pov: brainstorming $1M+ startup ideas with Daniel Dalen

Join me as I chat with Daniel Dalen, CEO and Founder of Ecomflow, as we explore various startup ideas and business opportunities, focusing on embeddable businesses and the Shopify ecosystem. We discuss the potential of credibility badges, analyzing both successful and unsuccessful business concepts while sharing insights on product development, aesthetics, and bootstrapping versus venture capital approaches. Timestamps: 00:00 - Intro 01:39 - Startup Idea 1: Best Product Plaques for Credibility 09:00 - Startup Idea 2: Embeddable Businesses 31:49 - Startup Idea 3: Shopify ecosystem opportunities 45:53 - Building sustainable businesses 59:47 - Content creation strategy discussion Key Points: • Discussion of embeddable businesses and their potential in 2025 • Analysis of credibility badges/plaques as a business model • Deep dive into Shopify ecosystem opportunities • Insights on aesthetic vs luxury software products 1) First startup idea: "Best Product of Year" Certification Business • Similar to Better Business Bureau model • Sell digital badges + physical plaques to startups • ~$200/year subscription model • 99% margins, pure SaaS play • Key challenge: Need massive distribution to create credibility 2) Second concept: "Embeddable Businesses" • Greg built http://offerbutton.com as an example • Place buttons/widgets on other people's websites • Own digital real estate across the web • Similar to "Sent with Superhuman" model • Massive distribution potential through viral embedding 3) Fascinating insight on software categories: Luxury Software is DEAD Aesthetic Software is the FUTURE • Users care more about design than status • Example: People use Superhuman for its clean UI • Shows they value design-thinking • Growing trend in 2024+ 4) On building Shopify apps: • Massive opportunity in DTC ecosystem • Need to deeply understand specific pain points • Niche down (ex: CRO for specific industries) • Can charge premium as money constantly flowing • Avoid competing with Shopify's core features 5) Building mindset insights from Daniel Dalen: • Bootstrap over VC if possible • Focus on cash flow positive businesses • Build with people who share your values • Success = freedom to choose your projects • Document over promote when building in public 6) Hot Take from Greg: "The wealthiest people have the least amount of recurring meetings" True wealth = control of your time Automation over Meetings Clear calendar = Clear mind 7) Key lesson on content: Stop asking for likes/subs Start asking for genuine feedback Let quality speak for itself Focus on documenting the journey Real value drives real engagement Notable Quotes: "I feel like luxury software is old, and the new wave is gonna be aesthetic software." - Greg Isenberg "The wealthiest people have the least amount of recurring meetings." - Greg Isenberg 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: https://www.gregisenberg.com/30startupideas LCA helps Fortune 500s and fast-growing startups build their future - from Warner Music to Fortnite to Dropbox. We turn 'what if' into reality with AI, apps, and next-gen products https://latecheckout.agency/ BoringAds — ads agency that will build you profitable ad campaigns http://boringads.com/ BoringMarketing — SEO agency and tools to get your organic customers http://boringmarketing.com/ Startup Empire - a membership for builders who want to build cash-flowing businesses https://www.startupempire.co FIND ME ON SOCIAL X/Twitter: https://twitter.com/gregisenberg Instagram: https://instagram.com/gregisenberg/ LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/gisenberg/ FIND DANIEL ON SOCIAL X/Twitter: https://x.com/danielvandalen Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@danieldalen/videos Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/danieldalen/

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Greg Isenberg?

  Dude, oh my God, I can't tell you how excited I am for this podcast. Daniel Dalen, if you're on YouTube and you're into startups and entrepreneurship, you know him. He doesn't do podcasts like this. So, thank you. Thank you, Daniel, for taking some time.

• 0:16Speaker 01

  Thank you for having me, Greg. It's funny enough, been the podcast that has actually been requested most. I've had so many people on Twitter DM me and be like, dude, please hop on with Greg because I know you guys would hit it off so well. I'm so sure that with YouTube, you're only scratching the surface and to get someone who's, you know, as raw and as, you know, straight to the point as Greg of just, you know, sitting down and talking about cool things, you know, I'm super excited to be here. So, thank you for having me.

• 1:08Greg Isenberg?

  So, today we're doing Startup Ideas with Daniel Dalen. And we're gonna go through these three startup ideas I have and just jam. And my hope is basically to get inside your brain, to just to, yeah, just a glimpse inside your brain of how you think about fleshing out some of these businesses. We're gonna give away these ideas and talk about how we'd actually build them. And you can tell me if you hate these ideas, by the way. And I want you to be real with us.

• 1:37Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:38Greg Isenberg?

  So, I went and had some dental work done yesterday. And I walked into the waiting room and the dentist, well, the receptionist says, hey, did you see our new best dentist in America plaque? For 2023, or actually no, it's 2024. And I was like, no, but that's amazing. Like, this is amazing. She was so proud of it. It got me thinking that there's an opportunity to build like best product of the year or, you know, best e-commerce brand of the year. Business where you actually create these plaques. And it's not too dissimilar to, have you ever seen like

• 2:23Greg Isenberg?

  the Better Business Bureau image? Have you seen this on some websites?

• 2:31Speaker 01

  No, I haven't.

• 2:33Greg Isenberg?

  So it's just like a little image that you can put on your website that says that you're like legit. Look, eight plus rating. And they're like Better Business Bureau makes millions of dollars a year basically selling this image. So that's the insight. The insight is what, what plaque or what image could you create and sell that to whenever you go to a website? So it shows that it's, you know, credible. It's a credible website. What do you think about that?

• 3:09Speaker 01

  Are we talking like, are we just taking the concept of a dentist or just like any business?

• 3:13Greg Isenberg?

  Any business. So like, um, you know, on one of my recent pods, I talked about this app called Granola, right? So it's like, wow, this is a really cool app. The AI notepad for people in back to back meetings. And it's like every, every product, every indie hacker, every founder is trying to add credibility here. So they all have this trusted at individuals at this. And I don't know about you, but I started to like gloss over these credibility slides. Now, if it said like top product of the year in an image over here.

• 3:52Greg Isenberg?

  I might be more willing to try this because there's a thousand AI notepad apps. And I think that granola would be willing to pay $200 a year for some sticker over here, as well as a physical plaque that they can get similar to like the YouTube 100 plaque that they can go and create content and be like, wow, we're so happy that, you know, we got the, you know, top startup of the year by, you know, Dalen Institute.

• 4:21Speaker 01

  Yeah, exactly. So I think especially for those kind of, like ultimately it comes down to acknowledgement of that being a good product, right? So there's, there's two sides to that. We've got the supply as in the product and then the demand for the product. So I think with, with like a concept like this, figuring out first of all, again, like I always try and especially when building product or thinking if something makes sense is like, how could we make this work? You know, because if there is a need for credibility, that's something that in my opinion is, is, is there. You know, like, like you said, even like splashing logos on your side or even having testimonials, like all those things are there.

• 5:06Speaker 01

  So having a product that essentially within a specific niche gathers and kind of aggregates that supply and demand and almost to like a sort of like a public listing. You know, it reminds me a little bit of Product Hunt where there's people that can vote and obviously you can apply. Product Hunt also allows these, these plaques to be, to be created and to be put on the website, which is, which is quite similar. So that's kind of like the first kind of set of thoughts that, that come to mind.

• 5:42Greg Isenberg?

  Yeah, I think the most similar thing is the product hunt, you know, product of the day. I do see this on people's websites.

• 5:50Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 5:51Greg Isenberg?

  You do see it?

• 5:53Speaker 01

  Yeah, especially within the indie hacking community. It's like, it's a big thing, you know, like if you go trending on Product Hunt, if you, if you know, you're even featured on Product Hunt, it's just, you know, it's just something that, again, going back to that credibility, there's relatability of something that they've seen on other platforms as well, you know? So if you're trending on, on, on that one thing, so just, I think like this product and with most of these products, you can make it work. I would say like the main thing where you can make a big difference, which is also something that stands very close to me and also very close to you, is making noise. Because making the noise is gonna get the eyeballs, which is basically the supply.

• 6:35Speaker 01

  And then all you have to do is to just close the demand on a $300 a year plan in order for you to have them displayed on the website. And then what, you know, in terms of making the noise, which can be done through the, you know, Startup Ideas podcast with Daniel, for example, or whatever you may come up with, to really start making that noise and having that traffic funnel to that specific page, which then again builds that credibility because people will start to recognize it. Which, which is, yeah, like, I think, I think the most crucial part here would be to, to make so much noise in the right way with the right authority for people to start, you know, really looking at that with the credibility

• 7:20Speaker 01

  that you would need for the companies to value it as much to pay a certain amount of money for it.

• 7:26Greg Isenberg?

  Quick break in the pod to tell you a little bit about Startup Empire. So Startup Empire is my private membership where it's a bunch of people like me, like you, who wanna build out their startup ideas. Now, they're looking for content to help accelerate that. They're looking for potential co-founders. They're looking for tutorials from people like me to come in and tell Tell them, how do you do email marketing? How do you build an audience? How do you go viral on Twitter? All these different things. That's exactly what Startup Empire is. And it's for people who want to start a startup, but are looking for ideas. Or it's for people who have a startup, but just they're not seeing the traction that they need.

• 8:11Greg Isenberg?

  So you can check out the link to startupempire.co in the description. 100%. Yeah, I think what I like about this business is the insight, I guess, is like, what are businesses where you can make 99% margin on? And if you're selling a badge, like you're selling, it's like Warren Buffett says, why does he like insurance businesses so much? He likes insurance businesses and spends billions of dollars on insurance businesses. Because like GEICO, because, you know, you sell something for $10,000 on day one. You know, it's just like pure margin, especially in the beginning. Now, eventually, there could be a hurricane in Florida, and then you have to make it up.

• 8:56Greg Isenberg?

  But yeah, that's why I like businesses like this. So that's one kind of insight. I built something for fun called Offer Button. And the reason I bring it up is because I'm starting to be really obsessed with businesses that are embeddable. So the way Offer Button works is I was like, wouldn't it be cool if you could just put a little button on your web, on anyone's website? And if you wanted to buy the website, you can just make an offer to the owner. And it's free. It's totally free.

• 9:31Greg Isenberg?

  And it's, it's, we already have 400 websites that have embedded it. Like, we're on 400 people's websites. Like, there's a directory of all these companies that are for sale.

• 9:43Greg Isenberg?

  And you go on their website, and it's like, we have real estate. I think that businesses like that, owning real estate on other people's websites, I call them embeddable businesses, are going to be really big in 2025. What do you, what do you think about that?

• 9:59Speaker 01

  Yeah, very interesting embeddable, embeddable businesses. I think it's almost, it's almost like an, like an extent.

• 10:10Speaker 01

  Within like even like the the concept of of what was the name again of the business you you started? Make an offer?

• 10:17Greg Isenberg?

  Offerbutton.com.

• 10:18Speaker 01

  Offerbutton.com. That's so interesting. I in all honesty, haven't like thought too much about um embeddable businesses. I mean, if you really think about it, like some of the things that we use a lot are especially when wanting to quickly validate stuff or, you know, think of think of things which is type form or whatever, like those are all things that you can embed for it to, you know, like, look pretty native uh with very, very, very minimal effort. Um embeddable business, in all honesty, I haven't I haven't thought about that much. I um like mainly within within the businesses that we're building right now, it's like a lot of layered solutions. So we build on top of existing very boring traditional infrastructure and try and innovate as much as we can there.

• 11:02Speaker 01

  Um, so I actually haven't um haven't really thought much about um embedded solutions. Uh or like embedded businesses as you as how you called it, but it's it's it's a it's a really interesting one. Like even product, it's like almost embedded, you know, business.

• 11:20Greg Isenberg?

  Yeah, it's true. Yeah, I think I think the reason why I'm interested in it is, as you know, it's so hard to get, you know, it's so hard to get traffic in a consistent manner. Sometimes it's easy for people like us to like launch something, get a bunch of traffic in the beginning, but then it like tapers off. And what's cool about an embeddable business is you're you own real estate on an app on a website that people are going to every single day.

• 11:51Speaker 01

  Yep, yep. One one thing that I also really like about that is something that um is also uh very recognizable. So it's automatically doing the marketing for itself. Like another good example is let's take um zero, like an invoicing software as an example. Like at the bottom, you'll always see that, you know, the the invoices sent with with zero. You know, so even though even. Though, um, you know, like you can pay premium to remove the branding, but ninety nine percent of customers won't do it. So everyone who receives an invoice has automatically kind of, you know, a seed planted as in like, hey, you know, like,

• 12:33Speaker 01

  they've, they've, they've used zero. So even when, when you make, yeah, Beehive does the, does the same thing. Um, like always at every single bottom of the, of the email, they, they always do a little bit of marketing, right? So, um, I feel like when, when having that digital real estate on someone else's, you know, property, that's also automatically marketing for you on their website, which comes with authority. So if you're a big fan of, let's say Beehive, and then all of a sudden you see that button on there, it's, it's, you know, it's really good marketing.

• 13:05Greg Isenberg?

  That's, uh, that's actually how Gmail, I don't know if you know the story of how Gmail, got popular, uh, in two thousand and five, I think, two thousand and four. So they, they had, they made it an invite only. It's like Google's making an invite only email. Very cool. I want to be on it. They got like, a few thousand people on it. People were selling invites on eBay for so much money to get into Gmail. And at the bottom of it, it said like, sent with Gmail. You know who does this now also is Superhuman?

• 13:37Speaker 01

  Superhuman, yeah.

• 13:39Greg Isenberg?

  Yeah.

• 13:41Speaker 01

  That's so funny. Yeah. Yeah. I think that's a big thing with embedded businesses as well. You like automatically lift on the authority of, of whoever uses your product, you know? Even with Superhuman, you know, like if, if you and I were to send an email and, and you'd see it at the bottom. I actually only found out about Superhuman doing this after like months of using it. I was like, man, I've just been promoting you guys' product for free.

• 14:08Greg Isenberg?

  That's awesome.

• 14:09Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 14:11Greg Isenberg?

  Yeah. You know, uh, people call this, people call products like Superhuman luxury software.

• 14:19Greg Isenberg?

  Because it's more expensive, it looks a bit luxury, it's a whole new category. Um, and I think having things like a status play, like a status symbol, like sent with Superhuman built within up the product is really important with luxury businesses. And you know, I feel like you know a lot about that sort of stuff.

• 14:44Greg Isenberg?

  Before we move on to our next one, I think, I feel like

• 14:49Greg Isenberg?

  it makes sense, right? Because like if you, you know, if you spend $7,000 on a Louis Vuitton bag, like you're wearing the bag, not because it's great leather, you want other people to see you.

• 15:01Speaker 01

  Yeah, I think, I think it goes kind of hand in hand with the thing that we touched on earlier. It's kind of the credibility, it's the authority, you know, it's like, what do I want to be associated with? That's, that's, I think, something that, I mean, I, for example, like, why would I, why wouldn't I mind that people know that I'm superhuman, or that I use superhuman, for example? I think it's a great tool, you know, I think it's actually something that really helps me. I think it's, it looks nice. And I, I mean, like, when, when I do my emails, it's just, it's just nice, you know? And, and the way it allows me to organize it, some of the AI features and all of that.

• 15:39Speaker 01

  So just having those, those, you know, having a good experience and then also allowing that, you know, marketing to happen on its own behalf because of using the product is something, you know, I think, I think a lot of people would, you know, be okay with. But with those kinds of products, like take, again, superhuman as an example, it's, there's a lot of interaction. So just as how you said with the, the, what was it called again? The button?

• 16:09Greg Isenberg?

  Offerbutton.com

• 16:10Speaker 01

  Offerbutton.com. It's, it's again, you know, like, anyone who uses it, you know, automatically promotes your product because they probably think, hey, that's a pretty cool product. You know, my business is for sale. And it's almost as if, you know, you have like one of those for sale boards in front of your house, but then on your business.

• 16:31Greg Isenberg?

  Exactly. That was, that was the insight is like, how do you put a, and I do that often as I go into the real world, people ask me, how do you come up with startup ideas? Right before this, I showed you my like long list of startup ideas. And it's often just going into the real world, seeing something and insight about human beings, because human beings don't change. We are who we are. And thinking, okay, how could I create software to make this, you know, to apply this way of thinking to a particular niche? I just want to, I want to say one quick thing. I want to get your opinion on this.

• 17:08Greg Isenberg?

  I I just I just thought about this. I feel like luxury software is old and the new wave is gonna be aesthetic software.

• 17:18Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 17:18Greg Isenberg?

  Yeah, you use superhuman not just not just because it's luxury because you you said I think you even might have used the word aesthetic or design. Like you might subconsciously want people to know that you're you're someone who takes design seriously.

• 17:32Speaker 01

  I think I think just um and I don't know, it may just be the designer in me. I mean, I I grew up.

• 17:43Speaker 01

  My dad's an architect, so I grew up with him working in the office. Like, we had a super small little home office and he was doing nothing else but drawing. You know, so I've always been super fascinated by just design and and, you know, aesthetics from a very, very young age. So I feel like, I don't know, even simple tools like Raycast, it's just nice, you know, like it just looks smooth. It works smooth. And um, yeah, I mean, it's it's it's kind of like almost the of a thing that I adopt even throughout. Um, you know, the way I um, you know, like the visuals we use when announcing um, new features.

• 18:26Speaker 01

  Um, the way we design websites, the way we design products, the way I use the products. And even if I shoot content, like if you look at my content, um, you know, the the the kind of aesthetic, you know, not only uh, it's displayed in the work that we do, but I also throughout my storytelling value, you know, like a good aesthetic a lot, because I just think that it just contributes so much to the perceived value of of, you know, um, of what it is that you're trying to get across and that I I I mean, that also applies to products. You know, ultimately, we're doing emails, you know, it's it's the way you do it is different.

• 19:05Speaker 01

  Um, so there's a luxury experience, there's a convenient experience, there may be a very convenient and luxury experience. Um, and all of those come, obviously, at like a different price range. And I'm sure that there's gonna be people listening who would happily pay ninety nine bucks a month for like a super aesthetically looking, efficient email client. Or there's gonna be people that say, you know, I'm never ever in my entire life gonna pay ninety nine bucks and I'll just use Gmail, you know?

• 19:32Greg Isenberg?

  Totally. I was, I was actually shocked. Have you heard of Zoho?

• 19:37Speaker 01

  I have, yeah. Man, that was my first email provider.

• 19:42Greg Isenberg?

  So I went in a deep rabbit hole of Zoho and learned about them. I didn't realize how big they were.

• 19:48Speaker 01

  Yeah, they're massive. They've got all these different branches of product like so payment invoicing. Yeah.

• 19:55Greg Isenberg?

  Yeah. So they've got 15,000 employees.

• 19:58Speaker 01

  Wow, that's crazy.

• 20:00Greg Isenberg?

  And Zoho is the Costco of software. It's the Kirkland of software. Like, I'm wearing a Kirkland t-shirt under my Lacoste sweater. You know what I'm saying? It works. I love it.

• 20:14Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 20:15Greg Isenberg?

  You know, um, I think, uh,

• 20:21Greg Isenberg?

  there's an opportunity, you know, when you're creating a startup, you have to ask yourself, am I Zoho? Am I trying to be the Costco? Or am I superhuman? Am I trying to be the Louis Vuitton? Or am I Daniel Dalen? Am I trying to go after aesthetics? I think those are the three, that's the spectrum. And maybe we can draw this out somehow. Where, yeah, what do you think about that?

• 20:45Speaker 01

  I think, I mean, I think the aesthetics just help because in all honesty, like the, I, I've taken one year of computer science just because I wanted to figure out how to build stuff myself. I did that when I was, I think I was like 16 or 17. It was my last year before I dropped out. But that made me realize that I would always have so much higher perceived value of everyone around me, building like really nice looking products with a terrible backend. But just because it looks so nice and just because it made so much sense. Because I think, you know, like when, when, when talking about aesthetics and especially when product,

• 21:27Speaker 01

  like the way I, the way I think of aesthetics within products is it just has to make sense. You know, and especially within a world where you're being bombarded with like so much information for stuff to just look clean and clear and just blend in and be very, very, very.

• 21:45Speaker 01

  You know, just clear on what this is, I feel like that's something that that is is really important. So when when building products, um, um, or at least from my experience, when when actually building products, that's something that I always obviously try and leverage. But ultimately, um, the most important thing to me is obviously that it makes most sense and that you can actually, that you can actually, you know, that it has an impact. Because, um, one, I would say, and I'm very curious to get your take actually on this as well as someone who, I don't think I know many people who build as much stuff as as you have done and to this day still do.

• 22:23Speaker 01

  The way I look at building stuff is that so many people always focus on on um, on the wrong things. And I have this analogy that I always use, that I even talk to my team members about.

• 22:37Speaker 01

  I feel like building a product is like building a car. And whenever someone walks into a dealership, um, they see this super nice car. Like it has everything, all the bells and whistles. It has the like a super nice collar, it has a leather steering wheel, it has a panorama rooftop. But the second that person gets into the car and finds out that the car doesn't drive, he he doesn't care and he's not gonna buy it. And what I always tell my team is like, let's figure out what makes the car drive. Like what like, just maybe a bike, you know, like maybe a skateboard before we turn it into a car.

• 23:18Speaker 01

  But let's figure out the core value proposition of getting from A to B. Now, what I try and do and why, you know, I would say the aesthetic in some extent is important is that when we're in that phase of figuring that out, we can validate if, you know, we get someone from A to B by just making it look nice, you know, because that naturally draws people's attention. Like even when you leverage platforms to to, you know, like you touched on this earlier as well. Not everyone is as fortunate to just launch a product and they get hundreds of people to sign up, if not thousands of people to sign up. Um, when it looks nice, you can. Grab attention, you know, so that's something that I like really try and leverage when I build products

• 23:59Speaker 01

  or whenever I want to announce everything, anything or or just make noise and and push traffic to whatever it may be. Obviously, we're talking about product right now, but that's why I think like the aesthetic to to to some extent is it can can be like a really good parameter to play with to um to grab attention and and, you know, get through the first stages of building your product.

• 24:23Greg Isenberg?

  Before we move on to the next startup idea, I just have to ask on this.

• 24:28Greg Isenberg?

  Sometimes when I'm building a product, I don't know if aesthetics should be in the MVP or not. How do you think about that?

• 24:38Speaker 01

  I think I think spinning up a really nice aesthetic landing page, and it doesn't even have to be, you know, like, I mean, the fine aesthetic, right? I think you can just, you know, pick a nice font, um, you know, bump up the font size, uh, get one nice, you know, good looking header, make a simple logo and a and a, you know, well, you know, get rounded with some shadow, uh, email signup, you know, like, I think I think that already gets you somewhere. But then in in terms of the product itself, yeah, that I would argue unless it's going to take you a lot of time to make it look aesthetic, just just run with it.

• 25:20Speaker 01

  Like, I I do firmly, firmly always refer back to that analogy that I used. You know, getting someone from A to B is is is the is the main thing that we have to figure out, you know, and are we going to do it in style? Probably not, you know, but are we going to do it in style later? Yes, but, um, you know, a a very nice looking car without the ability to drive doesn't make sense, you know. So I think if it's like not too much effort.

• 25:47Speaker 01

  Yes, the product can, you know, like have its design features and, and, you know, spend, and you can tell that, you know, the team spent some time thinking through the design just to make it look nice. But I would say just make the front end look as nice as possible to grab attention if you're not as, you know, in a position to be easily creating traffic just to grab that attention and clearly communicate what it is that, you know, like what makes your car drive. And then the product itself, I mean, it could be, it could be just like a type form with some Zappos behind it, you know, whatever you can, whatever the product may be.

• 26:21Greg Isenberg?

  Quick ad break. Let me tell you about a business I invested in. It's called boringmarketing.com. So a few years ago, I met this group of people that were some of the best SEO experts in the world. They were behind getting some of the biggest companies found on Google. And the secret sauce is they've got a set of technology and AI that could help you outrank your competition. So for my own businesses, I wanted that. I didn't want to have to rely on Mark Zuckerberg. I didn't want to depend on ads to drive customers to my businesses. I wanted to rank high in Google. That's why I like SEO and that's why I use boringmarketing.com and that's why I invested in it. They're so confident in their approach that they

• 27:06Greg Isenberg?

  offer a 30 day sprint with 100% money back guarantee. Who does that nowadays? So check it out. Highly recommend boringmarketing.com. Yeah, I think that, I think that's right. Like even with, um, with offer button, I used initially V zero. Like, by the way, this is not a beautiful landing page by any, you know, this, this took like a few hours type thing. But I think I recommend people put animations.

• 27:37Greg Isenberg?

  Because I think the animations just like help people and these aren't like this could be better. But again, I wanted to get something up within a day. So set that constraint on yourself. I want to get something up in a day. Use platforms like V zero, Framer AI, platforms like that to get like the basics done. And then iterate from there either on your own. Ideally, you know some code, excuse me, code. But otherwise, you can still, you can still do some like light animations that um. Or honestly, go to like, go to Upwork, get someone to do some animations. I think they will go a long way.

• 28:14Speaker 01

  Yeah, I agree. And I would argue this is like a good, this is like the perfect lender. You know, it's just like clear what is the, what is the, the main thing that we're trying to do here is displaying a button on your website. Showing that, you know, this business can be bought, you know, and that's, that's what it does. And then again, like you said. I mean, you've also done the like small animation or like the small graphic at the bottom. Um, like even the, the all the way in the bottom one. Yeah, that one. Um, but this is like really sufficient and, and I mean. This, this can be set up in, in, in like something like Framer, like you said, in, in like an hour, you know?

• 28:50Greg Isenberg?

  Yeah, totally. It's funny though, because as like a product person, I look at this and I'm like, this is the worst website I've ever seen.

• 28:56Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah. But it does the job, you know, like I, I, I, I know, like even if you, if you go to. Whatever, like the, the late checkout website, which is such a cool website. You know, you can tell you guys, you know, I've thought this through. It's like, it's so cool, you know, but on the other hand, it's, it's. You know, like even the, the other one, it, it, it does the job, you know, and, and um. It's, it's, you know, it's, it's gonna get to a point where there's enough validation for you to justify spending so much time, effort and energy. And to potentially making offer button, you know, that cool of a website, you know, it's like, it's. I'm sure the late checkout website didn't look like that when you started it.

• 29:38Greg Isenberg?

  No, not at all, dude. Like, I love going to, uh, do you ever go to archive.org?

• 29:45Speaker 01

  No.

• 29:47Greg Isenberg?

  The Wayback Machine, so you can go and check what a website looked like in the past?

• 29:52Speaker 01

  Oh, that's so cool.

• 29:54Greg Isenberg?

  Yeah, so like when we launched it in 2020, let's see, see if this comes up.

• 30:04Greg Isenberg?

  Now, it doesn't pull in all the animations, but it'll give you an idea of a snapshot of what a website will look like.

• 30:12Greg Isenberg?

  And dude, let's put it this way, as it's loading, it was a landing page. It was a landing page, but you gotta get something out there, right?

• 30:24Speaker 01

  Exactly, yeah.

• 30:25Greg Isenberg?

  Oh, you know what? It was with LateCheckout.com. That's what it was.

• 30:32Greg Isenberg?

  Checkout.com.

• 30:38Speaker 01

  Well, even goes back one more day, one more year.

• 30:43Greg Isenberg?

  Yeah.

• 30:45Greg Isenberg?

  I haven't checked this since, since then, so this is, uh, this is fun.

• 30:52Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 30:56Greg Isenberg?

  It's like, it's like remin, it's like reminiscing about, you know, an old girl you used to date or something like that.

• 31:02Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, exactly, yeah. It's funny that when you think of like this specific timeframe, 2020, that this probably would have been something, you know, like worth showing, worth talking about.

• 31:17Speaker 01

  But that the standard now of, of like such a simple website is one, so easy to create. And two, it's also, you know, it's also pretty, you know, you can so easily make something look so nice.

• 31:31Greg Isenberg?

  Yeah, I agree. I think there's, a landing page should be aesthetic for your MVP. You know, everything else you can layer on aesthetics. Okay, this is not pulling up, but maybe it'll be loading, it'll load and let's, let's go to our next startup idea and then we'll see if it's loaded by the end.

• 31:54Greg Isenberg?

  So I actually want to start with this. I'm not even gonna call it a startup idea. It's like a germ of an insight that I want to get your opinion on. So I've noticed recently where, you know, a local coffee shop I go to, if you share your, a picture of your coffee on social, they'll give you a free cup of coffee. So I've noticed that there's starting to be like incentivization for sharing on social. And if you do that, you'll get, you know, a future credit, status, or even free product. It got me thinking that, you know,

• 32:37Greg Isenberg?

  let's go to Singelman Stable, let's say. And if we go to their shop. If Daniel Dalen comes to this website, wouldn't it be cool if he could press a button that says, "Log in with Influencer"? You press that button, "Embeddable Business", and then he was able to see different products and different price points, maybe lower price points. And you had to like connect, you had to connect your YouTube, let's say, and you have hundreds of thousands of subs. Wouldn't it be cool if you can do that? It's, it's good for Singelman Stable because you might buy more of their product or more exclusive stuff too.

• 33:22Greg Isenberg?

  And it's, and it's good for you because, you know, you get cool product.

• 33:29Speaker 01

  And they would indirectly get exposure as well by?

• 33:32Greg Isenberg?

  Exactly.

• 33:33Speaker 01

  Because you kind of use the social status as a measure of, you know, wearing that.

• 33:40Greg Isenberg?

  Exactly.

• 33:41Speaker 01

  Yeah. Yeah, I think it's, it's, it's, I mean, I'm like, whenever someone tells me an idea, I, I always directly start to think about, "Okay, like, how would this work"? And it's like, kind of similar to, which I mean, like, it, it applies to like 99.9% of products, right? There's like supply and demand. And now it also comes with that, that little piece of credibility and also verification. So. When, I, I, I think that should be actually something that would be within,

• 34:22Speaker 01

  because I feel like when, especially when, when like, you know, working with econ brands like myself within our business is, um, you wanna avoid also giving too much options. Um, because, uh, you know, like it could, your conversion rate could drop, like especially for econ brands. They run loads of traffic, all this traffic is paid. And then giving someone the option to log in as in, as in, you know, um, you know, with their social profile to kind of measure what benefits they may be eligible to. Um, is something that could, um, you know, significantly impact, uh, or like could impact conversion. Uh, because maybe someone logs in and they're like, oh man, like I'm not even, you know,

• 35:06Speaker 01

  I cannot even get any benefits. Um, so maybe just, maybe even, um, when, um, there's any traffic that, you know, through cookies or whatever you can measure, uh, they come from socials, that you then can like trigger those kind of functions, maybe able to just like be a bit more specific about who you, who you show this to.

• 35:31Speaker 01

  But I think, I think, I think it would be, I think maybe integrating this within like the, the checkout, that could be something like, see if you're eligible to, to, you know, some benefits, you know, by, by, um, by connecting your socials, you know, or like by understanding, you know, who it is that's gonna wear or use these products. I think that would be something that's pretty cool. The only thing that I, that I, you know, it would, it would really be for marketing purposes, because I would say that you wouldn't wanna necessarily roll that out to the masses, because how many of, let's say, you know, any brand, their customers are, you know, eligible to, to get any benefits, right?

• 36:16Speaker 01

  So if, if, if, if we were to take a hundred thousand people, I dare to bet that's probably gonna be like a hundred people that a brand would actually be like, oh, you know, like I would definitely give you some, um, some, some benefits because of, because of your social status. Um, so that means that there's gonna be, um, you know,

• 36:39Speaker 01

  So much percentage, like almost ninety nine point nine percentage of people that are distracted with something that they're not even eligible for, because I'm sure as a brand, you would only want to give that to people that you feel are worthy of of of being able to give that. So I think there's got to be some some sort of a filtering system for you to to figure out, or or maybe like even turn it into a marketing tool, you know, and then just just reverse it where you get to scrape a bunch of social profiles within specific niches and then blast out, you know, an email or a message or whatever for them to be exposed to these benefits,

• 37:20Speaker 01

  kind of like, you know, a a around having to like physically, like publicly display some sort of a call to action for people to to check if they're eligible for benefits.

• 37:34Greg Isenberg?

  Yeah, I think I think there's something to this idea. I am a bit worried about, like, does it create like a dual class system for for e-commerce? You know what I mean? Like have or have nots? I mean, the real, yeah, I'm curious your your POV on that.

• 37:54Speaker 01

  Yeah, I think I think it's kind of like, you know, like, in all honesty, I feel like it would kind of suck, you know, like you would get on a website and you was like, oh, man, I can get discounted if I'm cool, and then you find out you're not cool enough, you know? It's like shit. So I think if if if if for this tool to like really to live, I feel like it should be the other way around, right? You should kind of see if you can get access to the cool people and automatically, you know, expose them to these benefits. So let's take, you know, let's let's take our personal brands as an example, and and someone would would.

• 38:34Speaker 01

  You know, reach out to us and be like, hey, listen, there's, there's, there's zero catch. We're a, um, we're a product and we gather, you know, people with, with, with like a following. And we put you in a database and, and brands get to, you know, just, just give you benefits. They get to give you discounts, free items, you name it. And that's it, you know? And for those brands to then kind of like select and, and on the backend decide to, you know, give those to you. I think that, that could be something that would make more sense because I think publicly facing it, you would really just. Yeah, you know, like differentiate those two while um, the, the percentage is only so small.

• 39:18Greg Isenberg?

  Yeah, and I'm, I'm happy that this is a bad idea because that it's a, it's a good insight with a bad idea. You know what I mean?

• 39:28Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 39:28Greg Isenberg?

  And that's, that's, that's the idea maze. The idea maze is helping you take that insight into a product that is, has a high probability of working.

• 39:38Speaker 01

  I always, even when I look at some of the things that I still go through, through this day. A lot of people don't realize that there's often way more failure to be found in things that are bad than, than are things that are right. Because um, you would never even, you know, like the odds of something not being the first, like the right idea straight away is way higher than. You're just hitting jackpot the first go, you know? So having like a streak of, of things that just simply didn't work out or bad ideas or, you know, they're going to take you one step closer to that one thing that sticks. That's like what I always notice where, you know, just, just, just focus on what information do I get from?

• 40:20Speaker 01

  And you can, and you can even go to extensive testing it, you know, like that's, that's also something that, um, you know, because who says what's good and what's bad, you know? Perhaps, you know, us putting that on that website and, and everyone starts to go crazy about, hey, am I cool enough? And everyone starts using it, you know, like we never know. So even, even figuring and finding those things out and to some extent use common sense. And maybe even speak to people, um, which I think, you know, like Greg, you're a living example of, of just putting it out there in the wild and literally spin up a visual and be like, hey, would you use this on my e-comm website? If you and just check if you're eligible for benefits, if you have social status, whatever, you know, and then get that feedback there and then you also have your answer.

• 41:05Speaker 01

  But it's, uh, yeah, I mean, I guess, I guess the, uh, the, the, the startup idea podcast, you know, wouldn't be impossible to have, you know, only good ideas.

• 41:17Greg Isenberg?

  A hundred percent. I mean, if we're lucky, if we get seventy five percent good insights, you know?

• 41:21Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 41:24Greg Isenberg?

  Do you, do you think a lot about, or how much do you think about the Shopify app ecosystem? You know, do you think there's a lot of opportunity there for people to create businesses there?

• 41:35Speaker 01

  Yeah. So I actually invested in a company, they're called instant dot S O. And it's, it's, it's like an instant page builder. And what I see a lot within Shopify, and even when I look at some of the things that we are building,

• 41:53Speaker 01

  we, for example, um, yeah, those guys, yeah, exactly. So instant is a tool that allows you to, and, and I'm, I'm also launching a product myself because my audience has been asking it so much. And, um, they have also, um, like, like we run a fulfillment business in China, right? So even the fulfillment itself for e-comm brands is just a beautiful case study. So I'm going to launch these glasses, the ones that I always wear. And I've used instant to build the entire website. Now I gave this to, uh, one of our designers who basically span up epic looking store in as quick as.

• 42:34Speaker 01

  I think it was, I think it was like two to three hours. Um, now, the cool thing is that they've run, um, or they've ran so many different split tests on all of the different designs that they're also CRO optimized. So you have all of these different templates that really allow you to just plug and play um and launch super quickly. Um, so it's, it's, it's one of these tools that is built on top of the Shopify ecosystem using and, and, you know, having built tools that automatically using AI generate liquid themes or, or liquid components, which is the, the native um code language for Shopify uh themes and, and, and, and the page builder itself.

• 43:18Speaker 01

  Um, and this is like, this is like fully living on top of Shopify. Um, then taking it like a, a, a bit closer to me myself, what we have built with our fulfillment business, which is also living on top of the Shopify ecosystem, is um a tool that integrate last mail carriers. Now, what does that mean? When um with a fulfillment business, and we'll take the US as an example, is when we ship a parcel from, let's, let's take these glasses as an example. They're like about two hundred, three hundred grams maximum, including packaging. Um, with our priority line, it takes about three days, three to six days to get a parcel from China to the US.

• 44:00Speaker 01

  Um, and, and one of the things that, you know, we got a lot from customers and also looking at the evolvement of, of, of shipping from, from, from China was like, hey, um, and, and again, like every single store you work with uses Shopify. So all our clients use Shopify. Um, and we got the feedback, it's like, you know, like, how can we hide the China origin? Because obviously, you know, even though the products are made in China, people always are like, oh, man, you know, I've received my parcel from China, but there's no difference to importing it to a local warehouse and then getting it to the customer. Now, what we did on top of the Shopify ecosystem was build a very simple Shopify app that allowed us to simply only upload and fulfill uh last mail carriers.

• 44:44Speaker 01

  Asmao carrier links. So for example, in the US, customers would only receive the USPS tracking link. And we integrated that within Shopify, its fulfillment status, where only that link would be provided to the customer, completely hiding the China origin, which is just like really enhancing the, you know, the experience for the customer. And in line with your question, it is so, like D to C is such an incredible, interesting space with so much money just flowing in every single direction for people that want to build products

• 45:24Speaker 01

  to save time, increase convenience, increase conversion, to like be somewhere in between those gaps. And even, even if you take like, like 10 cents, there is so much opportunity there. So to answer your question, yeah, I, I am a massive fan of building on top of the Shopify infrastructure just because I, I, I know how, how, how big it is and how, how much it's growing.

• 45:54Greg Isenberg?

  If someone listens to that, agrees with you, and wants to build in the Shopify ecosystem, how do they figure out what's the pain points that they need to go and solve?

• 46:06Speaker 01

  I think when building any product, it, it, it's really about understanding the pain point, right? It's, it's, it's really diving in, it's really getting your hands dirty on like, hey, why? Like if you look at anyone who starts an agency, you know, like it often comes out of a place of really understanding. You know, it's like, oh, hey, I've, I've, I've done this for myself. I can probably do this for other people. You know, it's, it's, it's, but it's within the part of doing it yourself by figuring it out. And I think within, within the kind of story that I just explained, where there's, there's so much happening within this entire D to C kind of land from, you know, dealing with China.

• 46:49Speaker 01

  Like, like again, that's all product, you know, like think of Alibaba, you know, like I, I've had so many ideas and I, and I probably know, and that's also something that I love about content because I always say content compounds. But I'm very, very sure that there's going to be a point in my career where, you know, I would. You know, take it up upon like an Alibaba and create the luxury version of it. You know, just to streamline that part in itself and that in itself is already like such a massive thing. And and and to answer your question, that comes out of a place of understanding the pain of dealing with Chinese manufacturers because of the language barriers, because of the distance, because of the cultural differences.

• 47:33Speaker 01

  So, understanding those pain points and having gone through me, you know, from the age of fifteen, sixteen, starting to learn Chinese Mandarin, just so that I could solve those problems because I saw how big they were. All comes out of a place of understanding. So, anyone who wants to build within the Shopify ecosystem, pick like one specific section within that entire niche, may it be supply chain, may be dealing with China, may it be CRO as in conversion rate optimization, may it be email, may it be after sales, may it be, um, you know, product, like building a store like the guys from Instant did.

• 48:11Speaker 01

  Um, there, there's so many pain points and there's so many money flowing because when you, and that's like the, what I realized because I've always been, um, that I've always been big in products, like I've always built products, always been fascinated about products. I've worked with on the Asia side with some, you know, the really big companies and help them just like strategize and think through product and and and build some stuff with them as well. Um, but the, the cool thing about D to C is that, you know, like think of any SaaS, if we were to take,

• 48:44Speaker 01

  whatever, let's take zero as an example, like you're sending invoices. Like it, you know, it gets, it gets very hard to convince a customer nowadays to pay, you know, two hundred fifty dollars a month or something for like a simple invoicing tool. You know, even though it's like super advanced, you use AI, all of those things, like the barrier to enter is getting, is getting. Is getting really, really, really high, you know, and you have to, you know, you have to like get low prices and deliver so much value and do so much work and put in so much, so much effort to, to acquire customers. Um, then now even, you know, I've seen you talk about that as well with like subscription fatigue where people are like, oh man, I'm, you know, I'm, I'm done.

• 49:23Speaker 01

  But then when you think about um, um, D to C, there's always money flowing. Every month, like as long as the business exists, there's money flowing. So, so to justify a four hundred ninety nine dollars a month subscription within that like flow of money is so easy to figure out as long as you solve a problem big enough to just, to keep justifying that amount within that, within that already flow of cash. You know, and I feel like within um, like a lot of other, like, like when you think of invoicing and especially how much competitive,

• 50:02Speaker 01

  um, you know, how competitive that specific niche is, it's so hard to find those, those gaps to like justify like high margin um, uh, products, you know, like high revenue generating products.

• 50:14Greg Isenberg?

  One of the things I think you said, which is really smart is, is, is once you figure out the pain point, niche down. And I think that you can even niche down further. So I think, um, you know, you mentioned CRO, you mentioned like logistics. Think about like what's CRO look, look like for, you know, local websites, construction workers. Um, like go deeper, um, because the, there's opportu- there's like one to ten million dollar ideas just in, just in that alone. And, and, and there's more of a moat for people, right? Cause like I saw today even, um,

• 50:55Greg Isenberg?

  I don't know if this is true or not, but like people were saying DocuSign has like fourteen thousand employees. And it's been like going viral on Twitter and I don't know if I'm like getting trolled and, and then it's like a joke, but, um. Google now has the ability to sign documents if you have Google Apps. So people are like, oh, what's gonna happen to all these DocuSign employees? You don't wanna compete with Google. You don't wanna compete with where, you know, you don't wanna be one of those apps that Shopify ends up cloning and puts into the system. You wanna be, you know, just quietly printing over there.

• 51:38Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah. The one thing that I do think is interesting, though, is that I do see opportunity. If you play your cards right and you build something that's in like a relatively short timeframe, making enough noise and acquiring enough market share for someone like Shopify to buy you.

• 51:58Greg Isenberg?

  Yeah.

• 51:58Speaker 01

  You know, that's a card you can play, but obviously that's a bit of a big bet. But it's, you know, like, it's not impossible. Like, they're buying like crazy.

• 52:11Greg Isenberg?

  Dude, I played that game in my twenties. That's the game I would play, which was go figure out what a company wants to buy, build it, get a lot of noise, raise a bunch of venture and sell it to them. And I did it, so I can't be like, don't do this. It's like, can't be like one of those people that is like, you know, don't drink alcohol as you're sipping a Chardonnay.

• 52:38Greg Isenberg?

  But on the positive side, these companies will overpay for or will like acquire some of these businesses if you're at the right place at the right time. And you have the opportunity to make generational wealth. You have the opportunity to be a part of these bigger companies and run that piece of the business within their division, which is really cool. And especially if you're in your twenties, like extremely cool. On the negative side, you have to, like, the stars literally need to align. And I just, I don't want, personally, I don't wanna be...

• 53:22Greg Isenberg?

  Like, that's like playing a slot machine versus playing poker. Like, business for me is, I wanna play poker in business. I wanna be like, learn about how to, you know, how to play the odds. You know, what do I do over here? What do I do over there? Look at my opponents. I don't wanna be like pressing a slot machine and hoping something happens.

• 53:43Speaker 01

  Yeah. I think for me, the biggest part in those two different types of building a business, for me, it's always been the freedom. You know, and I'm also personally just, you know, I mean, like, my whole journey as an entrepreneur has always been just figuring shit out my own, you know? And I have always operated out of a point where I understand that, you know, and again, like, obviously, I understand the concept behind raising and getting through a concept and, you know, and like having to invest a lot of money into build stuff. But because I didn't have that or even, I didn't even have the guts to ever think about raising money. You know, because, I mean, I come from a small town in the Netherlands.

• 54:28Speaker 01

  English is not even my first language. I've learned it through gaming. And, you know, like, it's never even occurred for me to like ask people for money because I was like, man, there's no way they're gonna give this kid money in any form or shape, you know? They're probably gonna ask me to pay them money to even ask them, you know? So, um, I very naturally came from the perspective of always wanting to just have something that, you know, proves to itself that it can sustain and grow. So having like a cash flow positive business that can grow from, from itself and reinvest the capital, bootstrapping it has always been something that, that to me makes so much sense. And the reason why I love this so much is because, you know, the difference between the two that you, that you sketched as well is that, you know,

• 55:13Speaker 01

  like, one, the stars have to align. Two, there's gonna be people breathing down your neck, making sure that, you know, like, you do everything right and that, you know, that, you know, the stars are aligned, you know? So, so all of a sudden, you're trying to control the stars as much as you can, which, you know, you and I both know you cannot do. So it comes with a lot of stress, a lot of pressure as well.

• 55:33Speaker 01

  And, I mean, like you said, obviously, when it works out, it works out. But then on the other hand, you know, you can have like a much leaner business, make a lot more money, where ultimately, like, when I really think about it, you know, like... That's what it's about, you know, like you gotta do something that makes you happy. You gotta do something that makes you enough money. And from that point, obviously, you just keep, you know, you you can repeat and you can go bigger and you can you can grow. That's kind of like how I really look at building anything.

• 56:04Greg Isenberg?

  Do you feel like you're free?

• 56:06Speaker 01

  Yeah, I am. Yeah, I could, I could, if I would really want to, step away anytime. Um, and live the life I, you know, have dreamed of. I think like one of the things that I'm most proud of is is right now, knowing that I have built such a strong arsenal of skills that no matter what happens, I will be able to build a successful lean business myself. That's gonna, you know, allow me to make enough money to sustain a very simple life that makes me happy. Um, and that I do with the people around me that I that I'm very proud of, you know, like when I look at

• 56:47Speaker 01

  my other half, when I look at my business partner, when I look at the team members that I work with, it's people that I know are very, very close to the values and morals that I live by. And I think that to me is ultimate wealth, you know, so all of the tools, all of the things that we've that we've talked about and everything. They're, they're, they're incredible, but I wouldn't want to do any of it or would sacrifice anything on the other side. Um, if I wouldn't have or could do it with those kinds of people, you know, and I think when you put so much pressure on it and and if you really fixate so much about, you know, wanting to go so big, I think it personally takes away the fun.

• 57:26Speaker 01

  You know, because I am, I mean, we're like, our business is doing, um, you know, like, like multiple eight figures. And I don't necessarily talk about that in my content even, like people don't even know how, you know, like how big the business actually is, you know, but the reason I don't talk about it is because I mean, like, even if it would have been, you know, six figures, it doesn't matter because it's still fun and and it's still getting the same thing done and the amount of money is not going to change my happiness. It's just, it's just a tool to do it bigger, better with probably cooler, more experienced people. Um, and just have fun, you know?

• 58:04Greg Isenberg?

  Yeah, I think, uh, one thing I learned about myself is.

• 58:11Greg Isenberg?

  Building, I can't have fun if I'm having too many meetings.

• 58:15Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 58:15Greg Isenberg?

  So I could be in the best business of all time, like with the best people, working on the coolest stuff, having the time of my life, crushing it. But if I have 25 recurring meetings in a week, and they just recur every single week, I will want to blow my brains out. And show me, show me your calendar. Like, the wealthiest people have the least amount of recurring meetings.

• 58:43Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah.

• 58:44Greg Isenberg?

  That's my hot take.

• 58:46Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. No, that's, it's, you have this, I've seen you, I've seen you tweet about it. I forgot what it's called. It's, it's something like you, you need a robot or something?

• 58:59Greg Isenberg?

  Yeah.

• 59:00Speaker 01

  Yeah, I love that so much because I feel like, you know, like, the empty calendar can also be very easily achieved by just leveraging everything that's out there, you know? And like, we're going through a big phase of that right now within the company where we're just rethinking everything, like literally everything, you know, everyone's being challenged, like, no, everyone's like waking up, it's like, okay, how can we, how can we, you know, like, make this more efficient? How can we use AI? How can we automate this? Just, just to get that calendar clear.

• 59:32Greg Isenberg?

  Daniel, we had one more idea, but we're not going to have time to do it. I'm going to flesh out that insight. I'll send it out in my newsletter. People can go and, go and check it out, gregisenberg.com. The link's in the description. Daniel, I just have a question for you before, before we end it. Should I ask people to like, like, comment and subscribe? Or should I just like, not, just like, not ask?

• 1:00:01Speaker 01

  I think, in all honesty, what I've seen, like, especially within, within like, how I've positioned myself with, within, you know, the YouTube and content creation, I feel like we're kind of entering this area, era of, of, you know, call to action kind of becoming dead, where I've like, I feel like, even throughout, like, throughout my content, like, I never like, asked necessarily anything of like, check out my business, or check this, or like, like or subscribe. I feel like... When people like it, they'll like it and they'll just, they'll just, you know, they'll do what they they should do, you know. Um, that's, that's really, really what I've seen, you know.

• 1:00:45Greg Isenberg?

  But one day, you're not gonna, in your content, you're not gonna promote a product or like, how do you, how do you think about that?

• 1:00:51Speaker 01

  I mean, I mean, like, the way I look at it, it's, it's, I promote my stuff all the time, but there's a very big difference between showing what's happening and talking about what has happened. So for me to document how we're building a brand and sharing the lessons along the way is the best form of marketing that you can ever do without, you know, making people feel like you're, you're screaming in their face or wanting to sell anything to them. You know, it's, it's, it's, it's just something that

• 1:01:26Speaker 01

  is so different, especially within, um, because it's like, it's really funny, like you mentioned, right? Like, there's, there's, there's two types of audience that listen to, to this podcast. There's one type of audience that probably has never heard of me. There's one type of audience that, you know, like, is, is heavily invested in my content.

• 1:01:47Speaker 01

  Now, like, um, anyone who watches my stuff, um, and if I were to like actively promote or like talk about things, I feel like in some extent it, it, with me building the business that I'm building, it just takes away a little bit of authenticity because my goal is not necessarily to promote these businesses to them. It's to take them through the learnings of me building these businesses where I just get to experience the upside and benefit of, of, you know, me just actually building something that they're interested in, you know? So, um, that's like how, how I like really look at my position within, within my, my brand and like my YouTube. It's like, it comes out of a place of just wanting to show and share and the exposure is there, you know?

• 1:02:32Speaker 01

  And people who want to find out, they will find out and they will click.

• 1:02:36Greg Isenberg?

  I am not going to ask people to like, comment and subscribe going further.

• 1:02:43Speaker 01

  So they, they know what to do anyway.

• 1:02:46Greg Isenberg?

  But, you know. The reality is like, I just, I'd like the comment section to be popping just because like, I want to see if the content that I'm creating is resonating with people. And that's ultimately what I care about. So that's good advice. That's good advice.

• 1:03:03Speaker 01

  I think, I think one thing that I always do is, um, yeah, like that is something that I, that I, that I do ask for is like, you know, let me know, send me a message. Yeah. Shoot, you know, shoot it through a tweet, shoot through a DM. Um, you know, those, those are things that, that I do, that I do ask for.

• 1:03:24Greg Isenberg?

  Okay. So I'm going to try this, no asking for like comments and subscribing. But I, but I will, I would love to hear your thoughts going forward, people. Daniel, I know you're not a, you don't want to promote, you know, that's not your vibe. So I'm going to promote for you. I think everyone should go and watch how, watch, watch Daniel's channel and on YouTube, follow him on Instagram. We'll include those links. Even if you're not particularly interested in, you know, Hong Kong, China, D to C e-commerce. I think the way that he's building his brand in public is, is, you know, top tier,

• 1:04:06Greg Isenberg?

  top shelf, as we say in Canada. Um, and you can learn a lot of it. So learn a lot from it. So dude, I can't thank you enough for, for the time. Uh, I just want to build a business with you, man. I don't know what it is.

• 1:04:20Speaker 01

  We should.

• 1:04:21Greg Isenberg?

  Yeah. I don't know what it is, but something.

• 1:04:27Speaker 01

  Yeah. Yeah. Well, let's make it happen, man. That's, uh, as I said, man, content compounds. Like if we put this out there and like a year from now, we've done it, that's going to be some cool stuff, man.

• 1:04:37Greg Isenberg?

  Totally. All right. Well, I'll catch you later.

• 1:04:41Speaker 01

  Thank you so much for having me, Greg. I've had a, um, I've had a really good time. It's, uh, you know, I've been, I've been following your stuff for a while as well. And, um, it's, uh, it's been super cool to just jam and talk product with you. Like, like such a pleasure. Thank you so much for having me.

• 1:04:57Greg Isenberg?

  The pleasure is all mine.

• 1:04:59Speaker 01

  Awesome.