The Startup Ideas Podcast - The IRL Tribes That Could Change Your Life

Episode Date: June 1, 2023

Today Greg is joined by Antonio Neves, the creator of the Man Morning Newsletter and community. In this episode, you'll hear how to build an IRL mastermind from nothing and the grittiness it takes to get into the most selective tribes in startupland. ►►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.comAntonio Neves:https://theantonioneves.com/https://twitter.com/TheAntonioNeveshttps://www.manmorning.com/SHOW NOTES:0:00 - Intro13:22 - Why proximity is a tool25:54 - The good, the bad, and the ugly of Man Morning35:50 - Greg answers community questions

Okay, so here's where I want to start. I want to start where we started, which was over 10 years ago, Los Angeles. We had a founder's mastermind. That's where we met. Describe to people what that was and maybe why you think it's important that people do it. That was one of the most amazing experiences of my life. And I've had the opportunity over my life to facilitate and lead. many quote unquote masterminds, if you will, intentional communities coming together to make one another better. And when we did this, man, we had such an amazing group of individuals. Of course, it was young Greg Eisenberg. I don't think you had your driver's license yet. We had people like Julian Smith of breather fame and his new amazing coaching product. We had Rob Sandy. We had Dario Melly. We had Maloon. I'm not going to try to pronounce his last name right now. Just an amazing group of people that came together to get each other better. I think what's unique about it, Greg, is that in this age, people are super, super competitive.

And they hold things super close to the chest and they don't want to share what they're working on. But our intention was to come, be vulnerable, share what we're working on, and then get input from like seasoned, accomplished, successful men to make it better. And that's exactly what happened. And out of that very first weekend, when we did that, and we've had more of those, some companies have been made. They have iterated. You probably had two companies that were formed that weekend that have been sold, Julian Dario as well. I like to think about it. Some people call people out.

That group it called people up. You know what I'm saying? So what we did is we rented like a mansion in L.A. We got a private chef and we were there for 72 hours. and you moderated the whole thing. And the way it worked was every founder would go up. I think there was a not a whiteboard, but like a blank sheet of paper, post-its,

exactly. And everyone would wear their heart on their sleeve and say what's going well with their business, what's not going well. And some people even just didn't even have a business but wanted to start something. Why do you think that format works so well? Well, one, it was intimate, first and foremost.

Two, that format worked extremely well because in some shape or form, trust had been established. Not everyone in that room had met one another previously. So they had trust because Greg knows this person or Dario knows this person, etc. But also it's very clear what the intention was. I think a lot of times the reason why masterminds and these type of group things, they don't succeed or people don't get value out of them is because there aren't clear intentions. There aren't clear metrics, KPI, why we are here.

Before we even sat down and started breaking down business ideas, we asked some key questions. We ask questions like, what does success look like? When we're checking out of this mansion in a few days, for you to say this investment from a dollars and cents perspective, from a time perspective, et cetera, what is it going to tell you that this was successful? So we established that. Not only that, we did some intentional grounding. I'm not sure if you recall, Greg, we went around the room.

We talked about how do you like to receive feedback? Do you want to blunt? Do you want to direct or do you like to receive it a little bit differently? Because one thing we didn't want to create was an environment of posturing or creating people who are starting to get defensive. Some people like top line bullet points, right? Some people need to pause before they hear anything. Some people like more of a story. Some people like to hear examples.

So we created that container where people could come in with a clear intention of what the goal was. They could be successful in that. And I'll say the last thing, and I touched on this in the beginning, what was the trust component of it. We didn't even need to say, hey, what happens in this room stays in this room. We know these were good dudes who were vetted and it was confidential. And it was trust. Rob Sandy. So this was a guy who, our mutual.

friend Shane Mac was like, oh, Rob should really come to this event type thing. And we're like, okay, he sounds cool. He had a company called, it was called Vidio. Now it's called Vid IQ. It's one of the most popular tools for creators to use. None of us knew him. He took a chance on us. Like he flew all the way down. His concept was called, or he had built a prototype or early product called vidio. And everyone was like, is it video? Is it vid.com. And he's like, I don't know, he didn't really know. We're like, dude, if you don't know how to say the name of your company, you might need to change the name of your company. And he changed it to vid IQ.

And the same with Julian, right? Julian came in and he was like, okay, this is, you know, my concept for this thing called breather.com. He had just bought the domain. And he was open to feedback and iterated from it. and I think what's interesting about that weekend that we had and these types of masterminds is when you think of like founder events right now, you have these like really big South by Southwest type things or collision conference or all these really big events. You don't have enough sort of small intimate stuff.

You have big events and then you have you're with your team and you're working with your team. So, you know, I just wrote a post, actually. I just published it. And I said one of the biggest regrets in my 20s was not doing that event every single year. Those things are so transformative versus the big group type of setting. And they're revealing in many ways as well. I think for leaders and entrepreneurs who are building things, nine times out of 10, they look to be the individuals or they're the individuals that everybody comes to

and assumes they're going to have the answers. very rarely can they find them in a space of peers where they're not leading where they can actually participate they can get feedback they can learn etc and not be the drivers and for an dude like rob and a dude like julian and do like dario maloon etc to come in and be willing to pivot to hear some maybe some some critical feedback things that may not be easy but because sometimes you don't know someone well you're willing to hear that right sometimes the people who are close to us of course we don't want to listen to them, right? You got to have that distance from individuals that you can build that trust with.

It's building trust and it's also just being open to the feedback. Deep down, I feel like a lot of us knew what we should do with our businesses, but we needed someone to tell us, I needed like Dario to be like, hey, this isn't a, you know, this is a bad idea. You know, we've also had like, quote unquote famous internet people come to this event, right? we had Sean Puri from My First Million come to the event and he pivoted his product shortly thereafter. I'm just wondering what advice could you give to people who want to start their own mastermind like this? Yeah.

Well, one, even before we talk about that, I'm trying to flash back to the name of what your product was you're working on at that time. It was not flyby. It was a, what was it? The initial, yeah, it was called five by. Yeah, five by. I forgot about that. That was beautiful, man. I still remember, like, really enjoying that, being able to put in the subject matter, push and play, and it being great. But in terms of what you can do, like the strong components to have a strong mastermind, one, you probably want to

drop the word mastermind. People hear that word. I think it scares people more than it actually excites them. Some recommendations. First and foremost, six to eight people max. Probably six is is the perfect number of individuals. Second, you want to have a facilitator, some type of coach, a person that's guiding and leading the conversation, taking notes on the whiteboard, etc., picking up on things that haven't been heard. I know there are a lot of masterminds that don't have facilitators or leaders, and I find that those typically don't work out well. You need that person, the referee, if you will, or the MC to move things along, but also someone who's, has experienced working with groups like that. Have a strong,

format to the day. Pretty much standard format for us was when someone would get the opportunity to present about what they're working on for 30 or 45 minutes. And then we'd have a build session after that where we dig into it. We ask questions. We provide feedback, et cetera. We also had like quote unquote learning and development sessions as well. That that person that you hired a facilitator lead that, you should walk away knowing you learn something as well. You added something to your your toolkit that you walked away with, make sure you don't have to think about things you don't want to think about. When we woke up, breakfast was ready. Lunch was taken care of by that private chef. Sometimes we'd go out to a nice dinner in the evenings. Make sure outside of the

build sessions and the learning that you're doing in this mastermind over the course of a day or a few days, make sure there's ample room for play. I mean, we did surfing lessons. We did surfing lessons, we skateboarded. We, dare I say, we went out, we shot guns. Like,

not just guns, but like these massive guns. And what's cool about the play, the walk from the house to the restaurant or the walk from the house

to the gym or after you finish surfing, you're going back to the vehicle. Powerful moments happen then because then, like, it can be like kind of the one-on-one

conversations. And you're like, hey, something you said earlier, you know, it's really been sticking with me. And so those moments are that downtime is critical. So have a clear structure in format. I have a facilitator. Make sure you have some downtime and some play that's involved. Make sure you don't have to think about the eating and that kind of stuff. Move your body, sweat, and it can lead

to an amazing experience. The gun thing, let's just talk about that for a second. So, especially like the look on on the faces of the Canadians who don't really, like, you know, we had a lot of Canadians in the room and there's, you know, there's not many guns up north, so to speak. So I felt like the Americans had a bit more, you know, they were more climatized to what a gun is and how it works. And we went to, I don't know, I think it was like an Englewood or somewhere. No, it was in the valley somewhere. It was in the valley. We walk in. I just couldn't believe it. Like we gave our driver's license and there's like, okay, like, now go pick from these like 20 guns.

And not just any guns. We're not talking about small pistols. We're talking about big, massive, powerful guns. And all I remember is you getting one of those guns. And I don't think you probably knew at the time. Listen, you're Canadian. You wouldn't have known, right? How powerful this doggone thing was.

I can still see you shooting it. And it just taking your arms. You just flew you up. And I think I saw the shock in your face. Like, A, what are we doing? here and B, that was pretty awesome. I didn't realize it. And I remember you telling me this, you're like, dude, like there's recoil.

So when you shoot a gun, it's going to hit back on you. You have to like kind of protect yourself. And it was in these moments of fear where we all got to know each other and that trust was built. So I think layering on, you know, I'm not suggesting people, you know, need, you know, need to shoot a shotgun to build trust. But like, yeah, like things like this are going to build trust. Yeah. It's the things that happen. Like even like when I think about the traditional like, you know, university experience, most of the learning that happens on a college campus,

it doesn't happen in the classroom. It happens outside of the classroom when you're living, right? That's why as much as people are major proponents of remote work and I have nothing against to remote work. I am a strong proponent of in-person elements as well. If you lead a remote team, it is so critical you get together, in my opinion, at least on a quarterly basis, face-to-face for a couple of days or a day, because those collisions that happen when you're with one another are just so powerful that they're just different. Remote is great. Video is great. And there's something magical special that happens in those conversations that happen again on the walk to the restaurant when you're leaving shooting guns that you probably shouldn't have been shooting.

When you see someone, like you see someone get off of the phone, like in a break of a mastermind, and you can tell they just have maybe a tough conversation with an employee or with a girlfriend or something like that, that's where intimacy is created. When people don't have access to these types of people, like, what should they do? So, for example, like, someone's listening to this and they're like, wow, that sounds really cool that you had like the coolest bunch of people come together and you had a bunch of breakthroughs and a bunch of people raised hundreds of millions of dollars some people took their companies public i live in idaho and you know i'm working on a startup or i'm a product

manager at proctor and gamble but i'm like inspired by startups how do you go from not having these people to having these people to showing up at an event like this. That's the biggest feedback I get. Like must be nice. Must be nice, Tony, to have this kind of community. Like, you know, my thing is out this man morning community and newsletter here in Los Angeles. And we meet every Thursday. And it's just a ridiculously amazing group of guys in their chapters that are popping up, popping up all across the country. But the feedback, even in my book, Stop Living on Autopilot is how do you find these people? And well, one thing I'll remind everyone is that this crew, these people, one, they don't always have to be your best friends. I think we have to think we have to be

really close with these people. Like they don't, they have to be people you respect, you have admiration for, but they don't need to be your best friends you kick it with and you talk to every single week. The mission is that you have a mission to be better at X, Y, or Z. So just know that first and foremost. Second, I always like to invite people to go where people grow. Go to find places where people are learning. You know, in your local community, there could be a variety of places. If you're in the middle of nowhere, some of those options may be virtual as opposed to in person, but where there are people who are going to grow and to learn, go there. That may mean you need to invest and getting on a plane and attending a conference every single year and mix

it up going across the country, maybe even all across the globe where you can put some names and faces to the handles and the people you see on Twitter and then you see on LinkedIn and beyond. So find those conferences and those events where people are mingling and get together and get uncomfortable and go to that. Guess what? This is breaking news for a lot of people, and this is the biggest resistance I seek, so I'd love to see your perspective on this,

is sometimes you have to write a check. I think people feel so much resistance for paying for something. There are so many amazing online virtual communities that also have like in-person components, but you have to write a monthly check. It's a membership model, or you have to write an annual check

to participate in these. And sometimes these things aren't necessarily cheap. You know, you can look at something like, you know, Sam Parr is building right now with Hampton. That's a nice check that those founders have to write. But the odds are that that check they write every single year or month. They're probably making that money back like tenfold, if not more, based on the learnings that they're getting. So whatever hesitation people have to writing a check to being willing to invest in themselves, I just invite you to press pause.

Like I'm a coach. I've been coaching, you know, leaders and executives. this for over 10 years now. And guess what? I have a coach that I write a nice, nice check to every single month. I write a check to an online community that I'm part of of other folks that work in my field and do similar work so I can learn and stay up to date with what's happening. So one, sometimes you have to write a check. These communities exist online. They are there. Join a cohort-based group learning, something like community college like you have, Greg, with his ongoing learning. I just hear a lot of excuses for that.

but most times it may have to start online, but then don't forget to get on a plane and go see folks face to face as well. Yeah, if it was a few years ago, I would be like way more PG with my answer and be like, no, you know, make a bunch of money and have it in a bank account. Once you have in the bank account,

then go and invest in it. And now, just like being honest, I was a teenager and like swiping my credit card and like getting on a plane to San Francisco to like meet people. And that's kind of the price you need to pay for a seat at the table. A lot of people expect to get into these rooms and they get frustrated when they can't. But either you need to fly to where these rooms are and where these events are happening and where these, you know, courses or events, you know, intimate gatherings are happening. Or the other idea is you, you do what the summit series people did. Summit started off, Elliot Biznow, started off basically

on a credit card. I think it was like in Utah or somewhere where he brought together a bunch of well-known entrepreneurs when he was like 21, 22, 23, put on his credit card and like just cold DM them and hosted this event. in Utah. And it became a really big event now with like, you know, it just had one off Miami and Richard Branson I saw was there and all these people, right? So what do you think about that idea? If like if you don't have that network actually just going in creating a landing page, creating a mission and start cold DMing people. Yeah. Well, I think that first one at L.A. did was actually in D.C. I remember hearing about that. Oh, right. Years ago and different folks that

were there. And briefly, to your point, sometimes you got to get on a plane. And like you said, swipe that credit card. Before I became an author and speaker and doing the manm morning community, I was a guy that worked in the television industry in New York City for over 12 years for major networks. I was like on live TV as a correspondent with NBC's and BETs and Nickelodeons, et cetera. And guess how that started? You moved to New York City with less than a thousand bucks in my bank account, that cliche story. Three years later, I found my way on live TV every single day. between landing with less than $1,000 in my bank account and getting on live TV, one thing that I did, being in New York City, I did informational meetings every single week. And what I've come to learn is that,

and you know this, Greg, nine times out of 10, people are willing to help you, people are willing to support you. They're willing to give you their time if you ask for it. And second, if you happen to be there. And if the people that you emulate, the people you respect, they happen to be in San Francisco, they happen to be in New York, they happen to be in New Orleans. Even if you're not going to move there, you got to find your way there and put some faces to these people you see on the internet. Yeah, that means writing a check. That means buying a plane ticket. It may mean staying in an Airbnb or sleeping on someone's couch. But the most powerful thing you can say, if you're trying to get someone's time in that Twitter DM and that LinkedIn DM or that

Instagram DM, hey, I'm actually going to be in the Miami area in two weeks, Greg, for an event. if you have time, I'd love to meet you and buy you a cup of coffee. Now, when you send that message, you may have no, no itinerary, no reservation made, but if Greg says, okay, great, I'll have a cup of coffee, you buy that ticket. I've done that many times in my life with success. Now, do you need necessarily to start your own event and put it on a credit card? You absolutely can, but my suggestion for step one is just fly to where the people are. They're in the bay, go to the bay. They're in Seattle. Take a week trip to the Seattle. Save your, save your coins and make that happen.

People want to help you. But A, you have to ask and B, you got to be there. Dude, I remember one of the first times I went to San Francisco, swiped the credit card, get there. I had found on Facebook there was this boat in the shore of the bay. I don't know. I think it was like, honestly, $25 a night. And I was like, perfect.

I'm just going to stay. It's like $25 a night. And it's other founders who are staying on the bay. this boat. I was like kind of cool. I show up. It's like midnight landed with like my carry on. We're not talking about a super yacht. That that was the, you know, in my mind, I'm like, oh yeah, I'm sure like it's pretty nice. No, no. It's like this is a boat that was like from the 1940s that was used in like World War II. Let's just say it was basically like sleeping on a floor of a boat. And sometimes you just have to just do it and just be like, okay, like, this is the price I need to pay if I want to get into this room.

Proximity is such a powerful tool. And the story you just told Greg about sleeping on the floor of a boat, right? In San Francisco, I stepped on the floor for over six months in Queens in New York before I was able to get a bed. Those are the stories, man. That's where you build up certain grit. You build up resilience. You build up some confidence in yourself. You start to have this track record.

And what you're doing also is like living an interesting life. I love someone told me once, live an interesting life. No one wants to talk to an old person who doesn't have interesting stories to tell, right? And I even think about you, even after you were quote unquote successful, I mean, you even went back, I mean, you went back to college in Alabama and live that life. and to learn more about your product and how to make that product even more successful. Do you know how few founders, even if they were successful, would be willing to go back and live on a college campus? Not very many, but obviously you built a little different.

Yeah, and I think, well, first of all, I appreciate that. But I also think, like, I hope people listening kind of get that gritty vibes that we're talking about because I actually think that, you know, if you're going into startup land, you can't be soft. You need that grittiness. But at the same time, sometimes you can get lucky. So one of the first times I went to San Francisco, I was on the boat. But after I went back to Montreal and I was like, I never want to sleep on that boat again. I had like nightmares. So I actually went into a Facebook group that was Canadians in Silicon Valley.

I was in no one. I joined it. And I asked, hey, would anyone be willing to rent me their plans? place in San Francisco, an apartment at like a reduced rate. And there was a woman and her husband who said yes to me. They were starting a company called Cloudflare. Oh my gosh. So CloudFair is a $20 plus billion dollar company.

Good Lord. Michelle Zatlin and her husband had moved into a two-bedroom apartment and they had still this lease to this studio apartment. and they gave it to me for nothing because I was a kid, not because I was well known at all. Like people will take chances if you shoot your shot. If you shoot your shot and you have a few things you can point to, right? Showing some track record. But again, most people are unwilling to ask.

I, during my early New York City days, I can't tell you that the amazing people, quote unquote, successful people that I had coffees with that gave me their time those 30 minutes. What happens, Greg, as you know, is most times when people give you that 30 minutes or that 15 minutes, folks don't come up prepared. I've experienced that. I get requests all the time for, can I pick your brain, got 15 minutes, the same way you probably get it. And then I jump on to Zoom or I jump on FaceTime and the folks aren't prepared. They haven't done their work. They don't have specific questions that they can ask.

So I invite people to 100% to be prepared in those moments because the truth is some opportunities do only come once. I think, you know, we have this mindset of, you know, it's never too late. Yes, it's never too late. And the longer you wait to pursue something, the harder that is going to get. So this is a reminded for all of us. This is something you've done consistently in your life, Greg, something I've done consistently. You've got to shoot your shot and you got to shoot it more often. You got to follow up more often. Some of the life-changing meetings for me, that first email that I sent wasn't responded to. That second, email I sent wasn't responsible. Sometimes it's a third or fourth follow-up when they finally get back to you.

So keep shooting that shot. You're shooting a new shot now with Man Morning. Oh, man. And it's a shot. So tell us, tell us the good, the bad, and the ugly of Man Morning. Yeah. Well, Man Morning, I'll give you some background on it and how it was founded. You know, seven years ago, eight years ago, according to the internet, your boy Tony was living his best life ever, traveling across the world as a speaker, published multiple books, married, newborn twins, living that dope Southern California life with the White House with the white picket fence not far from the beach. According to the internet, I was living my best life ever, but behind the scenes, my life was a hot mess. I was struggling. Even though my business was successful, I primarily came

from a nine to five background. And so I didn't know what it really meant to be an entrepreneur. So I was struggling with the growth of my business, which is a good problem. A guy that has experienced six different divorces growing up between my mom and dad, I was struggling with my marriage, you know, being married to my wife and we were just going to marriage counselor after marriage counselor. Now having a father growing up for a good period of my life, I was struggling to connect with my kids. And I found myself in a spiral like a lot of men do.

I gained like almost 30 pounds of weight man. I had like, I grew this big beard to hide. the weight gain, which didn't hide the weight, by the way, fellas, if you gain a lot of weight, the beard doesn't hide the weight. It's just an indicator that you gained weight. I found myself drinking a little bit too much in the evenings. Your boy even became a secret cigarette smoker behind the scenes amidst all of this. Again, the internet, though, the internet said your boy was doing great. But I was stuck. I was burned out. And I started isolating. And when people would ask me how I was doing, I said two of the internet. I said two of the

of the most dangerous words a man could say, Greg, how are you doing? Two of the most dangerous words, someone can say, I'm fine. As dudes, what do we typically say when we talk to our buddies? How you doing? Haven't seen you online a lot. You haven't been posting what's going. Oh, I'm fine. Thank goodness. Because of my community here in Los Angeles, we started something called, we didn't call it man morning at the time, but we started to getting together every Thursday at 7 a.m. for an hour long hike or walk. And I met with amazing business owners. entrepreneurs, some were married, some weren't, some were fathers, some weren't. But our mission, every Thursday was to get together and just make each other better and be there for one another.

And so I shifted from isolating and disconnection to being fully connected and being seen. And I couldn't hide behind those two words of, I'm fine anymore. And since that started seven, eight years ago, where my life has gone is just a different magical level of places from business success with multiple books and the speaking of the marriage is like strong and better, learn how to be a great father. And I can tell you other things. But what I wanted to do is now to provide that kind of love and encouragement to other growth-minded men across the country and across the world who do want to get better. Maybe they do feel a little bit stuck, but they want that ongoing a place to show up, if you will. So we started off with a newsletter that's happening right now

that goes out every single Sunday. We have a few thousand men on there at Man Morning where each weeks you get insight on key areas of life to get better from health, fitness, business, etc. We have different Man Morning chapters growing now all across the country. There's a few global ones as well. Some of the feedback I've been getting from the men is that they finally feel like they have a place. They have a hub where they can actually be honest and they can be real. Don't get me wrong. This isn't a place where dudes show up and complain and say, whoa, is me. No, these are super successful men that are reading this and engaging in this. But it could be those men that have become a little bit disconnected from their life,

maybe from their goals, et cetera. And this is just a place to every single week to reset, to recharge, and to refuel for people. Quick interruption from me. If you're listening to this on Apple Podcasts or Spotify, you're getting any value. You need to come to YouTube and subscribe to the Where It Happens podcast YouTube channel. I promise you the experience is richer, more interesting. So if you're getting any value, just stop what you're doing. Open up the YouTube app.

Go to the website and press subscribe at where it. it happened on YouTube. And if you're watching this on YouTube and you haven't subscribed, what are you doing? Go press subscribe. Thank you. Enjoy the rest of the show. How does someone join like the Thursday man morning hangout? Like can they?

How does that work? Yeah. So the one in Los Angeles, so we have our established group, but we invite guests. So like for example, if you're in town, like we get permission from the group, going back to buying and trust. Hey, Greg Eisenberg is in town. Dope dude. Can he join us this week? And typically, it's all good.

So you can come join us for that. Sometimes as attrition happens and people move to different parts of the country, we welcome in, you know, new men into our tribe. In the newsletter, I talk about how people can start their own manning morning. So you got these starting in places like Ohio, in northern Florida, in Tampa, in different areas of Arizona. And typically what happens is you pick a day of the week where you get Get together. Typically, we recommend getting together first thing in the morning, 7 or 8 a.m.

And that's very intentional because I'm sure you agree with this. We found that the conversations that people have at 7 a.m. over a cup of coffee or a cup of tea are very different than the conversations you have at 7 p.m. over a cocktail or a beer. Don't get me wrong. We like to have adult beverages as well. but the intention when you start your day with this, this meet and greet is so powerful. And we typically lead each session with one of two questions. We'll say share something you're celebrating and share something that you're navigating.

And that just opens up so much. And we also have different type coaching type questions that we use. So we also just had our first. Every year we do a big retreat together. We did one. We rented a massive mansion down in San Diego and did that similar to what, You know, we talked about the beginning of this talk. Last year, we took not, we took all of, all of our families to Italy for a couple of weeks. Because right now, for men, isolation, disconnection, not having a strong community of friends is a real important topic. And I don't want to get too heavy on this, but if you look, the numbers are correct, like, like of the suicides that happen is 80% of men. And I think a lot of it is because at some point, they kept saying the words, I'm fine, I'm fine, but they really weren't. And something we do. And something we do. take for granted is say someone like you, Greg. We assume because Greg is successful,

he posts life-changing content for us. He has these amazing communities. He has amazing things that he's building. Greg must be doing great. His life must be perfect. But you and I both know that, you know, everything's not, not perfect in everyone's life who's winning maybe at business. So we want to create a safe place for folks to come share what's really growing on. And actual, like, the people who share the most perfect lives are the ones actually who are the most hurt and are vulnerable in a lot of ways. Check on your friends. And even more, check on your strong friends. Check on your successful fans who you think are doing great.

Greg, you and I do something that's so powerful and this is what the Man Morning ethos is all about, that I'm going to invite every person who listens to this. to do. When you and I get together, whenever we get the chance to see one another, we both pull our phones out, this phone right here, we pull it out and we throw that bad boy in airplane mode. And there's something about that intentional moment of like, I'm going in airplane mode to say that I'm fully here for you. I'm fully here for us. And that's what happens in our man morning meetups, right? It is so pivotal because it is so rare that that happens. And those conversations that we have, whether it's 30 minutes we have together for a walk in Venice or if it's a dinner that we're having like in Hollywood somewhere, those airplane mode moments are so powerful.

Yeah, I think we're really starting to see just this trend towards in-person, intimate gatherings. Like, I feel like we went too deep into the internet for so long that now you're starting to see this trend. I mean, you mentioned Hampton from Sam Parr. Like, he's crushing it. It's like a seven-figure business, I assume, just by a lot of friends. There's so many of my friends are in it. He charges $7,000 a year. And people, I know he's doing retreats now.

Like, people want this. And I think the cool opportunity for you is, like, you've defined this mission, defined your niche. And you have your product, which is an, an IRL product and a digital product. Both, by the way, have retention built in because your man morning weekly Thursday ritual, like people are going to want to show up and your daily email content or your content that's coming in on a ritual basis.

So I love the, and I love the brand too. So my question to you is what questions you have for me? if you're trying to grow this thing, like what can I, what can I answer for you? And let's just like live jam on how we could take man morning to the next level. The question I have for you, man, is what, what am I probably not thinking about? Because already, you know, the feedback from the newsletter is great. It's a weekly newsletter. It started off actually three times a week. Now we went to weekly and it's gotten even better. And the next step is building what that community is going to look like, a cohort, if you will. So I'm trying to debate right now for the first step.

If I want to do like a six-week cohort or something like that or even just go all in on an annual kind of model where you can sign up for that membership each month and you have XYZ deliverables that are happening every single month, very similar to I'm sure what happens in Hampton and other groups that I've had the opportunity to lead over the years and retreats I've held internationally. So when you look at a community like that, what would be your next move? as it specifically relates to monetization. I'll do you one better. I'll give you an idea that will help with monetization and it will help increase your newsletter subscriber account. Got it. Win, win.

I think one of the most underrated channels right now is email-based courses. Email-based courses is when you want to teach someone something over a period of days via email. So I'll give you an example. We have a community called You Probably Need a Robot.com. It's an AI community where people learn about productivity. We're launching a free email-based course. It's called Five Tools, Five Days. And so now you can use your social channels, Twitter, Instagram, whatever, post about the course, and it's free. Also spend money on like Twitter ads, et cetera, to drive to that. And why that's important is it's so hard to grow in newsletter organically right now

because there's so many people with newsletters. So basically what's happening is when people are like, if you like this tweet, you'll like this newsletter. It's like people become blind to it. And the way to actually go around that is you do something like an email-based course where it's like, I'm going to give you a carrot. I'm going to give you this free course. It's normally worth $300. All you have to do is put in your email. Once they are in the funnel, the five-day, let's say you do a five-day course, 10-day course around rediscovering who you are as a man. At the end of that course, you put them into something that's called a FOMO sequence.

And the FOMO sequence is a 1 to 5 email sequence after the free content that upsells them to the premium offering. So, for example, you probably need a robot. that five tools, five days thing, at the end of that, we actually created essentially a deeper version of that course, five tools, five days, where we're taking the exact same tools, but we're going way deeper on each of those tools. And then we're selling that course. Now, why that works is because you've given value, you've proven to these people that

you can create value. And they're also kind of hooked on the format. They're like, wow, I'm making this a part of my everyday routine and I don't want to lose it. So why I'm a big believer in things like email-based courses is gives you the carrot that you can use on social content and also use paid ads against it. and then it also gives you the ability to earn trust with this new audience. And then it also gives you the ability to upsell them really quickly right after. I love that.

And I love that. I already have something like this that already exists all my hard drive. So that's great. And I'm going to employ that immediately. I have a second question. I think this is a very unique question for you based on what you're doing. I come from a really analog world where, you know, my brand for the past 20 years, but even past 10 years as a speaker, an author has been me.

I, like a lot of people show up to get paid for the group coaching I do with organizations, the keynote speaking, I do to big organizations across the globe, et cetera. As I think about this newsletter, specifically Man Morning, is it possible to do this without my name attached? It seems like what I'm seeing right now in the marketplace from a broad. brand perspective. And as I think about late checkout, I think about if you need a robot. It's still Greg, but it still is a strong brand. And I feel like your stuff could still exist even if Greg wasn't in the signature. So how critical is it to have me attached to it? So it's a great question.

I think initially it's helpful to have you be attached to it because like you're on a podcast right now, if we get 100,000 downloads plus a month on our podcast, a bunch of these people are going to listen to it. And they're going to be like, oh, Tony, like I resonated with that guy, man morning. I resonate with that concept. Boom, I'm going to give my email address in. So it's helpful that you're out there screaming about what you're doing. And the truth of the matter is people resonate with people more than they resonate with

brands. that being said i don't think that you necessarily need to be that person um long term so i think that you can like shift out of it at one point so one option is you shift out of it once you are starting to see i don't know 50 100 000 subs multiple major cities um that are really working in different chapters and then you just kind of like shift out of it and then you just employ like a toastmaster's model, which is like, there's no person behind Toastmasters. Yet Toastmasters is an incredibly big business. I think it's a nonprofit. Probably does tens of millions a year in revenue, if not hundreds of millions of dollars a year in revenue. And there's no person behind it. People just show up to these

events, pay their dues to be a part of it. The other opportunity that you have is you've essentially built a prototype that works and a product that works. And the question is, who would be the most interesting creator to be attached to this company or product? So, for example, you know, I used to work with these guys, Adam and Jordan Borenstein. They actually used to produce this podcast. And they just launched a newsletter for Arnold Schwarzenegger. Wow. Have you seen it?

No, I haven't. They launched it like recently, like within the last like 90 days. and it has like half a million subscribers. Wow. Now that's a big deal because when you look at products like Morning Brew that sold a majority of their business for $75 million or the hustle, which I think sold for $20 or $30 million. You know, when the hustle sold, I think they had like a million and a half subs. So or when Morning Brew sold, I think they had like a couple million subs. So Arnold Schwarzenegger has basically made like eight figures of.

potential value via leveraging his name and creating this newsletter. Now, my question to you is if you can have any creator celebrity to attach to this, who would it be and why? Yeah, that's a fantastic question. And I do not have an answer for you right now on that, but that's going to be a good thought experiment for me because when I think about the ethos of the brand, what it's about, what it's not about. I know the demographics of this guy extremely well who we're talking to.

So now it's for me to transfer that to who is that man out there that exists right now. So that's a dope exercise I'm going to do and I'm going to give you an update on that soon. Tell me. Yeah. I have a last question for you. And I don't always get to see what's going on behind the scene. We get to talk offline obviously quite a bit as well. As I think about this next chapter and working with Man Morning and have a vision for other

newsletters down the road, etc., targeting men. What's your perspective on if one should pursue having a partner in something like this or delegate and higher pros? Of course, there's a lot of great newsletter agencies out there right now and people you can write checks to implement and do certain things. When you, of course, when you look at, say that the morning brew motto or the hustle, it's like you always had strong tandums, you know, strong. partners that were doing things together.

As you look at me, would you say, Tony, you're going to go further if you're not doing this jam by yourself? I mean, you always go further when you're not doing it yourself. I think you want to have bright minds at the table who've done this zero to one before. They don't necessarily need to have, you know, worked at Facebook or Google. I actually think that's like a red flag. You know, you, I'd much prefer like they've, you know, I was telling, I was telling this to Rob Sandy actually, who we talked about in the beginning of the call right before this.

He, you know, he's trying to hire someone on his team. And there's a difference between hiring someone zero to one and, and hiring someone who's, you know, just optimizing something that's working. And I think if I'm you, all I'm thinking about is how do I get. zero to one. Because if you get to one and you have real product market fit that's really taking off, both on physical and digital, this is a thing that could scale to hundreds of millions of people. So I think if I'm you, I'm open to either. Like my framework for thinking about do I need a partner is what am I really good at? What am I missing? And if you find a,

someone who fills those gaps who's the yang to your ying you know is it worth giving up a percentage of the business to accelerate it and have them thinking about it 24-7 like probably um your other option is to go to agencies like with a lot of our uh i haven't said this publicly or anything but with a lot of like our like you probably need a robot and things like that like we've hired agencies to run a lot of it. For example, content and stuff like that. And I'm not afraid of hiring as an agency guy now who owns a bunch of agencies. I'm also not afraid to hire a bunch of agencies. Like, no one hires more agencies than us. Because we like, we're kind of like the most amount of equity you're going to give away is going to be now pre-product market fit. So therefore, I'd much rather

spend a little bit, get further along, prove that. And then have to give up less equity after. No, that's that's a great advice. And I love that the agency hires agencies. That's what's up. Totally. I mean, we bought an agency in 2022 as a result of we were hiring this agency. They were amazing.

And we're like, hey, like, can we work more closely together? And that might happen to you. You might be like, wow, I found this incredible agency that does newsletter growth. and I need them on my team to be thinking about this all the time. And I think if I'm you, I'm trying to think of, like, don't look at big agencies. Look at like these are three to five people, eight people, 12 people, small that have something to prove, are gritty, want to make this work, and hold them accountable to a KPI. Be like, I'm making this up. but I want 50,000 high quality subscribers by this date.

Yeah. And all of our efforts need to be focused on that. If you hit that, that is going to be successful. And I want to like double down with you. If you don't, I don't know. We'll have to revisit it. Yeah, that's good. So the three key takeaways I'm getting from you is one, the email course.

That's going to come out fast. For now, it's going to be me, your boy, Tony, as the brand. And I'm going to identify who that. other person or people could be down the road. And three, yeah, even as you say that, I'm more excited about the prospect of working with agencies where I can write a check now versus, like you say, giving up equity long term. This is very helpful, man. I'm fired up right now. And your boy is going to be grinding this weekend. So I appreciate it, man. Thanks for coming on, man. Where could folks find you in Manmorning and get involved?

Yeah, manmorning.com, like the beginning of the day, manmourning.com. com and everything, me is at the Antonio Neves. That's a handle on all socials at the Antonio Neves. I love it. And can you tell people to subscribe to this YouTube channel? Hey, everybody. If you're listening to right now, like Greg said, you made it to the deep end. Odds are you've got value out of this or some other content that Greg has provided you with, not only this month, but probably last month and over the years. It costs you absolutely nothing right now to smash that subscribe button and it helps Greg in the work that he does so he can continue to publish free amazing content like this for you so not only are you going to press

that subscribe button but share this episode with a friend as well I knew you'd crush it because you were on TV so that was like for me that was like I'm watching a Nickelodeon TV ad right now like that was amazing I got your back man I share your newsletter with so many people. I sing your praises far and wide. Love you, man. And you'll have to come back on the show again. Love you, homie.

Appreciate you.