The Startup Ideas Podcast - My Year In Review: Lessons To Make 2024 Your Best Year Yet

Episode Date: December 28, 2023

In this special end-of-year episode, Greg looks back at his biggest wins, biggest losses, business epiphanies, productivity unlocks, and so much more. 📬 Join my free newsletter to get weekly startup insights for free: https://www.gregisenberg.com/70,000+ people are already subscribed.FIND ME ON SOCIALTwitter: https://twitter.com/gregisenbergInstagram: https://instagram.com/gregisenberg/LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/gisenberg/TIMESTAMPS0:00 Intro0:47 Big wins07:11 Big losses11:16 Business epiphanies18:56 Productivity unlocks22:11 Audience growth 28:20 Game-changing products36:22 Net worth & investment breakdown39:26 Business updates

Hello, I'm going to do a 2023 year in review. I'm not going to hold back. I want to tell you about my biggest wins, my biggest losses, my epiphanies, my productivity unlocks, my net worth update, my personal investment breakdown, my social media update, and more. I don't want to hold back at all. And the idea is if I share some of these things with you, hopefully it triggers an idea in your own business or your own life and that's all I could ask for. So if that sounds cool, I'll get started. So big wins. I got married. So I'm 34, got married, had a small wedding with our immediate families, small ceremony. We had dinner at this cute little French bistro in Montreal. Highly recommend a wedding like that. Not a big thing, not hundreds of people.

And it was just nice to have both of our families, just immediate and conversing, eating, breaking bread. I love that. We went to the accord in Miami Beach and just did it here. And then we went back to Canada where we're both from. My wife's from Toronto. I'm from Montreal. And we did a little ceremony slash dinner there. So that was big.

That was really, really big. And still processing how fun that was and what it means for the next chapter. but that was obviously the biggest win. Another big win is we bought 50% of a business, which became Boringmarketing.com, which is basically an AI-enhanced SEO business. So it's some tools that help companies get organic search. And that was our first real acquisition.

The crazy thing is by next year, or in 2024, I should say, the business conservatively will do $2 to $3 million a free cash flow. And it's quite a reminder of the fact that you only need a couple good ideas to have a wonderful career and life. It's kind of like Warren Buffett and Charlie Munger's vibe where they really just sit on their hands a lot of the year and just try to come up with a few good ideas. Because if you can do that, everything else clicks. So that was a big win. The other big win was we produced nice cash flow for late checkout, which is our holding company. And we continue to grow several cash flowing businesses, which is awesome.

So the Holdco made money. All the individual businesses made money. So if this isn't product market fit, I do not know what is. So our core thesis of community-based products outperforming non-community-based products seems to be working. And that feels really good. You know, a lot of people ask me, how do you know, if you have product market fit, well, you'll know it when you see it. And I definitely feel it and see it. Another big win is I started writing my newsletter weekly. So have a newsletter. You can subscribe at

Greg Eisenberg.com. And I, for the longest time, had had this newsletter, but I would only, I would only write once in a blue moon, maybe once every two months, three months. Whenever I felt Like I had something to get off my chest. That's when I would write. And I got convinced that writing weekly was a good thing to do. And I was kind of anti it for a while because I was like, how am I going to come up with something that's unique every single week in a deep format? And I started thinking about Seth Godin. He's got this incredible, incredible blog that he's been blogging daily for for like 15 years.

I think it's seth.blog. And I realized if Seth can do it daily, I can do it weekly. And that's exactly what I did. Some of my posts were longer. Some of my house were smaller. But I wrote weekly, and it really, really impacted all of our businesses because I was able to promote our businesses through the newsletter. And it also just made me a lot more clear around my thoughts, which was priceless.

So forget even the promotion of the businesses through my newsletter. The clarity that I was able to get was worth it. If I just got that clarity, it would be 100% worth it. So I definitely recommend starting a newsletter. Another big win is someone offered us, and not just someone, someone I really, really respect and a top tier investor offered us $30 million of private equity capital to scale outlay checkout. We didn't take it, but it did feel quite good. Always feels good when you get validated.

Yeah, that just, that was dope. There's no other way to describe it. It felt really awesome. And although venture and private equity isn't for us right now, we're just happy to self-fund it. It was cool to get the offer and to say no. It was really cool. And the last biggest win is stay true to myself. So I didn't get distracted from competition or other founders trying to build the biggest

business and the most amount of followers, the most amount of likes, the highest amount of YouTube subscribers. just did what I thought was right. And maybe that's the biggest win of all. Not getting married is the biggest win, but maybe it's the second biggest win. So stay true to yourself. So what were some big losses for 2020 for me?

Well, for one, we listened to some bad advice for our innovation agency, which is called late checkout agency. Someone once told us early 2023, keep your team lean, recession is coming, your Fortune 500 clients will cut innovation budgets. And it made a lot of sense because we were seeing in the news that tech companies were doing layoffs.

Everyone was saying there was going to be a recession. Logically, that made a lot of sense. Of course, we're not going to hire and higher higher, we're just going to sort of do the same. And the reality is these companies that we work with need new products to drive revenue and community, which is what we do. We help them build new products that are beautiful and that drive community and turn customers into raving fans. They need that even more during a rough market. So if things are tough, they need these new products. So we basically had full utilization of our team the entire year,

and we lost at least $3 million of revenue. If we just would have not listened to this advice, we would have three plus more million dollars in the bank. So that definitely sucked. And I think we led on that particular business with this particular thing. We led with fear instead of leading with courage. And we knew our team was really, really world class and really we think the best at this. So we should have been on the offense. I wouldn't say we were on the defense. We were just kind of just doing our things. We had the same amount of clients. We did gain a few new clients, but we were very, very, you know, stayed the course. Another big loss is, you know, there's a saying in entrepreneurship, hire one to higher 10. And I wish I did more of that in 2023. Those are the hires

that multiply the business. When you look back on a year, the higher one to hire 10 people really, really changed the trajectory of where you're going. And although we did hire a few, we didn't hire enough. And last big, big loss of the year is I didn't do enough two to three day IRL masterminds. A mastermind is basically when a group of people come together, usually in a similar industry, and you spend like a few days together. Sometimes it's in a different city. than you live in. And then ultimately, that group keeps you accountable and support each other and help each other out. And I used to do this all the time. And by all the time, I mean like at least once a quarter. You know, once a quarter, I think is a really good, it's a really good cadence. I guess because of

COVID, I just like got out of the loop of that. I got out of the habit of that. Don't do that. These are key. These are amazing. These are, these are, this will give you inspiration. So for 2024, I've got some plans to do a quarterly mastermind so I can connect with people in the industry in these smaller groups. Because I do think these like big conferences are overrated, but these small IRL masterminds underrated. So let's talk about some aha moments I had during 2023. So one is that multipreneurship is the future of entrepreneurship. So multipreneurship, some of you've heard me talk about this concept. it's the idea that someone creates multiple products per year with the aim of creating a company that

creates companies. So basically what I did with Lay Checkout. And when I started Lay Checkout three and a half years ago, I considered it a holding company and I considered myself to be an entrepreneur. But now I consider myself to be a multi-preneur, which I think is like a new breed of founder that you're going to see a lot more of us over the next five years. I think there's going to be huge wave of successful multi-preneurs over the next five years, just like over the last couple years, you started to see the wave of solopreneurs all over. So maybe you're one of those multi-preneurs, or maybe you're a solopreneur that might evolve to a multi-preneur. But that's just a big realization and different, you know, I guess now I have a different mindset and frame, yeah,

frame of mind as a multi-paneer. Second aha moment I had was this idea around, on IRL is greater than URL, meaning there's just so much alpha in creating products that drive IRL community experiences. I think there's so much post-COVID that we can do. You know, we were glued to our screens. How do you get off the screen? I had a quote that went viral in 2023, which is, the internet used to be a place to get away from real life.

Now, real life is a place to get away from the internet. And I think that's pretty true. I think there's a lot of. demand, pent up demand to create interesting experiences in person. So that's another frame and a ha moment that I had in 2023, which might be useful to you too. The third is that premium domains work. I used to be one of those people that someone would come to me and say, oh, I just bought this $100,000.com, premium.com for my startup. And inside I'm like, what? That is such a waste of money. Why wouldn't you spend that on the product? Why wouldn't you spend that on?

direct response that $100,000 could have been 50,000 customers until I saw how much of an increase in conversion rate you can get when it comes to a great dot com, especially in B2B. So I've seen this a few times in 2023, and I'm starting to think that premium domains are undervalued some of them. So definitely interested in buying premium domains. And now I'm like, kind of like, I don't even want to buy a regular domain. I'm like, I'm out on regular domain. So something to think about. The other aha moment I have is marry the niche, date the product.

So what that means is you can give up on a product, but don't give up on the niche you believe in. So it's common for your product to fail. When you build something, it's product for your product to fail. Or if you're a content creator, it's common that you create content and it's not hitting. But don't give up on the niche you believe in. So try different things in your product. niche, don't be so quick to give up. The fifth aha moment is I want to hire more Canadians.

One US dollar today is about a $1.35 Canadian. Basically, hiring in the Great Wide North is 35% off. We hired some exceptional Canadians in 2023 and I want to do more of it. Obviously continue to still hire in the US, but only for select high impact roles because I'd love to save that 35% and put that into a premium domain or put that into marketing or put that into a product. Another aha moment is reach out to people. Sounds obvious, but I started doing that more in 2020.

Just random reaching out. And I ended up meeting some of my heroes. You know, I reached out to Rivers Cuomo, frontman of Weezer, some guy who, you know, when I was 15 years old, obsessed with. So it's so cool to do that all from Twitter and hang out with him in 2023. I even met a business partner of mine in 2023. So this guy, Jordan, he designed one of my. my tweets, you know, I had a tweet and he designed it and I hit him up and all of a sudden

he became a business partner. So if you aren't sending a few DMs a week, you are missing out. And then the last aha moment is buy more companies. I remember Andrew Wilkinson, co-founder of Tiny, which is similar to lay checkout, a bigger lay checkout, really in lots of ways worth hundreds of millions of dollars. I think probably, I think it's worth almost half a billion dollars. I was on the phone with him in 2020 and he asked me, he says, why are you so? focus on building and incubating companies. Buying is way easier. And my response to him at the time was it's way more fun to build. And I believe that true today, but I still want to buy more in 2024. So I just see the opportunity. And I think I can do both from our experience with boring.

We can do both. So if you're selling your agency, your marketplace, your email newsletter, your vertical SaaS, your social network, get in touch with me. We're buying community-based businesses. I had a few productivity unlocks that I wanted to share. Some of them are very small, but are meaningful. One is I, in 2023, started to change my desktop wallpaper monthly. I always pick minimalist stuff. I don't want like something that's super, super busy. Right now I have like a space background.

It's like a bunch of galaxies, but it's black and it looks like a bunch of stars. When I log into my computer, it like fires me up. And I also, I used to be one of those people. with like a few things on my desktop. Maybe more than a few things I care to admit, you know, maybe not the cleanest desktop. And in 2023, my desktop was super clean. I wouldn't let a file linger on it.

So the productivity unlock is, yeah, just change your wallpapers, make it a point to do it and do some cleaning. Second productivity unlock 2023, salads for lunch. Call me basic, but salad is healthy, keeps it light. That way I'm not working and it's like heavy in the afternoon or have any crashes. So I do recommend a salad for lunch. I probably do it four times a week.

Put some protein ideally in there as well. Put chicken, shrimp, steak, whatever floats your boat and less crashes. And then just D&D mode on desktop and mobile. No brainer. You can still set it. So when certain people call, it's very important, husband, wife, kids, parents, whatever, that it comes through. but you got to focus on the task at hand.

And the last one relates a little bit to this, which is I hide, I'm on a Mac, I hide my top bar and like the top bar where it shows the Apple icon and stuff like that, and it only shows up if I hover over it. I just want to focus on the task at hand. That's been a productivity unlock as well. And I also hide the dock at the bottom.

So I have to hover over it to see it. And I also use ARC browser, which is like this new cool browser, that when I am in it, I don't see the sidebar. I've hidden hidden the sidebar. So it's a full screen browsing experience, which is also been a productivity unlock. So let's talk about my update on my audiences. How am I doing? On my newsletter in January, 2023, I had 36,000 subscribers. Today I have 72,000 subscribers, so pretty good.

But I didn't spend any money on advertising. Unlike my peers who have. A lot of my friends spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on advertising and probably got their money back. The question to me was, should I have written weekly and grown like paid for ads at the same time? Maybe. But I wanted to prove to myself and prove to you, person who, you know, I'm writing to, that I

can produce value. So I didn't do both at the same time. was that not thinking big enough? Maybe you let me know in the YouTube comments if you feel that way. Twitter, a year ago, I had 280,000 followers. Today I have 361,000 followers, which I think is pretty good. The interesting thing is most of the followers of that 81,000 people who came and followed me in 2023 came from a select like two, three, four, five tweets, a very small amount. of tweets. Two weeks ago, I had a tweet. I had 70 plus thousand likes and was seen by 20 million people.

Just goes to show you that you've got to continue to be consistent and you never know when you're going to pull the slot machine and the algorithm gods are going to let the floodgates open. So that's Twitter for you and also some other platforms, but definitely my experience with Twitter. YouTube subscribers, I started, you know, a year ago I had about 8,000 subscribers. Today I have 11,300. YouTube is hard, but I'm not giving it up. I think it's a worthwhile investment. Honestly, please subscribe. So I know that you're enjoying it.

It's the only way I can know. But I've given it a lot of work. I started doing these five to ten minute videos. I did about five or six of those where I break down people like Ryan Holiday and Jack Butcher and Colin and Samir. And I talk about multi-printership. So I'll do these shorter videos, not just long form. and not just shorts.

And I thought actually that that would get me like go viral, kind of like how that one tweet I had got 70,000 likes. But it hasn't happened yet. But I'm still a believer, so I'm going to continue to invest in it. But yeah, let me know if you don't like it. I think that some of the videos are valuable. So I'm going to continue doing it. The podcast.

My podcast is called Where It Happens. You're listening to it probably. this is this is the podcast um no growth 22 i had 360 000 downloads in 2023 i had 360 000 downloads so there's been no growth but the podcast has been a lesson it reminds me of the quote over the years i've learned that the first idea you have is irrelevant it's just a catalyst for you to get started then you figure out what's wrong with it and you go through phases of denial, panic, regret. Then you finally have a better idea and the second idea is always the important one. So what do I mean by that? I mean, I started the podcast at the end of 2021.

I had a co-host that didn't last and I shifted it from there. I shifted it again. And only towards the end of 2023 did I really, really feel as if I started to get a grapple of what I want my podcast to be. And I want it to be an ideas podcast. I want people to bring ideas. I want to hash out ideas. I want them to be ideas that are powered by community, powered by internet audiences, power by the internet. I don't want to do another interview style podcast.

I think there's enough of those. So although the podcast wasn't successful in the sense that it didn't get millions of downloads, anecdotally, I feel like over the last six months, a lot of you have reached out to me and have said, hey, I really enjoy the podcast and I like where it's going. So I'm going to continue creating it for you. And yeah, it's just a reminder that all these things are revolutions. All right.

And last social platform, LinkedIn, a year ago, I had 10,000 followers. Now I have 82,000 followers. I'd been sleeping on LinkedIn and I had already been writing tweets for years. So, yeah, what I basically do is I take my tweets and I put it on LinkedIn. Simple as that. and I comment with my community there. And that's it. So nice to have that audience.

Okay. Products I loved using in 2023. And I'm not involved with any of these products. I just, I liked using them. So the ones I came to mine is clack, K-L-A-C-K. For those of you who love the sound of mechanical keyboards, crack, crack, crack, crack, clack. I'm one of those people.

I feel like it's pretty satisfying when I do that. And the problem with doing it, though, is it's loud. And it gets annoying for people in the room. And if you're on a call, it gets annoying if you're typing. Other people are like, what is that? So clack is pretty cool because it's just an app that you download in the Apple store on your Mac. And you could set it up. And you can make it different volumes.

Do you want it loud? Do you want to balance? You can change what the clack sounds like. Do you want it to be clack, that clack? Do you want it to be click, click, click? It helped you do that. It's $5. And it makes me feel like I'm being more productive because I'm clacking away.

I don't know. I can't explain it, but clock helps. Apple Studio Display. So I'm looking at you now, if you're watching this on YouTube, on an Apple Studio Display, it's $15.99. which is absolutely crazy for a screen. You know, screens cost a few hundred dollars. But I enjoy writing on it so much more.

I enjoy being just on the computer so much more. So it pays dividends and you stare at this thing eight hours a day at least. So you want something that's beautiful, 5K. And I don't know, man. It's beautiful. What can I say? I love looking at it too. It's like a piece of art.

It's a highly recommend. The third product I enjoyed dabbling into in 2023 was fire is firebelly tea. So I'm a coffee guy, but if you're watching this on YouTube, this is some tea. And in the afternoon, this is the afternoon while I'm recording this. I've become a tea person. So coffee in the morning, tea in the afternoon, better for sleep. I just love enjoying. I enjoy just sipping working, sipping working, sipping working, sipping working.

And you can't do that unless it's decaf, I guess, coffee all day or else, you know, just unsustainable to have 10 cups of coffee a day. So tea has been really great. And Firebelly, which is loose tea. My friend Harley Finkelstein president of Shopify got me onto it because he's a co-founder of that company. And I steep my own tea. It's a ritual I love doing.

And I think we got tea. Most people got tea wrong, at least in North America. Like we think of tea as tea bags. but once you have real loose leaf tea that's delicious it really does change the game and it's a beautiful experience feels really good it's doing something to me too i don't know i i think clear i can't recommend it and not firebelly tea we're gonna i'll put the links to all these products in the description so you can you can try some of it if you're interested um the fourth thing is beam beam dream so like many founders

I have trouble sleeping. So instead of grabbing a prescription pill in 2023, I started using dream powder when I can't fall asleep, and I sleep like a baby. It's this cocoa that you have. You mix it up. It's like a mix of like melatonin, some CBD, some rachy, elfianine, I think is another thing in there.

And I know what you're thinking. You're like, well, I tried all these things. And it doesn't, I still can't sleep. I don't know. It's the combination of all of them make this thing like, work like a charm like i'm out i sleep like a baby so highly recommend being probably one of the biggest lifesavers that i had in in 2023 because if you're tired all the time it's just good luck being productive impossible and honestly good luck like enjoying your life like it's tough uh if you're tired

you feel like this weird you're in this weird state it's cloudy it doesn't feel good you're more agitated So not fun. And last product I loved using, the Uniko-Hiyoshi porcelain mugs. I went to Japan a few months ago, and I found these, for watching this on YouTube, these little cups, mugs by an incredible designer

and porcelain, and I love the sound of it, and I love the color ways. Yeah, I think a lot of people, including myself, were using just like regular mugs and upping my mug game, dinnerware game was helpful, 2023. And don't just get the big box, Walmart stuff. It's worth it. Especially if you're working from home,

make your space feel spiritual, make it feel amazing, make it feel like you're excited. So these little things. And even if you don't work from home, like, these mugs are amazing. And a lot of my friends talk about the Ember mug, which is that mug that is like a smart mug. mug that keeps your coffee or beverage warm at a particular temperature. And I thought about getting that.

And then I went the complete other direction. Umiko mugs are like the complete opposite. And it's okay if your coffee gets cold. It's okay if you want to heat it up. It's okay if you want to brew something, a new one, you know? Like you don't need to be productive eight hours a day in front of the computer and not moving. You know, I think having these little breaks are really helpful, especially for creatives.

So those are the product. Top products I loved using. Next thing I want to talk about is my net worth. It's gone up 20% year over a year. And I wanted to do a breakdown of my investments as of December 2020. This is not financial advice, do your own research. I'm just telling you what I have done. So I'll break it out in order of biggest to smallest holdings.

SPY, which is the ticker for SP500. So basically the S&P 500 is 20% of my investments. Private equity, which is VC angel investments. It's about 17% of my net worth. SPYV, which is the value investment part of the SPY, SMP, is about 8%. Berkshire Hathaway A and B is 8%. Microsoft, 7%, Amazon, 6%. WCL, which is cloud companies.

It's the top 100 cloud companies by Bessemer. It's 5%. That's a newer trade. My thesis there was that all these cloud companies and SaaS companies are going to add AI. And they're just going to be much more valuable. So that's my thesis there. Cash 5%. Fixed income, 5%.

Apple, 4%. Google, 3%. I had a bigger stake in Google and trimmed it a little bit. Royal Bank. And I trimmed it because of and put it. into Microsoft, basically. Royal Bank of Canada, 2%, good dividend stock. TD, Toronto Dominion, another large Canadian bank, big dividends, 2%. Other stocks 3%, real estate 3%, Bitcoin and Ethereum, 2%. And before you, crypto people come after me and say, why don't you have more in Bitcoin and

Ethereum? Well, number one, I think 1 to 2% is a good amount for people to start with. And number two, I have backed some Web3 fund managers, crypto fund managers. Some of my private equity investments are in crypto Web3 type thing. So there's probably a few extra percent there. In terms of my net worth update, I don't count late checkout equity. I don't count my 401K. I don't count my car, my Volvo. It's on that calculation.

So that's my net worth update. And then the late checkout holdings update, what's going on with our businesses? We talk a little bit about them, but I'll go a bit deeper. So we've got a few businesses we're running. One is the late checkout innovation agency. So I think of this as like the modern day IDO or the McKinsey for product design. But we've got the special sauce, which is community-based design, which is like we get into a community, we understand them, we design for them. I think this is going to be a big year for that business for a few reasons.

Companies have laid off. The tech companies have laid off a lot of people, but they still need products. And so we're getting a lot of inbound there. And yeah, I just think there's an opportunity here. So we've got some incredible case studies of adding literally billions of dollars of market caps to companies through products we've created. So that's the thing when you're building like an innovation type agency. Like the case studies are really important.

And that stuff takes time. So I expect that business to do several million dollars of free cash flow. in 2024. Boringmarketing.com. I can't believe the growth of this business started like seven months ago. It's 28 employees. And honestly, the growth of the boring marketing movement. So like this whole idea of, you know, you've heard of boring businesses. You might have not heard of boring marketing. We helped invent that movement, that concept. Our Twitter is almost 30,000 people this year. I think it's 29,000 people. People definitely resonate with the concept. The business is flying.

And then we often joke internally that boring will turn into its own holding company and it'll be bigger than lay checkout. And we recently expanded the business from just SEO to paid ads and some new services coming soon. So that's really going to make this business fly. I'd expect this business to be 60 plus, 70 plus employees by the end of 2024. Third business, you probably need a robot.com. We started it this year. It's a community for people interested in AI and automation. We added a newsletter.

There's 60,000 people signed up. We're still trying to figure out like the business angle of it. Like we've sold some things. We've sold something called Robot Pass, which is basically a way to get, you pay like 100 bucks or something and you get discounts on all the AI tools. We've done stuff like that. We did a async course, like an email-based course that you can pay for,

paid community type of stuff. So I think we're still trying to figure out how do we monetize it. But being in the center of AI and really, you know, learning and about it. And that's another cool thing about building a community is it allows you to be a center of gravity for some really cool people. So that's been really awesome. Meet dispatch.com. So is that a six figure a month business. And it's been an interesting experiments. Clients love us to be their design partner. We've done some really cool work, but there's actually a bigger opportunity in 2024. We're going to evolve it. I'm not ready to talk. I don't think I'm ready to talk about exactly what that is, but TBD. Stay tuned. Community Empire. So Community Empire is a membership. We launched it a few months ago.

It's for people who are interested in building businesses powered by community. So it's basically people like me who are into the same sort of stuff I'm into. And it's definitely working. We priced it so low to basically make it a no-brainer. So it's on this platform called school. It's $99 a month. And if you want to start your, and we basically say everyone should start a school for a lot of reasons. But the biggest reason is just it's an incredible lead.

A community is an incredible lead magnet. We call it a community magnet. So if you have an internet audience and you want to get their emails, you don't want to be reliant on Twitter or Instagram. You funnel them into a community. You get their emails. You nurture them and you sell them a product. That could be a paid product.

You can charge for access to a paid community. But it can also just be like a SaaS product, a consumer software business, a physical location, CPG, coaching, agency. So, yeah, launched a couple months ago. We're already doing $20,000 a month of revenue. People love that they get the, you know, they're paying $99 a month. and they get the free school, which costs $99 a month, usually, but free with our group. My hope is that I acquire someone's business in here. Like, they go through our playbooks because basically community empire is like all my

playbooks, like distilled. Plus like peer-to-peer mentorship, plus a bunch of, you know, these things called sprints. Anyways, the point is, you can check it out if you're interested. But the point is like the real value here is not to make $20,000 a month, although that's like pretty awesome because if you think about it, it's a quarter of a million dollars. If you value that at 10x, AR, that's like $2.5 million of enterprise value created overnight. Like some of these paid communities, like a lot of people should start paid communities.

So yeah, anyways, that community empire, I'm excited to see where it goes. I'm not sure where it's going to go. That's the thing with community-based, you know, paid communities. You kind of have to see what people want and where, you know, like, Like, for example, I would have never thought that we would do a monthly email with here's like two or three niches and that we're seeing and here's the trends and like here's some business ideas. Like I never expected it to be a monthly business idea, like almost research, trendy type email. But people wanted it. People wanted people.

Yeah, people wanted it. So we'll see where it goes. And yeah, we've also got a bunch of experiments that are cooking. in the holding company and I'll talk more about that in the new year. I think with the holding company, I just really want to embody the build skyscrapers, not strip malls mentality, meaning like we've got a bunch of businesses that are really working. Let's go build experiments for these businesses instead of incubating 10 new businesses. So we will be incubating a few new businesses.

We'll be buying a few new businesses. but we're really focusing on adding fuel to the fire to a bunch of these, which just are really working. And it just goes to show you. Like I started, you know, three and a half years ago, I had basically no, no followings on the internet or very small followings. And I was a guy who created venture back startups. Now I'm a bootstrap, got a bunch of businesses running, having way more fun,

loving writing, loving podcasting. feeling really energized and thank you know it's corny to say but thank you thank you for listening thank you for watching thank you for replying thank you for liking thank you for subscribing and i hope i added value to your life in 2023 and i will continue to do that in 24 so let me know in the comments if i did if you have any thoughts about this and share this video share this podcast with your friends your family anyone who you think could be useful too and hope you have a great great start tier 24 let's go get it