.

Then when people are getting up and our teams are coming online in the morning, I'm starting to just, you know, connect with the different leads. You know, the way our business is structured is because we have a lot of companies that we, that we run you know lay checkout is a company of companies it's just really checking it with the different leads and trying to see how it can be helpful so i really just spend you know nine to five trying to be helpful to uh the leads um i spread four to nine or six to nine writing content and then yeah after five like it's it's me time you know there's this perception that you need to work 20 hours a day but i don't think that's true i think that you know someone once told me if

someone who I really respect, you know, almost billionaire, actually, once told me if you can't get your work done between nine and six, chances are you're not doing your work well. So I try to do my work from nine to five, and I do some writing before to help clarify for my thoughts. And that's, I drink some coffee in between. And sometimes I'll do like a midday workout or steam and sauna.

And that's my day. So, okay, someone asked, Julian DeVito, Brand Kitchen. How do you figure out what products to launch with creators? How do you validate it? So Brand Kitchen is something new. Brandkitchen. Studio. Basically, we're partnering with creators that have at least a million followers

and we're building product studios with them and products with them. We've actually done this with late checkout, our agency. So we've worked with some large creators to build products. And it's great getting paid to do that. but after seeing what you know we have such an exceptional team you know it's kind of like well I'd rather own equity versus you know building a top creator's product seeing it soar and realizing that we were a lot of the design and brand and community thinking behind it so that that's the reason why we started brand kitchen more to come soon I'll talk more about it soon I'll talk more

but on the pod. Parker Curry asked, would be cool to hear how you found going from startup life to agency life? So on one hand, I love this question because, like, I've got a lot of thoughts here. On the other hand, on the other hand,

on the other hand, I hate this question because, like, I still feel like I'm building startups. I don't, like, consider myself a agency guide, but then again, I own a bunch of agencies, so I hear you. Going to agency life is a lot less stress. than running a venture-back startup.

I think if you raise venture capital for your startup, you just, you enter this treadmill and it just goes faster and faster and faster and faster and faster and faster and faster. And agency life is kind of like you're on a treadmill, but you're just walking, you know, you're walking at a brisk pace. And of course, there's challenges that exist in agency life. Like there's ups and there's downs. certain companies or agencies will get a lot busier than others and you have to manage that. But overall, I just enjoy the pace of agency life a lot better.

And that being said, like, even with you probably need a robot, like, I wouldn't be surprised if we build or you see like AI products built around that community. So we're still building startups. So I've got this mix of I'm, we're building agencies, but we're also building startups. Sharan asked, would be cool to know, how are you balancing these multiple projects? This is a good question. So my belief is that if you're running a product studio, it's really, really, which we're doing, like Le Checkout is a product studio. We launch multiple companies per year.

It's really difficult, or one of the most difficult parts about it is that you can work on anything. You literally could wake up and work on anything. It's not like you're a startup and you're building a social networking app and then you're like, oh, you know, let's go build like a chat feature or a photo feature or video feature. Like you have a lane in startups versus in product studio, you have a highway. You know, you have just so much more, so many more lanes. The difficult part about that is when you can work on anything, you end up potentially

getting shiny object syndrome, launching a bunch of different things, and then you don't give enough focus to the projects that either need the love and you've got to give it love or the projects that are working and you really just need to double down on it. So I've been running Late Checo for three years now,

and I think the first couple of years, we were bad at just like, we would just launch so many things. But like many people with 2022, the recession hitting, we kind of like focused a lot more. And now we're, we're just like, okay, we're going to launch like these like four companies and we're just going to really focus on them. So how am I balancing it? Launching less and then focusing on it. Chandler Scott asks, really curious to see how you build your audiences and launch these agencies. Yeah. So with every

product we launch, sometimes we launch an agency. sometimes we'll launch a product, but we always start with an audience, and we sometimes start with a community. In the case of you probably need a robot, we just started with a community, and then we started building the audience. With the case of boring marketing, we actually started a Twitter account called At Boring Marketer, which over the last like, I don't know, 60 days has gone up to 17,000 followers. And boring marketers is just an anonymous face. Like, go check it out, go follow it. And it's a, you know, if you look at the bio, it's like boring marketing advice that brings

you profit. Anonymous so I can be 100% honest. Drove 600 million visitors last year and a billion in organic revenue. Follow along. And that, and it's just crushing it. So how do I think about building these audiences is how do we stand out? How do we build something that is different than what other people are doing? Like, for example, with dispatch, at dispatch design.

design. Like we just tweeted about this like McDonald's logo. It says like happy father's day. And it's it's like a hamburger bun. And the hamburger bun looks like, you know, your dad's bald head with like the sesame seeds is like the freckles. So we'll tweet stuff like that. And I think it's really important for us to have like media and audiences and communities at the core of any of the products or agencies that we launch. That's a part of our strategy. All right. And there you have it. Those were the top questions this week, where it happens, question and answer segment. If you like this, I'll do this again. You know, I don't have ads on this podcast. So would really appreciate if you subscribe to the YouTube. So go ahead. And if you're listening to this on Spotify or Apple, go to YouTube, subscribe on YouTube. It's actually like kind of a great experience on YouTube because there's different visuals. And if you're more of like on the go, listener on Spotify and podcast, all good. But share this podcast out with your friends.

Hopefully this was valuable to you. That's my goal here is just to drive value for you, whatever it is you're building. So thank you so much for listening. And that's a wrap. See you next time.