The Startup Ideas Podcast - Local businesses to start with NO startup costs

Episode Date: July 3, 2024

Join us for an insightful conversation with Jonathan Courtney, Co-Founder and CEO of AJ&Smart, as we dive deep into the mindset required for entrepreneurial success and we reveal two promising startup ideas. At the beginning of the episode, we discuss strategies to avoid burnout and my productivity system that maximizes efficiency. We explore the challenges of entrepreneurship and why it can be tough, sharing the benefits of being a multipreneur to address some these common stresses. Toward the end, we delve into how to leverage the growing trends of shopping local and the desire for a "third place" to build a couple of great businesses. We outline how to build these businesses and why they are ideal for first-time founders. Whether you're looking to start your first million-dollar business or are curious about entrepreneurial strategies, this episode is packed with actionable advice and inspiration. Don’t miss this essential guide to launching a successful startup!Want more free ideas? I collect the best ideas from the pod and give them to you for free in a database. Most of them cost $0 to start (my fav)Get access: [gregisenberg.com/30startupideas](http://gregisenberg.com/30startupideas)🚀  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 tohttp://boringmarketing.com/Episode Timestamps: 0:00 Intro02:28 How to deal with Burnout22:44 When you should hire a CEO26:23 Benefits of being a HoldCo Entrepreneur35:59 The most difficult thing about entrepreneurship39:45 Ideas vs Execution?42:31 Startup Idea 1: Farmers Market Management Company52:41 Startup Idea 2: Event Management as a Service

What is the thing that you find the most difficult and painful about entrepreneurship? The most painful part about being an entrepreneur to me is the uncertainty, period. Anything could happen. If you're building a SaaS startup, for example, you wake up every day and you check product hunt. And you're like, I hope that, you know, if you're competing against Figma, Figma didn't launch something to competing directly against you. There's like 800-pound gorillas literally. everywhere could squash you in in a moment.

And I just think that the uncertainty and the slot machine nature of being an entrepreneur, it is tough. It is, it is really tough. You have to be at peace with it. If you're not able to be at peace with the uncertainty, then you'll never survive as an entrepreneur. Jay Scream is back.

Hello. What's up, dude? I'm sipping here. I'm sipping over here. Sipping time, baby. I'm sipping some booch. I don't know if it's pronounced boche. Bouch.

It means mouth in French. It means mouth? Oh no, I'm sipping on some mouth. Yeah. Wouldn't be the first time. Hey. How are you doing, man? I'm good.

I'm at the cabin in the woods on the lake, Canada. Very nice. Feeling good. Just had a nitro cold brew. Oh shit. Which makes you feel real good. There's about 350 milligrams of caffeine in it. So that's an average cup of coffee, I think, has 80.

Oh, that sounds dangerous. Yeah. So I'm ready to talk about whatever it is you want to talk about, because I'm in the Matrix. Okay. All right. So before you hit record, I asked you if it was going to be okay to bring this topic to you. and you just pressed record so you don't know what it is yet. So how the podcast works.

I like it. I've been pushing, so I've been running my company for 14 years coming up in September, AJ and Smart. And there's been many, and basically the topic I want to talk about is kind of like burnout and keeping going as a self-employed kind of solopreneur, entrepreneur. or like I guess my first question is, do you ever feel just like, fuck?

Like I just have so much going on. There's just too much. I just want to get rid of it all and go sell it and live in a cabin in the woods in Canada. So I guess my first question before I even ask any other questions because I want to learn some shit from you here is do you get to those phases where you're just done with it all? I don't.

Really? Yeah, I don't. I don't let it get to that point. You know, if I'm ever, if I'm ever feeling like I'm overwhelmed and too much stuff is going on, I just, I just take a step back. Like, instead of, you know, here's one thing I'll say, I actually work every day. Like seven days a week, I'm working some amount of time. And I know that's not what you're supposed to do, but I do it because especially, in the mornings for me. I notice that like I'm really, like, I get like one hour of work is like, in the morning is like eight hours in the afternoon and night for me. So if I notice that I'm like

getting close to being burnt out, like maybe instead of working two hours every day or on a weekend type thing, I'll just, you know, I'll go to 30 minutes. So I'll just, or I'll go to zero, you know? So I'm very conscious of about the burnout. and I just don't get too close to the sun. So talk to me about this. You work every day, by the way, which I think is who gives a shit. Like there's no rules about when you can work and when you can't work. And I think it's ridiculous that, yeah, everyone's trying to jam everything into the Monday to Friday.

And actually that could be causing a lot of burnout because you're jamming it all in there. Then you're like, now is my time where I take my break. And now I'm back. So you said you work best in the morning. So the reason you work every day is just so you can work every morning instead of having to work full days just Monday to Friday. Like how much do you tend to like? Like what's your workday look like?

Well, I work every day because I don't look at it like on a week to week basis. I'm like, okay, I've got like some stuff to do this year and some goals I want to hit this year. And I want to hit them. And so my average day is like I wake up. I wake up pretty early and I have three things I need to do every single day. And if I do those three things by 2 p.m., I'm out. But if it takes me longer, you know, I don't stop until I finish those three things every day. How do you figure out what those three things are?

Are you doing any sort of like, I don't know, task making exercises or prioritization things? Or is it just like you wake up and you're like, here's the fires or here's the fire's. the interesting things to do or, well, what does it look like? I think people who over-optimized on like this whole productivity system stuff, like, take it too far. You inherently know that there's like two or three things that you need to do. Just do the thing. And also, can we be honest?

It's not like we're toiling away, mining, you know, doing mining, you know, going down in a mine shaft. We're literally pressing buttons on the internet. that's like our work you know absolutely and it's so fun it is so fun i think so i'll tell you where my struggle comes from so i agree it's fun um i also don't have productivity systems and honestly most of the people i know who have like really detailed products is productivity systems are generally want entrepreneurs they pretend they are going to be entrepreneurs but all they do is just make like systems, but they don't make any money at all.

I actually know someone who is, I don't want to. Yeah. It could be too close. Let's say I know a person called Kevin, just because I have this book here. Right. Who obsesses about systems and reading all the books and reading all the entrepreneurship stuff and collect all these systems and literally has never made $1 as an entrepreneur, mainly works in corporates, but talks about being an entrepreneur.

entrepreneur all the time. And so I would generally agree with you, productivity stuff is just like not for real business people. Here's the non-system system. I'll give it to you. The non-system. Greg Eisenberg's non-system system is this. Wake up relatively early. What's early for you? Whatever. No. For who, you know, for some people that might be 830, for some people that might be 430. So whatever it is for you, wake up relatively early. Take out a piece of page of or an iOS note and pick three things that you need to do, do the three things, and don't get burned out. Don't fly two coasts of the sun. You know, like that's what it is. That's, that's all it is. Quick ad break. Let me tell you about a business I invested in. It's called boringmarketing.com.

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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. Okay, let me ask for some context here. Feel free to cut any of this out. I will not. Not cutting any of this out.

I'm going to ask questions as if I'm as if you might cut stuff out. Great. I'm just going to ask freely, okay? Yes. Many times when I'm talking to entrepreneurs who are very relaxed, And I'm confused about why they're so relaxed. I find out that they're already ludicrously rich. So I'll give you an example.

I know an entrepreneur who talks a lot about, you know, not pushing too hard and, and like, it's all easy and it's all fine. And I found out that he got like an $18 million kind of inheritance a very long time ago. And then I was like, of course I wouldn't be. fucking burnt out if I had 18 million in my bank account. So my question is, were you always this, well, first of all, do you have like crazy inheritance and you just don't give a shit about money and it's all good? A hundred percent of the money I have and the wealth I made has been self-made. From inheritance. It's from inheritance. 100% of the money I made has been from inheritance

and winning the lottery, you know? Yes, yes, yes. No, I think this system is a system I developed when I was 18 or 19. Okay. So when I had nothing, when I had no companies, when I was just getting started,

this is what I developed. So it's not like now that I quote unquote made it or I have a little bit of money, it's like, Yeah, I'm way more chill. It's like, no, no, no. I've always, this is how I've always been.

You seem very chill, but you also seem to get a lot done. And so I'm like... You can't wrap your brain around it. Honestly, I, I, yeah, it's tricky because I'll tell you for me, one of the things that gets me, or the times where I'm the least chill is usually when a part of the business is not working necessarily or very well. And I can tell that it needs like an overhaul in order to start working well again. For example, like last year the consulting or like the corporate consulting and corporate training side of the business just needed a massive overhaul.

And I could tell like basically stagnating revenue, stagnating profits. It's actually the profits we're starting to slowly go down. And I could just see shit like in a few months' time. This is going to be hitting the break-even point. And then we're going to start losing cash flow. And I see a project of that size. And sometimes I'm just like, I'm just not in the mood to do that right now. Like I'm not in the mood to take it on.

And this could be related to the way I have not necessarily hired and staffed up in the way maybe you have like, Tio at LCA who seems to just be able to take things and run with them. But Laura and I at AJ and Smart definitely have this feeling that if we, if something starts to stagnate, it's not possible to fix it without me personally jumping in

or Laura personally jumping in. Do you still get dragged into things like that? Or are you just totally, are you out of this sort of revenue cash flow day-to-day stuff? I drag myself into it. I don't think, you know, we have a bunch of companies under late checkout and a lot of, you know, a lot of the times some of them are struggling more than others. But a lot of the people running it don't want to bring me in because that's like, you know,

an area of last resort. and they want to fix the problem themselves. And that's amazing, right? Yeah. But I don't want to make it seem like I'm so chill that I'm just like, all right. Yeah, good luck, all these companies. Like, I'm not. I really care about these businesses seeing full potential.

So, like, I'm in the Slack. I'm looking at things. I'm asking questions. But you can do those things and not work 20 hours a day. Sure. And actually, just to be clear, and I know this is becoming a therapy session for me, thanks Greg. I don't work an abnormal amount of hours. It's more like the amount of hours I do. And sometimes it is three or four hours. They can be quite consequential for the business. Like they can be the ones that make the decision that makes us the money for the next six months. And so and then obviously, I have experimented with stepping out and being out of the business for quite some time. And then like more stagnation sort of kicks in. So I guess at least today I feel like I'm still very much needed.

And I guess that stress of knowing that if I just take my eye off the ball, something can fall apart. Any person running a successful business will now say, well, your business is not robust enough. you're right and that's what I'm trying to figure out but yeah like that's the stuff that kind of stresses me out doesn't mess with my sleep it isn't all the time

but it does there are like sometimes weeks where I'm like oh man now I want to sell the company like whenever I'm annoyed with AJ and smart I'm like fuck this I'm just taking the money out

and I'm done you know that that comes to my mind yeah I mean of course it comes to your mind but I think people are going to, I think people are going to listen to this and are going to be like, this is champagne problems, Jonathan. Obviously, we're running a, this is an entrepreneur podcast. Like it's, it's a, we're not trying to help people figure out how to do important life.

Although, yeah, we're talking about, fuck anyone saying they're champagne problems. They're coming to this podcast to listen to two relatively successful entrepreneurs talk about stuff. Fuck you. I just think that someone's listening to this and being like, burn out. You know, like, I'm just trying to get financial freedom right now. I want to like require my parents. I want to do all these things. I need to, you know, buy a house.

Have you seen the, have you seen the price of coffee lately? You know? Yeah. Okay, that's your audience. Okay, let me ask you. Let me change the topic. Maybe. I thought all your audience were millionaire.

entrepreneur or no. Maybe, maybe. I mean, to put a bow on this topic, I think that realistically, you can get a lot done in eight hours a day, just figure out what are the most productive hours and slap Do Not Disturb mode and have a cold, you know,

nitro cold group and see you in outer space. Do you use Zin? Do you use nicotine pouches? I'm not a, I'm not a Zin. Not a Zin boy? No. Oh man. Yeah.

I mean, I only realize now that Zin is these pouches that they also sell in Sweden. So like easy access, but I heard they can be quite addictive. Yeah. Yeah, I think that's what they say. Nicotine is, what is it? It's like more addictive than heroin or something like that. Oh my God. Okay.

Yeah. I'm going to just continue drinking mouth. Yeah. Until further notice. Okay, wait, I just want to be sure I got. So I, so you basically just don't ever get to the point where you feel overwhelmed or stressed. You don't go too close to this hunt. That's right.

Great, dude. And I mean, of course I get stressed. Like, okay, business. revenues down 30% month over month. We lost our biggest client. I don't know. Our technology is built on this API and they just shut it off. That's stressful.

But being stress isn't going to help the problem. What helps the problem is figuring out what is your most productive time zone. How do you get in the state to get most productive? And then what are the things that you need to do to move the needle the quickest? and go and do that. And that's it. And just do it every day. Yeah.

And I know that sounds like really simple, but that's what it is. Everything else is noise and fluff. And, and this is the system that work for me. All right, dude. Yeah. Fucking Superman over there.

So you, so the unfortunate answer to this question is you are as chilled as you seem. Unfortunately. Would your employees say that you are a chill person? to work with? I don't know. I don't know because I think when they see me, it's always in a moment of there's something wrong and me being like, you know, ask. I'm also very direct. So. Ah. Do people say that about like, I know that people say about me that I'm very direct, but also like, I don't talk about the positive things. I'm just talking about the, I'm like a very much a fire

firefighter. I jump in and I'm like, this is broken, this is broken, this is broken, this is broken. We need to fix this, this, this, this, this, this, goodbye. And that obviously rubs people the wrong way. And I've heard obviously negatives things coming out of that. Like no one who works with me would say, oh, Jonathan's so chilled. It wouldn't be what they would talk about me publicly. Yeah, I don't think people say that.

I mean, I don't know, but I don't think internally people are like, like Greg is super chill because it's the same situation. Like when I, when they see me, I'm generally with a firefighter hat on. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. All right. And it's and it's, and it's like you. It's like, yeah, like here's here are all my questions. Like let me collect all the data points. Once I have their data points. Then it's like, okay, based on this, here's what we need to do. That that, that, that, that, that, that, that. Also, why didn't we do these three things? And the, and the reason why I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, say that is because I, you know, I don't want to be, I don't want to dress up as a sexy firefighter. You know?

Just topless, but like not in shape. I always said that for you because I know that you'd appreciate that. I love it. I love it. And I don't want to do that because I start, you know, I want to spawn many firefighters within the organizations, right? So, yeah. As a hold co-entrepreneur, that's what you're trying to do.

You're trying to build the reflexes for the companies within themselves to come and come and be like, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, you know, Michelle is the firefighter because she sees something and she sees revenues down or she hears that, you know, Twitter's API, you know, is being shut off or whatever it is. Okay. Okay. Well, you can tell I came to this session today in a stressed mode. And I just wanted you to say you get stressed too, but fuck you, Greg. Yeah. Yeah, I mean, I do get stressed, but... But you never get to the point where you're like, fuck this thing. Fuck LCA. I'm selling it. I'm done with all this. I'm going to go live in a cabin. And then I'll get, I'll think about what I want to do in about five years. years. No, I don't, I can honestly say that doesn't cross my mind. I get to that point multiple times per year, not just with it. Like, just it's part of the way my brain works sometimes. I'm like, ah. Why? That business has generated like millions of dollars of profits for you. Why would you

go and just decide, hey, it's no longer for me? Well, first of all, I'm very grateful for the revenue and profit it generates and I love the business and it is a big part of my life. It's just sort of part of how my brain works, I would say, like sometimes I just hit a wall and get sick of something and I just want to move on to something new and interesting. I generally hold myself back from doing that and like stay on the core business. And the problem is sometimes it's also worked out really well. Like I remember a couple of years ago, like seven or eight years ago, I was so sick of just focus or relying on client work to make money. And you maybe know the cash flow kind of variation when you're just doing client consulting

work. And we started the education business with the in-person training and then online training. And that moved our run like burn rate from like three months to like 15 months to 18 months. And I was like, holy shit, just being super annoyed at something sometimes generates interesting things. Yeah, I mean, what I often say is I'm not the right person to be the CEO because I'm the I am the person when I get annoyed with something. Even if it's making money, I'm like, I don't want to do this anymore.

I don't want us to do this anymore. And why don't you just hire a CEO? Laura and I have talked about this and multiple times. And I think, yeah, one part about it is the idea of looking for someone. sounds annoying. And I've heard that process is very difficult and like often doesn't work out. The other part is like maybe I'm just not ready to let it go just yet. The other part is I did bring in a CEO for the consulting business and fucking shit hit the fan majorly.

So I did let that one happen. Although it did work well for two years. Like brought in a CEO, kept the number stable. It didn't really grow. And then it was like, phew. Yeah, but.

Well, that's a bad answer because it's a bad answer. Like, okay, the hiring, okay, I've hired a CEO before and it didn't really work out is like, is like saying,

well, it's a lazy answer. You know, I, I didn't say I wasn't lazy. I had a broken heart before, therefore, therefore I'm never going to date again.

Yeah, yeah, I know. So that, that's a, that's a bad answer. How do you, can you,

assess whether we should have a new CEO? Can we do an assessment? You own so many companies. The assessment is yes. This is the assessment. If you if you if you are having racing thoughts from time to time that you want to sell the business and like it's only when I'm annoyed with it. How many times per year do you think that thought hits you? Um, four times maybe per year. No, no brainer. There's this is if that thought is coming at least once quarter, then see you later. Life's too short for it. You'll hire someone who actually cares a lot about it more. Now, you have to be okay with the fact that CEO might be worse than you, and it might not work out, and it might take three CEOs for it to work out. And that's just the nature of, yeah, I know, and it's crazy. And, you know, or you might get lucky. But I think that that's just the reality

of giving your baby to someone else. I'm not against it. I think we're doing sort of a big relaunch in September. I talked to you a little bit about it off the podcast. And I think that's the point where I basically have the vision for the next 12 months, which I'm very excited about and very happy about and very proud of. And I feel like once that's in place, that's the next 10 years worth of stuff for the company to do.

And I think I'd prefer, I prefer for in that decade to be more in the role of the person who's bringing product ideas and bringing the maybe, like being the sounding board for someone else who's running it versus being the person running it and making the decisions. Yeah, it's a constant conversation. Dude, I have no idea if any of this is interesting for your audience. I'm just telling you, I just answered your question. Sorry. I mean, you're like, the audience is here to learn how to start a business.

And we're like, so when you're 15 years into it and it's already making millions, here's the small problems that you're going to, you know. I think if I were you, I would also become a hold co-entrepreneur. Yeah, I have to talk. I don't even really know what that is. It's like, so I would basically have a holding company and then that would own AJ and smart and that would also own other companies and I would be on like the board of these companies. Yeah, exactly.

You know what I don't like about that? For me, I really do not. I really optimize for peace. Like I like peace and calm and quiet and not a lot of stuff going on. I don't even like traveling because it like annoyed. it kind of breaks me out of my routine and I love my routine. I had a holding company, which I shut down in December, and I was doing investments and I was looking into this concept.

And I think the way my brain works, that would feel, I'd love to be, I'd love to help other companies with their products and their strategy with no paperwork at all. And like, I heard Jason Freed saying this recently, if they make shit tons of money and they, feel like reimbursing me for the for the work I did great but I don't know if I actually want to have I don't know if I want to do the paperwork for the and I know I wouldn't personally be doing the paperwork I wasn't personally doing the paperwork for my holding company and my company it's just

that world of adding what do you think a holding company is well my the holding company I had which I started it's just a vehicle for owning other things. Yeah. But there's lots of legal and paperwork behind that. It's a whole other company. I mean, this is the same, dude, this is the same thing as the CEO thing where it's like your heart, your heart has been broken by paperwork in the past. Therefore, you're like, yeah, I hate it. Yeah. I hate it. No, I hope some people in the comments understand me here, but I feel so much better when I'm working on one thing, like doing, like, it's, I like simplicity and peace, and I would always choose that over complexity, even if it means way more money. Yeah, but why don't you just

abstract away the paperwork? So, for example, I own a holding company, I'm a co-founder in a holding company, lay checkout. And there's deals that get signed all the time and paperworked, but and inked up, but I'm not involved in signing them. I just trust other people to sign them. And then- I don't, yeah. Yeah. I don't sign every deal.

Like, like $450,000 deals will come in, which I won't even see. It's more that I feel like I'm going to come across like a complete idiot on this call. Because this is the truth. because my entrepreneur friends also think I'm stupid when it comes to this stuff. There's more noise when I have holding company plus AJ and smart, plus a few other things going on. There's more text messages. There's more emails.

There's more slacks. And it doesn't matter how automated and incentivized everyone is. Someone will always come to me and say, yeah, you know what? I'd actually like to talk about my compensation for doing. this thing in this company and I simply don't enjoy the amount of new open threads it creates. Someone we know, you and I know Sam somewhat, Sam Ovens, he has a similar brain in a way that he like hyper focuses on one thing and leaves infinite money on the table because of wanting to avoid complexity.

And so for me, for me, I view that as as more complex. than I want to go to, even though everyone tells me I'm stupid about it. And I don't disagree with them. So I agree it's stupid that I won't do the whole co thing. But it just makes me feel stressed. It's the reason I also don't own a place. I have a very simple, easy setup life. I think that you can still have an easy, simple life if you just abstract away things. And I think the, what you need to do, is is figure out how you can abstract away the things that you really don't like. Abstract away meaning

giving it to other people. Correct. Dude, it always comes back. Yeah, it always comes back. It like, as in, for me, it still, like, let's say, like there's always things that come back to the legal owner.

Yeah. You know what I mean? Eventually. Yeah, obviously. but, you know, it doesn't, it doesn't have to happen like very frequently, you know, it happens very infrequently. Right. It's like once per quarter. Yeah, exactly. I am literally talking about that level. But it's like, all right, you, I don't know again what you want to put on the podcast. I have a kid in the picture. That makes everything 10 times louder and 10 times more complicated.

And she's not in the kindergarten. And now there's an outbreak of a vomiting bug. And now I have this thing over here and now have this thing over here. It makes me feel stressed and like loud even when one thing per extra thing per quarter comes in. Whereas when I'm just running one business, it's still a lot of stuff. But dude, you know what? I think I need to talk to you about this because maybe you're right. Maybe I'm just doing way too many things that are completely unnecessary.

But I have these phases where I like step out of everything. and then I'm like, all right, I'm free, and then I get bored. And then I'm like, I'm going to go in and then I'm like, I'm overwhelmed. And finding this middle ground between bored and overwhelmed, I find very tricky. You need to do, and people listening should do this too, is like just an audit, a straight up audit of all the things you do, isn't necessary, is it unnecessary, is it unnecessary? What can you abstract away? What can you not abstract away?

And then what's your goal? what is the goal you want to, you know, come to? And I think that's, that's it. That's like, that's going to help you. Like, that's the framework. That's the non-framework framework. So you have some serious thinking you got to do, Jonathan. Do you have a financial goal?

Like, big, so that's the, I think that's one of the issues I have is that I don't know what I'm actually working toward. Like, I don't have like, oh, this would be the number I would love to have or this is the thing I'm trying to do. Like with AJ and smart, I'm like 10 million revenue, but it's like a random thing I pull out of my head. It's not a do you have for yourself personally, do you have like a financial goal on a yearly basis or like when you want to retire like when do you want to be financially free something like that? Am I coming across as like really neurotic and weird on this episode? Just the way I wanted. This couldn't have gone better.

So I have a financial rate of return that I want to hit in my portfolio, which includes liquid and non-liquid. And I have goals for each of my individual businesses, which, you know, some are financial and some are not. but they're all kind of made up goals. It's just pretty arbitrary. But it's just, you know, what isn't measured, what is, what's the expression? What isn't measured doesn't get managed? Something like that. Something like that.

That's the basic. That's a basic idea. That's the basic idea. I mean, if you don't, basically, if you don't, you don't, if you don't measure. Are you to say the same thing again? If you don't measure, you don't manage. We did this a few times ago in the pot. Into the river, the river's moving.

Yeah, exactly. So I'm not good at sayings. I'm not good at things, but I'm good at balance. You still go for the sayings. Yeah, I still go for it. That's the type of guy I am. I really appreciate that you do actually put out the podcast on edited like this. Yes.

I mean, in a way, it can be painful. to watch because there are any awkward silences between you and I are actually still in there. I'd appreciate if your editors would remove some of that. But I think it's cool that you're willing to just put it out there and including the fact that you say these sayings and then forget them and just doesn't matter. I mean, I think it's great. This is like the real life of entrepreneurs, right? This is, this is it.

This conversation, you know, everything we're saying is real. And that's what I want to put out there. So what is, I think this could be the title and this could be the clip here coming up because I feel like what is the thing that you find the most difficult and painful about entrepreneurship? So my answer to that question is that I do have the feeling that there's a lot of weight on my shoulders to make the decisions that move us forward and the financial well-being of, of the people who are employed by me and like the direction and all of that. And then sometimes I'm like, man, I wonder could I just make the same amount of money

not doing all of that and not having all of this responsibility? So for me, definitely there's this feeling of, wouldn't it be great if someone else would just tell me what to do sometimes instead of having to be basically creative all the time? what do you find painful or negative or what sometimes really gets you about being an entrepreneur? I'm trying to get fucking anything out of you, man. The most painful part about being an entrepreneur to me is the uncertainty, period. So anything could happen.

You know, you wake up, you know, if you're building a SaaS startup, for example, you wake up, you wake up every day and you check product hunt and you're like, I hope that, you know, if you're competing against Figma, Figma didn't launch something to compete directly against you. There's like 800 pound gorillas literally everywhere that could squash you in a moment. And I just think that the uncertainty and the slop machine nature of being an entrepreneur, just, it is tough. It is really tough. and you have to be at peace with it.

If you're not able to be at peace with the uncertainty, then you'll never survive as an entrepreneur at all, at all. So that's another reason I like being a hold co entrepreneur or multi-preneur, as I call it, because if you have a bunch of revenue lines and product lines, even if one of them suffers from one of these 800-pound gorillas or an upstart or a black swan event like COVID, it's okay and because you have other revenue lines that are doing well.

And then I would say, because I guess we're just different types of entrepreneurs, I would say that it would be difficult for me to go all in on one of them and really like, I don't know, I feel like right now with AJ and smart, we've, the last couple years we've been sort of like, are we a training company or are we a consulting company. And I think actually we're about to go in a direction that will be more akin to the way you're doing it today, where we have a bit more separation between the brands. And actually maybe all of this bullshitting I've been talking about in this episode is going to be all undone when people see the relaunch because it's a bit more hold co-y. But yeah, I think for me, I struggle.

First of all, uncertainty, absolutely. I think if you, inherently our struggle with uncertainty, I don't think you'll even go into entrepreneurship. Like, you have people, I feel like, you might. You might because like there's a lot of people listening to podcasts like this and just saying entrepreneurs out there and they're like, I want that. And then once they take the plunge and their heartbeat goes from 120 to, you know, their resting heartbeat goes from 120 to 180 overnight.

then they're like, what did I just sign up for? What have I done? What have I done? Like, you know, your podcast talks a lot about ideas, and I think ideas are great and all, but underneath. No, but. You can't come on the startup ideas podcast. Dude, I love the podcast.

Not one startup idea. By the way, I'm going to give a startup idea at the end of this podcast. Okay, okay, okay. And then talk smack about startup ideas. Yeah. No, no, no, no. No, listen, I think you'll agree with the next thing I'm going to say. Ideas are really important, but the person who's actually executing the ideas and their mindset and their abilities is just as important, if not more.

Like, if you took any of Cody Schneider's ideas, his second name is Schneider, right? Yes. Okay. If you took any of Cody's ideas, but you were really worried about uncertainty all the time and you were still like, I don't know, you just had this. And you also got overwhelmed very easily and you had a lot of fear. You'd have a harder time than someone who is more entrepreneurially inclined. You'd struggle with it more. And so I think ideas are execution is just extremely important.

You came on the podcast to say execution is everything. Execution Ideas Podcast. Oh, no, startup execution podcast. I mean, obviously execution is important, right? You can't just come up with ideas. But like when I say... Yeah, debate me. Yeah, I'll debate you.

I'll debate you. Actually, yeah, then let me put my statement more clear. Yeah. I do actually think execution is more important than the ideas themselves. And I've seen people try to execute the same ideas as I do, but they give up much quicker than me. And so therefore it's as if it didn't matter in the first place. Ideas and execution.

are really important. You can't do that one. That's not a debate if we, because I'm going to agree with that. I'm going to agree with that. The reality is this. If you have really good ideas on a product,

a niche, how to grow it, and then who to hire to execute on it, then you're Gucci. Oh, yeah. Yeah, you're right. Yeah, you are right on that one.

I guess when I say execution, I mean the actual ability to follow through and even hire that person. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, tomato tomato. You know what I'm saying? Tomato tomato. All right. What's your fucking startup idea? All right. Just so you can say this is the name of the podcast. So I told you the topic wasn't necessarily related. I'm here in Canada in the small town and every Saturday there's, this farmer's market. And I've noticed that this farmer's market over the years has gotten busier and busier. And people are getting just cultish over it. And I've noticed this in when I'm

in Miami, the farmer's markets and other places, there's farmer markets. And it's just this whole like shop local, shop organic vibe that I think, and I don't know how it is in Europe. Similar. Similar. Yeah, similar. like really cult they become super overcrowded everyone loves them i also love them um yeah i don't know what you're going to say next but that part is similar what i'm going to say next is that i think that so this town that has the farmers market is a really small town but there's so many people that come during on saturdays that it's like really good for the town they find out about the town

they're coming from all over. There's then the, you know, restaurants are popping up and all these sorts of things. And I think that there's an opportunity to basically be the person that manages, organizes, farmers markets, and then goes to, you know, you can go to cities and be, or towns and villages and be like, hey, like, we want to set up this farmer's market, give us some space. you curate the merchants. The business model could be you take, you either charge like rent essentially for the merchants

or you just take like a percentage of revenue and you're making the world a better place because you know, shop local, shop organic, all these things. So I just think that there's an opportunity. This is a non-digital idea, but I just think that there's like a pretty simple idea where if you care about shop local, you can probably convince a lot of these entrepreneurs to set up shop. You don't need that

many of them, maybe like six or ten to start. And definitely make, and I think you can make a few thousand dollars a week, just get going. And then the last thing I'll say is you can, what I like about this idea is, you know, if it works in this small town, you can bring it to other small towns and replicate the model. So I actually think that this is like a several million dollar a year idea. I love it. And you could even like, okay, so the idea would be you're running, is it like a two-sided marketplace as well where you're also essentially bringing the customers by being also

the advertiser for the event? Yes. Okay. So that's really cool because what you could also do and you know if you want to get funding, you have to say the word AI. So you have to use AI to find the perfect towns where you can set this up, where you can say, find me, we use this amazing AI to find the towns which do not yet have farmers markets, but have all of the supply and are surrounded by a lot of demand.

And so we find these center points and we turn them into these third spaces where people from different towns can come together and ha. And you could also then expand. it to, I don't know if you guys, like flea markets in Berlin are also super popular. Yeah. And they like combine flea markets with farmers markets and it's like a whole thing. You could just expand out to anything where this concept of local, also like local art, local. Yes. Pottery. Yes. Local furniture making. Uh, I love the idea. I think it's great. Yeah. Yeah. That's the idea. And that's, And you're giving it away because you know no one can execute it.

I'm giving it away because I would like to see more of a nitro coffee for that one. That's true. I do, I do, I would like to see more of these pop up and I just think that it's one of those like really validated ideas. The hard part about the idea is just getting these entrepreneurs to agree to show up on a Saturday morning or whatever because they have to staff it. It's like a big logistical thing. as well because that also gives it sort of like a moat because if you can get this working,

it's really hard to compete with. There's a, I'm not going to reveal where I live, but there's a market near to where I live. And the company obviously who runs the market, you know, they set up the tables. They set everything up so that the different companies can just, like there's a place here, if you Google it called Mark Tallanoin. And you rent the space. They, They have the space. They've now expanded it out onto the streets. It's unbelievably popular. And it's gone from being a farmer's market to now there being events on like Thursday nights.

And Saturday there's like this cheese event. And then there's a chocolate focused event. That shit is like expanding like crazy. And I never thought about it being an actual. I never thought about the idea that you could be the middleman in between all of these places. Even then finding the location, even like rent. innovating the place, being the person who brings all the tables, you could really like corner that market in your area.

Are you going to do it? Probably not. You got enough, but you got your whole cold. You can just like, you abstract it out. Abstracted out. I'm, I'm really into digital ideas right now. Okay. Yeah.

And, but I think someone should. do it. How would you start something like that? Would you start by going to the suppliers? Would you start by looking for the space? Like what would be the early steps? If someone in your audience actually wants to give this a try, what would be like some of the tomorrow, this would be the first thing to do? Step one would be, I'd create an audience in my town. So I would, you know, local like restaurant reviews and hotel reviews and things like that, like build a email list or TikTok following in my local town. Once I have that, then I have leverage with the merchants and I say like, hey, I'm thinking about creating this, you know, flea market meets farmer's market. By the way,

I think there's like a name that you can own there. Like what is that, you know, what is that called? you know, flee and farmer, I don't put it together, flalarmers. Flea to mouth. Yeah, something like that. And, you know, if I was able to pull this together and get hundreds of people to come on a Saturday, would this be of interest? And that's all you need. You just need them to say yes. And then once you have five or eight or 12 of those, you go to the city and there's always someone or town.

and there's always someone there who's like their job is is commerce. And in my little town in Canada that I'm that I'm that I'm in, I actually met with like the government official and he was just like, you'd be surprised you can like walk right in and into the town hall. You know, these are small towns. And, and just be like, hey, like, is, you know, in this case, like, is Deney around? and you just have a chat with him. And you'd be how these people are open to having conversations with citizens

or people who live there. And then you get them to support it in some way. And then once you have both sides, then you, you know, I don't think you're going to need that much of your own cash to actually get this going. So it has a lot of the ingredients I like for a business idea. doesn't require a lot of cash to get going. It's something that could be replicated. It's, it's, it's, it's,

there's also probably an opportunity to create like the brand for, for this category, for this type of experience. Like, for example, in New York, I think they have something called Smorgasbord. Have you heard about this? I've heard the word smorgasbord, but not the event. I think it's like, you know,

someone's going to, kill me on this because I'm getting it wrong. But it's basically like in Brooklyn and a few other places. I think there's just like, you know, a huge, huge, almost like a food truck festival, all the different, a smorgasbord of food. And there's, it's kind of like this in some ways. But then it becomes a brand, you know, it's like, oh, you're going to smorgasbork this week, you know, smorgasbork.

And they're able to like, you know, if they open one up in Portland, Oregon, I'm sure, that would get buzz as well. Another example of someone who's done this, by the way, is timeout. So they have these timeout, like food halls where they went to like the popular but landmark food institutions and cities. And then they created like a what's it called the food court. So instead of having like subway and McDonald's, it's like the local Schwarmistand that everyone knows in the town. Yeah.

Yeah. I remember, I think I was in like Sweden recently and I was looking. There was like this timeout food court. I was like, what the, why timeout? Time out? I didn't get the connection with the magazine. And so for me, I just had no idea what that meant. It was like, I'm going to take a little break, take a little time out.

okay so this idea is super interesting I have the boring agency that can go along with it so let's say the hold co that creates this farmer's market will have another business will own another business which is like the business that you can hire to help you basically invent and conceptualize and create the logistics around events like this

This, I honestly think if you had like one of the most difficult things to do, I'm going, I'm flying to Palo Alto in a couple of weeks to run a training event and selling the event and the tickets are like 10K each was a hundred times easier than arranging the event and organizing it and getting the catering sorted. And in the end we spent approximately 30,000, it'd probably be more than $30,000 to get it all organized. And we couldn't find anyone to help. us with this. We ended up almost doing every element of it ourselves, or at least we didn't find any influencer or brand or YouTube channel that talks about setting up events in a way that it would make us reach out to them and contact them. And I was thinking, just when you were talking there, is we need the Greg Eisenberg or we need the specific info, we need me for in the facilitation world, but for event management, which is, first of all, seen as a job, no one wants to do. And it's like always in the top lists of most stressful jobs to do as well. But it is a thing that a lot of companies want to do events, especially now post-COVID, a lot of companies want to

go back to doing more in-person things. And it is really difficult to find anyone to help with that, to help with the logistics. Literally, the brief would have been, we're running an event in Palo Alto. It's four days long. There's this many people. Can you fucking have. help us figure this out. And like we'll give you a 10k commission, whatever the commission is on the on the thing. And we couldn't find anybody. So we did it ourselves. So for this, uh, idea that you have, it would be amazing if you as the entrepreneur, if you were starting it, could call up event in person co and say, hey, Greg, like we're thinking about doing this thing in this town. Uh, I really do not want to be involved in the logistics.

of it for the first one at least. Can you do like an event sprint for us and get it off the ground? Next time we'll do it all ourselves because you'll have connected us with all the people. But how do we get this event off the ground? Can you do an event sprint for us? Like that type of company desperately needs to exist. Someone who is very good at organizing stuff and enjoys that and gets pleasure out of it needs to start an event management company that isn't a website with pictures of big speakers and PA systems on it. It's a, it's a person, it's a video of a person showing you how to do it all yourself. Greg, content style, but for event management, honestly, I think it would be a game changer.

I think you could start it in basically every city and these people will be booked out forever. Yeah, yeah. So there are experiential agencies that do, like, you know, if you're Evian, and you will, want to, you know, throw an event at, you know, Wimbledon. There's big agencies that do that. A buddy mine owns one. I think he does like 30 million a year in revenue. Oh my gosh. Those are like these like brand activation things, right? Yeah. So that exists. Yes. But, you know, I think for smaller companies, more like new types of events like the ones we're talking doesn't exist. And I wonder what you can do also in the business

model to make it different and interesting. Like maybe you can do like rev shares and maybe you can make it a product-sized service in some capacity. So there's a lot. There's a lot here. Yeah. If you want to look at what I was looking at, go to Google or if your team wants to show this, you Google event management Palo Alto, Palo Alto, like one of the wealthiest places on the planet. And hopefully you see the opportunity I'm talking about. Oh, man. I don't, I don't want to shit on any of the companies. I just want to say we ended up having to do it ourselves. You don't want to, but you will. I didn't. I really, I really, but also like this, you know, Laura organized our Palo Alto event, book the location, book the catering. She's our head of marketing.

This is how difficult. And every day of her time is worth a lot of money. 100%. It's crazy. Good idea. Good pod. Thank you. Good friends. Did I save my, did I save myself at the end there after shitting all over the podcast and saying it's all about execution? You always save yourself, I think. If you enjoyed this episode, give us a like on YouTube. you know, and a comment, just because we do read every single darn comment. We literally do, like, and reply to every single one as well. And we're like texting each other about the comment. So like it and comment.

And if you are listening to this on Spotify or Apple Podcasts, rate, review, and then join us on YouTube where the fun is. Yes, please. And thank you so much, Greg, for having me on the podcast again. Thank you so much for Greg's audience. also for the really kind comments and your audience is really great and like Greg said we genuinely

read every single one makes our day when you guys have something to say absolutely no criticism is accepted no just kidding if you want to make fun of Jonathan go for it go for it go for it go for it go for it

but don't do that unless you give us a thumbs up on YouTube if you want to follow Jonathan you can follow him on his crappy username on X Ice cream Jay ice cream By the way it's a perfect example of my

Peace thing I just don't use social media Because I don't want to keep going into all the services And seeing what's going on What's going on? You can't you can't I just told people to follow you And then you're like I don't use social media You know? I'm worried I'm worried that no no I'm using Twitter now

I'm using X because of you There we go thank you and I'm enjoying it I'm enjoying it I'm enjoying I only downloaded I only went back to X after being on the episode with you a couple of weeks ago for the first time in seven years or something. So I'm actually having a lot of fun on there now.

Okay, there you go. I'm following your advice. I'm trying to follow your advice anyway. All right, go build some internet audiences, people. Go build some internet audiences. There you go. Later. Me building an audience.

Bye, everyone. Bye.