The Step-by-Step Plan to Go From $3M to $10M+

In this episode, Ayman Al-Abdullah, former CEO of AppSumo, shares his framework for scaling businesses from seven to nine figures. The conversation focuses on the importance of customer retention, strategic hiring, and proper incentive structures. Ayman shares insights from his experience scaling AppSumo from $3M to $84M in revenue, emphasizing the transition from founder to CEO mindset. Timestamps: 00:00 - Introduction and background 02:47 - Discussion of the Nine Steps framework 08:13 - Team building and executive compensation 10:35 - The Reality of Startup Valuations 14:36 - The importance of setting a strong foundation 15:59 - Focus on Retention Before Growth 22:26 - Evaluating Opportunities and Thinking Big 29:47 - Examples of Successful Founders that Ayman admires 31:35 - The Importance of Focus in Business 33:26 - Build Skyscrapers, Not Strip-malls 36:01 - The importance of being the best in the market 37:54 - Where to double down in your business 40:22 - Testing and Investing in Business Strategies 42:05 - Identifying Bottlenecks in Your Business 44:39 - Finding Your Zone of Genius Key Points: • The "Nine Steps to Nine Figures" framework divides business growth into three phases: startup, scale-up, and grow-up • Focus on retention and customer loyalty before aggressive growth • Use the "Test Then Invest" framework with 80% resources on core business and 20% on experiments • Structure executive compensation with a 50-50 split between top-line and bottom-line metrics 1) The "Nine Steps to Nine Figures" Framework: Breaks down into 3 phases: • Startup (Product Market Fit) • Scale-up (Company Creation) • Grow-up (Legacy Protection) Most founders get this wrong from day 1... 2) RETENTION over GROWTH "Building a business without focusing on retention is like building a skyscraper on sand" Every 3% increase in net revenue retention = DOUBLES company valuation Stop chasing growth before you nail retention! 3) The 80/20 Marketing Rule: • 80% of resources on proven channels • 20% on experimental channels Real example: AppSumo tested switching from credits to cash payments for referrals → Became 8-figure revenue channel 4) The Shield vs Sword Framework for Decision Making: Rate every opportunity 1-5 on: • Impact (Sword) • Effort (Shield) Only pursue 8+/10 total score opportunities Ignore the rest - they're distractions 5) On Building Your Executive Team: Two core functions: • Sales (CRO) • Delivery (COO) Pro tip: Hire first in YOUR zone of genius Why? You'll know what excellence looks like 6) The Triple, Triple, Double, Double Path to $100M: Year 1: $3M → $9M Year 2: $9M → $27M Year 3: $27M → $54M Year 4: $54M → $108M This is how you hit 9-figures in 5 years 7) REVOLUTIONARY Compensation Framework: Forget traditional equity! Instead: • Set total comp package • Let employees choose cash vs equity split • Makes equity REAL by forcing skin in the game 8) CEO Evolution: "The founder is the hardest working person The CEO should be the laziest" Your job: Think 3-5 quarters ahead while your team executes Key Takeaway: Focus on retention first Build processes before hiring Think in 5-year blocks Execute with intention Notable Quotes: "Product market fit is when it feels like you're wearing a meat suit in a dog park - you just have more leads than you know what to do with." - Ayman "Every 3% increase in net revenue retention doubles a company's valuation." - Ayman 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 AYMAN ON SOCIAL Ayman’s Website: https://aymanalabdullah.com X/Twitter: https://x.com/aymanalabdul LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/aalab003/

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

• 0:00Speaker 00

  Most people have maybe five years of dedicated, focused, obsessive energy to put into their business. So how do we, what do we do in five years in order to have a hundred million dollar business? You're familiar with the triple, triple, double, double? So for the, no, so, okay. Oh, yeah.

• 0:15Greg Isenberg?

  I'm Canadian. A triple, triple, double, double to me sounds like you want coffee with three creams and three.

• 0:21Speaker 00

  It's like a Tim, it's a Tim Hortons.

• 0:23Greg Isenberg?

  It's a Tim Hortons order. I'm like, yeah, I am familiar with the triple, triple, double, double.

• 0:27Speaker 00

  So the triple, triple, for those that aren't familiar, is how do we triple our revenue three times and then double our revenue twice? So you have a three million dollar business, you go from three to nine, nine to 27, then we double from 27 to 54, and then from 54 to 108. So in five years, you can have a three million dollar business go to a hundred and eight billion dollar business. At that point, you've got all the optionality in the world. If you want to have a hundred million dollar exit, if you want to keep growing, you've probably end up dominating. And so.

• 1:03Greg Isenberg?

  We are live. So, Aman, I was going through my contact book and I was like, who is the person with the least amount of startup ideas that I know? And I invited you on the pod. You know why I did that?

• 1:22Speaker 00

  What an introduction, Greg. Really appreciate it.

• 1:26Greg Isenberg?

  There you have it.

• 1:27Speaker 00

  Wrap it up. We're done.

• 1:28Greg Isenberg?

  Yeah, we're done. Pod's done. So Aman is the guy I call when I'm trying to figure out how to scale whatever it is I'm doing. So on this podcast, we talk a lot about the zero to one phase, how you build a startup, ideas on how to build a startup. But what we don't really talk about is, okay, you've got a thing that's going, it's doing 100K a month, 500K a month, whatever it is, how do I scale that business? And you've done that, you know, AppSumo, you took it from.

• 2:02Speaker 00

  Three to 84.

• 2:03Greg Isenberg?

  Three million to 84 million.

• 2:06Greg Isenberg?

  And I was hoping today, what we can accomplish is, is just giving people tactics on how they could scale whatever it is they're working on.

• 2:15Speaker 00

  Love it. Awesome. Yeah, I think you and I were talking and jamming last night at dinner. I am, I'm terrible at the startup phase. The zero to one is just not my jam. And I hate the grow up phase, which is north of a hundred million. But that scale up phase, that mid seven figures to a hundred million, like that's my sweet spot. That's my zone of genius. That's really what I enjoy. And so really looking forward to jamming on that today.

• 2:35Greg Isenberg?

  So you've got this framework. I really like that. I need people to understand. You know what I'm about to say?

• 2:41Speaker 00

  No, I have no idea.

• 2:42Greg Isenberg?

  The nine figures.

• 2:44Speaker 00

  Nine steps, nine figures.

• 2:45Greg Isenberg?

  Nine steps, nine figures.

• 2:46Speaker 00

  That's right.

• 2:47Greg Isenberg?

  So walk me through that.

• 2:50Speaker 00

  So most founders deeply misunderstand what it takes to scale a business beyond seven figures. You have to transition from being a product led founder to now one where you're building a company. And the nine steps, nine figures essentially goes through three phases. The first phase is startup. That's everything getting to product market fit. The second phase is scale up, which is really around company creation. And then the last phase is around legacy protection, which is grow up. So startup, scale up, grow up. It's three separate phases that completely changes the way you run the company. The startup is really around product market fit, which is persona. Who am I selling to? Every single business should start with market. I love your ATM framework. We should go deeper into that. Then it's, well, what am I selling to that market? And then lastly is how am I selling at scale, which is promotion?

• 3:34Speaker 00

  Once we figure that out, and that's typically around mid seven figures, I'll tell people that this is the equivalent of, you know, you've hit product market fit when it feels like you're wearing a meat suit in a dog park. Like you just have more leads than you know what to do with. And that's oftentimes when founders really struggle and they don't know what to do next. And that's oftentimes when they reach out to me, which really the second phase was the scale up.

• 3:55Greg Isenberg?

  So I want to cover more about the nine steps to nine figures because I want nine steps to nine figures.

• 4:05Greg Isenberg?

  And I think others do too. What else, what else can we, we talk more about that?

• 4:10Speaker 00

  Yeah. I mean, when we, when we think about goal planning, most people have maybe five years of dedicated, focused, obsessive energy to put into their business. So how do we, what do we do in five years in order to have a hundred million dollar business? You're familiar with the triple, triple, double, double? So for the, no, so, okay. Oh, yeah.

• 4:29Greg Isenberg?

  I'm Canadian. A triple, triple, double, double to me sounds like you want coffee with three creams and three.

• 4:35Speaker 00

  It's like a Tim, it's a Tim Hortons.

• 4:36Greg Isenberg?

  It's a Tim Hortons. I'm like, yeah, yeah, I am familiar with the triple, triple, double, double.

• 4:41Speaker 00

  So the triple trip, for those that aren't familiar, is how do we triple our revenue three times and then double our revenue twice? So you have a three million dollar business, you go from three to nine, nine to 27, then we double from 27 to 54, and then from 54 to 108. So in five years, you can have a three million dollar business go to a hundred and eight million dollar business. At that point, you've got all the options out in the world. If you want to have a hundred million dollar exit, if you want to keep growing, you've probably end up dominating. And so when we think about the triple, triple, double, double, this is where we go, how am I enabling us to triple? And so we go back to, is the sales or delivery? Do I have enough leads in order to triple this year? If I don't, then I have

• 5:24Speaker 00

  probably a bottleneck in sales. If I did have enough leads, if I have a waiting list, or I could, I'm not sending enough tweets because my team is struggling, then it's my job to think about the next phase, which is the scale up phase. Scale up is process people performance. Oftentimes, I got a lot of advice when I was, you know, running seven, absolutely about seven million, 10 million, they're like, it's people first, it's people first, you got to think about people. And what I ended up realizing is like, that's actually bull. It's not people first. In fact, nobody wants to run a business that's full of people, that's bureaucratic, it's like the DMV. What, what's way more fun is actually building

• 6:05Speaker 00

  a business that's highly optimized, highly automated, almost always software driven, now with AI, I wish I had AI back then. Leveraging AI and you have a handful of A players that are super fun to be around. Like that's, I mean, Golden Eye was built with like 12 people, like the greatest game of all time. Like if, if you don't need more than 12 people. So like, if we can build Golden Eye with 12, like what makes you think that your, your logo studio needs 60?

• 6:32Greg Isenberg?

  And that was back then, right?

• 6:34Speaker 00

  That was back then, yeah. So it's like, let's just get a handful of incredible people, surround ourselves, be obsessive about this and get that triple, triple, double, double. So process people, and then once you've got those two, then it becomes your job to manage performance. So what does performance mean? Imagine you're Bill Belichick or a world-class coach. And now imagine your team in the middle of a game, you shut off the scoreboard. LeBron James would have no clue what to do. Like, how am I going to help you win this game? So it's your job to give your team the scoreboard, to give them the incentives, to give them the compensation package, and it's your job to sit on the sideline and draw up the next play.

• 7:11Greg 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 want to 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 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.

• 7:55Greg Isenberg?

  So you can check out the link to startupempire.co in the description.

• 8:02Greg Isenberg?

  You know, Charlie Munger, "Show me the incentive, I'll show you the outcome." Obviously, perfect quote.

• 8:08Speaker 00

  So good.

• 8:08Greg Isenberg?

  So good.

• 8:12Greg Isenberg?

  Again, it's one of those things where it's, I agree, but how do I do it? How do you structure?

• 8:22Greg Isenberg?

  How do you structure incentive programs for partners, VPs? That that work for them, but also work for you?

• 8:30Speaker 00

  Yeah. So let's use COO. So let's say you hire a COO. The biggest mistake that I see CEOs will do is they go, well, profit's really important, so we're going to incentivize you on profit. Because that's what I care about. I care about cash in the bank. So guess what they do? They create a bonus structure on profit. And what they end up realizing is the COO all year, all they care about is cost cutting. All they care about is, oh, I found, I found us. We were able to transition from Upwork to Fiverr. It's like, oh, my God. This is not what we're trying to do. Or I was able to fire this, this team, or is able to save us money on this rent. And they're not thinking about growth at all. And so then what do they do the opposite? Oh, so the following year, guess what? I'm going to do it on revenue.

• 9:15Speaker 00

  So we're going to incentivize on revenue. Well, what ends up happening? I hired 40 salespeople. I spent all this money on, on advertising that made no money. And so then you end up having an individual that, yes, you doubled revenue, but now we made less than half the money at the previous year. So we work twice as hard for half the money. So to me, the ideal structure is a 50 50 split. So you get 50% of your bonus on top line and 50% of your bonus on bottom line. So what ends up happening is now you have founder alignment. You have an individual that's thinking about both top line growth and bottom line profitability. And so if I have 100,000 on top line and 100,000 in bottom line in terms of my bonus structure, then all of a sudden, I don't mind dropping down a little bit of profitability if it results in a top line increase.

• 10:00Speaker 00

  But what I won't do is I won't drop my profitability if I end up with just flat revenue growth. Or I won't just grow top line if my profitability drops as well. I'm thinking about both of these together. And the second you do that, I mean, this is a very simplistic comp structure. And it's one that we can get across in a podcast, but that's infinitely better than just focusing on one of those other two.

• 10:21Greg Isenberg?

  So. I sound old, but you know, in my generation of startups, a lot of us got equity in Silicon Valley, venture-backed startups, on paper, we're millionaires. Companies raise billions of dollars and you even see, you know, front page of TechCrunch, wow, this company sells for a billion dollars, but they had 1.4 billion in prep stack, employees get zero. I think that there's a lot of us who are now in our 30s and 40s, who are kind of like, yeah, that equity of venture-backed startups, hmm, I'd rather profit sharing or a bonus structure. And I think that's going to be a trend that's only going to accelerate.

• 11:02Speaker 00

  Totally.

• 11:02Greg Isenberg?

  So if I'm trying to incentivize, you know, people I'm working with, how do I think about equity versus straight up cash?

• 11:13Speaker 00

  Yeah. This is really tough. So number one, Harvard did a study where they actually found no marked increase in performance when they handed equity to individuals. And I actually found the same thing to be true. Because the issue is, most employees, even the most sophisticated ones, don't know how to value equity. They're like, what is, what are these 10,000 RSUs? I have no idea what these mean. I have no idea how it measures. So the only way that I think about, if you were to do equity, I personally don't do equity, but if you were to do equity, is we start with, here's your total compensation package. Let's say we hire a VP of Revenue at 400,000 a year. Your total comp package is 400K.

• 11:55Speaker 00

  Your base, I like to keep the base as low as possible. So let's say we do 100K for base. So 100K base. So that means you have 300K and you get to decide how much of that is going to be cash bonus versus equity. And they're like, oh, now all of a sudden, they start to like, do the math, like, oh, do I actually want to invest 100K into this business? Now all of a sudden, that equity means something to them. And so they have to make a decision, oh, I want to invest 100K in this business. Well, guess what? Now they understand the math. If you invest 100K based on today's 409A valuation, this is how many RSUs you get. And now all of a sudden, they're like, oh, this is like buying Nvidia stock. Yes, it's exactly buying Nvidia stock, except this company is not public

• 12:40Speaker 00

  and we're not able to trade it. You will get that exit in the future.

• 12:44Greg Isenberg?

  You may get that exit.

• 12:45Speaker 00

  You may get it. It's a lottery ticket. So I have no problem with them going, you know what? Cash is actually more important to me. I want all 300K in cash. Some of them go, you know what? Give it to me 250 50. Some of them are like, you know what? I'm very bullish on this company and I don't need the cash. I've already had an exit. Give it to me all in stock. But now they have to make a decision rather than me handing, here's 10,000 RSUs that gets slammed into a shoebox, never to be seen again. And then they ask me every year, how come I'm not getting a raise? Well, you get a raise, like your raise is effective when you are. Right? Like when we exit, then you're going to get a raise. And so the problem that you have with most equity structures is the employee doesn't know how to structure it. They don't know how to value it. And as a result, the founder gives up so much and gets nothing in return.

• 13:27Greg Isenberg?

  What's cool about that model is let's say you get 250K for the employee to say like, I can invest this. All of a sudden, if they do invest it, they're actually invested versus getting this like phantom equity, basically like, let's be real, no one's logging into their card and being like, I got 1632 RSUs vested to me today.

• 13:50Speaker 00

  That's right.

• 13:50Greg Isenberg?

  You know, but you definitely are opening up your Chase app or you're getting a push notification from Bank of America. That's like, oh, wow, I got a hundred thousand dollars deposited in my bank account today. This is dope. I've got some swagger in my step. No one gets swagger from 1600 RSUs on card.

• 14:06Speaker 00

  No one.

• 14:06Greg Isenberg?

  It's just not happening.

• 14:07Speaker 00

  No, not at all. 100%. I, to me, that's the only way that I've seen that it actually works and creates founder employee alignment is when now there's some skin in the game. You have made a decision. You're not gifted this equity. You've made a decision to invest in the company.

• 14:21Greg Isenberg?

  Yeah. I like that. I just have to say this because a lot of people are going to be listening to this and they're going to be like, I'll worry about all that stuff later.

• 14:33Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 14:34Greg Isenberg?

  You know what I mean? Like they're, they're going to be like, Steve Jobs was never thinking about all that stuff. Are they wrong?

• 14:42Speaker 00

  So the problem that I see a lot of founders is if they ignore this stuff now in the beginning, what ends up happening is that the equivalent of building a skyscraper on a sandy foundation. We know what happened with that building down the street. And so what ends up happening is when you ignore that, you've probably seen this a lot in agency world.

• 14:59Greg Isenberg?

  By the way, spoiler alert, the building down the street collapsed.

• 15:03Speaker 00

  Yeah, exactly. And I see this happen all the time where these companies will scale to mid seven figures and they fail to think about the fundamentals. And all of a sudden churn starts to rear its ugly head. Competition starts to come in and all of a sudden they realize like, oh, we're building floors on top of a very sandy foundation. And all of a sudden around mid seven figures, the founder is burnt out. They try to push more in order to grow and they're like, you know what? I'm done and they either exit or they burn out and the company falls apart. And so if you ignore this in the beginning, it becomes really, really difficult in order for you to scale over time. So I do, I do think even if you are still early phase, I think this episode is really important because it's a preview of what's to come once you are successful.

• 15:45Greg Isenberg?

  I think the, you said a really important word churn.

• 15:49Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 15:50Greg Isenberg?

  Like, I feel like a lot of people from this, you know, listen to the show, come steal an idea, they're doing a hundred K a month, they're feeling like they're on top of the world. And then churn just gets worse and worse. How do you think about churn? And how do you, like, is there a scientific way to combat churn?

• 16:14Speaker 00

  So I think when you, it's kind of like when you're riding a motorcycle, what is the first thing they teach you is like, don't look at the wall. And I think that oftentimes the, the big four letter word in startup ecosystem is churn. And I think the problem is when you think about churn as your main focus, it ends up thinking about the opposite, which is actually what you really should be thinking about, which is loyalty. So loyalty is, the way I measure it is net revenue retention, which is not just how do we avoid churn, rather, how do we get more loyalty from each existing cohort? Every 3% increase in net revenue retention doubles the company's valuation.

• 16:49Greg Isenberg?

  Okay, can you define net revenue?

• 16:51Speaker 00

  So for a singular cohort, so let's say January, all of your customers in January, if you have 10% monthly churn, that means in February, they will spend 90% of what they spent in January. That's 10% churn. The opposite of net revenue retention, or the opposite is net revenue retention, which means that that cohort actually spends more with you in February than they did in January. A good example of that is like Slack. You sign up relentlessly to Slack, and then you pay for it, and then all of a sudden, well, you add more contractors, you add more features. And so in January to February, you start spending more as your usage increases. You've created loyalty. AWS is another example. Snowflake is probably the best, the company that's doing the best right now.

• 17:34Speaker 00

  And if you can think about net revenue retention more than anything else, that singular KPI, more than any other KPI, is going to drastically increase your company's valuation. It's going to make it much easier for you to grow your business over time, and it's going to make it much easier for you to exit five, 10 years down the road when you're ready to move on to your next thing.

• 17:51Greg Isenberg?

  So when you're doing zero to one, should you be focused on that revenue retention? Or like, what are the things that you should be focusing on zero to one versus when you're scaling?

• 18:00Speaker 00

  I think the biggest mistake that a lot of founders make is they try to jump right into growth before they think about retention. I think it's so much easier to grow a business when you have incredible customer loyalty, and then you're able to then throw gasoline on that fire. I think a lot of founders make the mistake of going, "Well, we've got something that's kind of break even. Let's just go and market it like crazy, and eventually we'll grow." What ends up happening? You have massive churn. It's hard to profitably grow. As we know, acquiring customers becomes harder and harder every single month. I think Sam Par mentions, like, growing on these platforms is like buying real estate, beachfront, but rent goes up every 18 months. So it becomes harder and harder.

• 18:44Speaker 00

  And so I do think you need to focus on retention upfront, first and foremost, before you ever worry about promotion. So I do think it's important.

• 18:52Greg Isenberg?

  Yeah, I think it's like... You wouldn't go, you wouldn't build a leaky ship, right? You don't want a leaky ship because even if you start getting 10, 15, 25 K of revenue, if it's going to go away in six months, like you do the math, what's the point, right? So I feel like the mistake a lot of people make is they put all their product energy, iterations, product velocity into how do I grow this thing as big as possible?

• 19:23Greg Isenberg?

  I'll figure out retention later.

• 19:24Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 19:24Greg Isenberg?

  Where it's like, hmm, probably not the move. Maybe you keep it tight, small, have less revenue, but your retention is higher.

• 19:34Speaker 00

  Well, oftentimes your first handful of customers are the ones that are the most loyal. They're coming to you because they have the biggest pain point. And so that feedback loop, that iteration can be a lot tighter with your first 10, 15, 20, 100 customers versus your first 10,000. And so it's so much better for you to nail that upfront, develop the brand equity before you start throwing that gasoline on the fire. I've seen way more success when you've nailed retention, when you've nailed loyalty upfront. That's why you start creating a movement. That's how you start getting individuals wanting to stick around forever versus like the companies that are a flash in the pan, they're amazing one year, and then you don't see them ever again.

• 20:12Greg Isenberg?

  So someone's going to be listening to this and they're going to be like, cool, you know, I'll focus on retention, but I still need to grow. Like I've got VCs that I gotta impress. I want to, you know, I, and honestly, it feels good to grow.

• 20:26Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 20:27Greg Isenberg?

  You know, it just, it's fun to wake up every morning and see your dashboard go up, not just retention go up. How do you think about growth channels, paid versus organic? How do you think about, you know, should I go international or not? Walk us through how you think about growth tactics. Once you're, you know, you're figuring out retention over here, but you know, you still want to grow.

• 20:51Speaker 00

  Totally. Well, I mean, the beautiful thing about retention, if you've priced things properly, you are actually still going to grow because if you think about that net revenue retention number, if you have a certain cohort of customers, month over month, your revenue overall is going to grow. It may not be growing as fast as you want it to because you're not accelerating that promotion strategy, but you're still going to be experiencing growth month over month. That's how you know you figured it out. In terms of your portfolio approach for. Marketing as an example, I like to think about it like an investment thesis. I know you're not 100% in crypto. You're probably not even 100% in cash. There's probably a medley between that, right? And I think the same thing is true when you're thinking about your marketing channels. 80% should be in index funds.

• 21:35Speaker 00

  80% should be in the stuff that you know is going to produce that consistent year-over-year results. So your number one marketing channel should be getting 80% of your investments. But that 20% should be thinking about, well, what's next? What has the potential to be a rocket ship? What is my next Nvidia? What is my next Bitcoin? And so with 20% of your allocation, which includes your money, your people, that's where you should be thinking about, well, what is the next marketing channel? So that way you're not beholden or stuck. If one channel ends up falling apart and cratering, you've got a second backup channel that could easily recoup and make up the first channel if for whatever reason that first channel ends up stopping working for you.

• 22:14Greg Isenberg?

  Okay, can I be selfish for a minute?

• 22:15Speaker 00

  Of course.

• 22:16Greg Isenberg?

  So right before we hit record on this pod, I got a text message kind of out of the blue. I'll let you read it.

• 22:31Speaker 00

  All right.

• 22:33Greg Isenberg?

  It's just at the end.

• 22:34Speaker 00

  Right at the end. So the question is, let's buy biz with 50-plus million revenue together this year? That's the new year intention.

• 22:41Greg Isenberg?

  Just out of the blue, I get this text from this guy saying he wants to build a 50 million, he wants us to partner up and buy a $50 million a year revenue business together. And last night, we were at dinner and with a bunch of friends. And you asked me, well, what my superpower is? And the second question was, what do you hope?

• 23:13Greg Isenberg?

  What do you need help for? What was the second question?

• 23:15Speaker 00

  Yeah, so the two questions are, what's your superpower? What can you help everyone else in the group? And then number two is, what's one thing you need help with?

• 23:22Greg Isenberg?

  Right, and I said, you remember what I said?

• 23:26Speaker 00

  You want to say it?

• 23:27Greg Isenberg?

  Think big, thinking big. And so I said that last night. All of a sudden now, I'm getting this text message where someone is pushing me to think big about a strategic acquisition in a 50 million dollar revenue thing might be an acquisition of 150 million dollars. Right, this is really outside my comfort zone.

• 23:49Greg Isenberg?

  I would like to know when,

• 23:54Greg Isenberg?

  how do you think about, how should I think about acquisitions? If you were me? And then, so that's just like strategically? And then on the personal side, like, how do I, how do I get my comfort level to be like, yeah, I can make that, you know, that big bet, right? It never feels really good when you're making a big bet. At least for me, you know, it never feels good to, to me, like, I've got a really good thing going, right? When you have a really good thing going, it's hard, you know, you don't want to mess it up.

• 24:33Speaker 00

  Totally.

• 24:33Greg Isenberg?

  So what advice do you have for me?

• 24:35Speaker 00

  So one of the most important things that a CEO should be really good at is making decisions. And one of the main frameworks that I use for decision making is, I call it the shield versus sword, which is, how much effort is this acquisition going to take? Versus what is the potential impact that it has on my business? So it's this impact versus effort matrix that's super important. I'm always thinking about, what is something that is super easy for me to do? That's going to have a massive impact on my portfolio or on my business? When I'm looking for massive impact with low effort, those are the low hanging fruits. I'm always going to be optimizing for those things. They don't require a lot of shield, they don't require a lot of sword. They're super low hanging fruit.

• 25:19Speaker 00

  And I'll typically rank these, one to five. How much effort is this going to take? And then how much impact is this going to have in my business? And I'm looking for 10 out of 10 ideas. I want five in terms of effort and five in terms of impact. Because it's super easy to do and it's going to have a massive impact on my business. For me, something like this, just gut feel, while it's going to have a massive impact, right? If it's done well. What's the effort? That's probably a one out of five. So that's really only a six out of 10 in terms of my, is there eight out of 10 ideas, 10 out of 10 ideas? Oftentimes founders love to go after the new thing, the shiny object syndrome, and they completely ignore the amount of 10 out of 10 ideas that are in their existing business. And so for something like that, if I'm working with a founder,

• 26:04Speaker 00

  I'm gonna, I'm gonna hit pause. I'm gonna be like, you know what? Is that actually the best thing that we should be doing strategically for this year? Or is there something else inside of your own portfolio? It's actually worth a way higher ROI.

• 26:14Greg Isenberg?

  Is it worth, so you know, the one on 10 that, the one on five that you're giving the effort?

• 26:20Speaker 00

  Yep.

• 26:21Greg Isenberg?

  Is it, is it worth being like, is there a world where I can make this a five on five?

• 26:26Speaker 00

  Totally.

• 26:26Greg Isenberg?

  Or should I give up on that idea right now? Or?

• 26:30Speaker 00

  Well, here's the thing. If you give up the effort, let's say, hey, I'm happy to do it, but I'm only gonna do 10K of an investment and I don't want to be on the board. I don't want any advice. I'm not going to promote it at all. Well, you're also reducing the impact because you're not going to get as much equity. You're not going to get as much impact as a result of it. And so you have to throttle how much effort it's going to require in order to do this with the impact that's going to require. So of course, who wouldn't love a 1,000 out of 1,000 impact for a zero effort? It's like, if you could just respond, yeah, let's do it. Here's a hundred bucks and you're gonna get a $50,000 equity stake. Of course, it'd be amazing, but that's not the case in most scenarios. And so you do have to adequately rank these things.

• 27:13Speaker 00

  And then more importantly, you have to rank it compared to all of your other opportunities. Someone like you, Greg, you've got hundreds, maybe, you know, thousands of ideas sitting in your DMs, sitting in your brain. I know how your brain works. You've got tons of ideas, even with your existing businesses. How does this rank compared to everything else?

• 27:31Greg Isenberg?

  Yeah, it's kind of one of those things where everyone else is trying to get you to do their idea, right?

• 27:38Speaker 00

  A hundred percent.

• 27:39Greg Isenberg?

  And you kind of have to block out everyone else.

• 27:47Greg Isenberg?

  For a second, we're recording this in January 2025. Like January is such a good time. Honestly, February is such a good time. Like the first quarter, 20, you know, the first quarter of the year is a good time to be like, okay, what do I, what's important to me? What are the, what are the most impactful things I could do? And then you can start tuning people in. Once you figure that out.

• 28:11Speaker 00

  That's right. Yeah. Look, there's, it's not that you don't want those ideas. I mean, it's amazing that they're coming into your ecosystem, but it becomes so easy for them to become distractions and noise. If you don't have a framework for how does this fit into my strategy? How does this fit into all of the other ideas that I have? I guarantee you, your team has probably some incredible ideas. Maybe there's a company worth acquiring that you want to fold into the overall portfolio. How does that acquisition fit into the ecosystem? Because you got to remember, okay, let's just go through. Oftentimes people are like, oh, just buy a $50 million company. Which $50 million company? What are the financials? How much effort is it going to require? How much due diligence? Is it going to be an 18 month process? It could fall apart at the last minute.

• 28:55Speaker 00

  So now I'm doing a 10 out of 10 effort and I have yet to see a dollar of impact.

• 28:59Greg Isenberg?

  It most likely will fall apart last night.

• 29:01Speaker 00

  100%.

• 29:02Greg Isenberg?

  Right?

• 29:02Speaker 00

  And then once I've actually signed the paper and we're able to pop the champagne, well, guess what? Now the real work starts. Cause now we have to grow this thing, right? It's already hit 150 million. Guess what? If things were growing and going well, I guarantee you that founder is not willing to sell. And so there's probably going to be some things that need to get fixed. There's probably going to be some churn issues, right? We've got to make sure that we're not buying a skyscraper that's about to collapse in on itself, which I see all the time. So yeah, no, thanks, but no thanks.

• 29:34Greg Isenberg?

  Who's a founder that you look up to that is doing like a lot of the right things that people can model themselves after?

• 29:44Speaker 00

  I mean, to me, I've been going deep down James Sinagal, founder of Costco. I know he's bigger than most, but I love the focus. I love the pricing and strategy model. I love that he gave back to the next generation of entrepreneurs. Like, he famously coached Jeff Bezos, which is where the Amazon Prime idea came from for the membership. So it's not someone that just focused on pricing and modeling, but he's also giving back to the next generation of entrepreneurs. So that's someone that, you know, maybe from like a tier one founder is someone that I'm admiring, someone that I'm admiring right now, that's, you know, just working on a lot of like really cool things. Honestly, like I'm, I enjoy watching like Nathalie Son just tinker and come up with ideas.

• 30:26Speaker 00

  And he's got an audience right now. I saw him just launch an AI course two days ago, just because of his audience being like, yeah, this is cool. So I like seeing what he's doing. You know, Marshall just exited somewhere.com. I love his tinkering philosophy.

• 30:42Greg Isenberg?

  What's his tinkering philosophy?

• 30:44Speaker 00

  I mean, it's funny. He had Peel and then he ended up using that to start somewhere. And he used that to, and ended up just selling that for 50 plus million dollars. And now he's moving 12 minutes down the street from me. So I'm super excited for us to be hanging. I love seeing him just figure out, hey, like where are my cure, like, doesn't seem very monetarily driven, where I think over the last four years, the amount of people that chased the latest NFT project, the latest crypto project versus like, how do I just scratch my own itch and then sell that solution to others?

• 31:16Greg Isenberg?

  Isn't, isn't Marshall, didn't he create a few products and one of them kind of hit? And I know you're a focus guy, you know, whenever, whenever I'm telling you I'm working on like a bunch of projects, I'm like, oh my God, oh my God, he's, I know what he's thinking. I know what he's thinking. Focus, Greg, focus. So how should people think about, you know, a lot of people are into product studios now, launching multiple products. I call them multi, multi, multipreneurs. How should people think about? You know, having multiple cash flowing businesses doesn't work. What are your thoughts?

• 31:54Speaker 00

  So this goes back to what we were talking about in the beginning of this conversation, which is, are you a founder or are you a CEO? And founders found, builders build. And if you know this is your zone of genius, this is actually the most valuable part of the overall value chain. If you can get something, if you can discover flight, like that more than anything else is the most valuable part of the overall ecosystem. The problem that most founders have is they discover flight and then they abandon it to go start the next thing, right? They spend 2,000 years discovering flight and then they go, okay, well, like, let me go build, let me go invent the helicopter. Or it's like, the last hundred years is actually where the exciting parts of flight happened. So you have to hand off the baton. You have to successfully hand off the baton.

• 32:35Speaker 00

  And so if, if you have discovered flight, mid seven figures, your only job right now is go, am I the right CEO for the next phase of growth? And if not, the only thing you should be doing is either hiring a COO or a president to execute on your vision, or recognize this is actually not a business I'm very passionate about, and hire a CEO to take your vision to the next level. Once you do that, go back to tinker mode, because that's actually way more valuable for your skillset. But the problem that most founders face is they go right back to tinker mode when the first thing still is a spinning plate and ends up crashing, failing, and now they have nothing to show for all that hard work.

• 33:14Greg Isenberg?

  The founder of Costco, what's his name again?

• 33:16Speaker 00

  James Senegal.

• 33:17Greg Isenberg?

  James, so if you think about Costco, Costco, the only thing, the only expansion that they've done is expand internationally, right? They, they haven't really changed their model that much. And when I hear you talk, I'm like, that's what I want to be doing too, right? Like, I want to be, I call it building skyscrapers, not strip malls. So have a, you know, you have a business and it's starting to work, but then it's like, how can I expand upon it versus creating new business units? I think that's the mistake a lot of people make when they're building these product studios.

• 33:58Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 33:59Greg Isenberg?

  I mean, they're not like James.

• 34:01Speaker 00

  Well, let's use AppSumo as an example. When I joined AppSumo, we were selling everything from eBooks to fonts to digital courses to software. The way we build skyscrapers instead of strip malls is we then analyze the portfolio and we go, well, which thing is selling the most? How do we get more customer loyalty? And software was outselling all of the other ecosystems by 10x. So why? What's going on there? We realized if we dive deeper, marketing agencies were our most profitable customer segment and they were buying software to reduce their monthly spend on software. So let's just do more of that. We go way deeper with them. We build way more customer loyalty. We tripled our customer lifetime value. That alone, all things being equal, tripled our business.

• 34:46Speaker 00

  And so when we talk about how do I go deeper? Yes, you know, James Sinagal expanded only internationally, but I would argue each opening of a new Costco was an expansion. It's a new market. Each time someone walked in and bought a membership, that was deeper, deeper loyalty with that customer base. Each time they reinvested profits to lower pricing and increased their buying power, they were building more customer loyalty and they were going deeper and deeper with each market, each store. And that's why they are the most profitable per square inch of any retail facility in the United States.

• 35:20Greg Isenberg?

  It takes a lot of courage to focus. You know what I mean?

• 35:24Speaker 00

  It does.

• 35:25Greg Isenberg?

  I feel like you really have to believe that if you execute on this vision and you expand on this vision, that.

• 35:36Greg Isenberg?

  You'll win that market and in a world where the AI makes buildings so, so simple, I feel like, yeah, it takes courage.

• 35:49Speaker 00

  Greg, who's the fastest man on earth?

• 35:53Greg Isenberg?

  The fastest man on earth? I don't know, dude.

• 35:56Speaker 00

  You say, you know, Usain Bolt?

• 35:58Greg Isenberg?

  I know the name. Is he the fastest man on earth?

• 36:00Speaker 00

  I mean, he could be, right? Like, I mean, when you say-

• 36:02Greg Isenberg?

  Top, top.

• 36:03Speaker 00

  Top, top.

• 36:04Greg Isenberg?

  Yeah.

• 36:04Speaker 00

  Point one.

• 36:05Greg Isenberg?

  Exactly.

• 36:05Speaker 00

  Who's, who's second?

• 36:09Greg Isenberg?

  Lord knows.

• 36:09Speaker 00

  Yeah, who, who knows? And that's the, when you look at most markets, they only care about the winner. Like, they only care about the gold medalist. And so if you're not going, if you enter a market, you have to ask yourself, can I be the gold medalist in this scenario? Can I be number one in this scenario? Because when you take a look at where the market will flow, nine, 99.9% of the, of the actual rewards will only go to the best in the market.

• 36:35Greg Isenberg?

  Is that, is that true even with non venture backed businesses?

• 36:38Speaker 00

  It's true for any business. When you ask yourself, who is the best in the world at anything? That's where the majority of the value is going to go. And so you shouldn't enter any market that you're not going to be the best in. By the way, markets are broad and can be sliced up. So Amazon is the best, let's say for two day shipping, but Target's the best for an in-person experience. And so you have to ask yourself, well, in what arena are we competing in? And can we be the best in it? Because if not, you're going to end up being a Sears where they're not good at anything and they end up going bankrupt. And so before you enter a market or before you decide to focus, you have to ask, is this something even worth focusing in? Is this something that I'm uniquely qualified for? Can I be the best in the world in? And if yes, if this is something you want to dedicate your life to, you think you can

• 37:23Speaker 00

  be the best in the world in, or at least for five years. If you can focus for five years, you can have a hundred million dollar business and have life, a life-changing exit. Once you do that, then you can do whatever you want. Once you're an exited founder with a nine-figure exit, you can do whatever you want because all of a sudden those business ideas, those texts are going to come to you.

• 37:42Greg Isenberg?

  Okay, so, you know, Aiman, tell me, tell me a story of, you know. Hyper niching and relentless focus.

• 37:51Speaker 00

  Yeah. Well, going back to the nine steps, nine figures, the very first step is persona. I think deeply understanding who you sell to, who loves you, who do you love back? Who's sending you referrals is probably the most critical question that any startup can ask itself. And we, we ask ourselves that question every year. And what we do is we analyze our customer data. We, we look at, are there any trends with our top 10, top 100 customers? And for us, 2017, we analyzed that customer data and we realized, oh, wow. Over 80% of our top customers are marketing agencies. So we branded, and I like alliteration, so we called it Marketing Agency Matt. And ironically, there was an actual Marketing Agency Matt on our list.

• 38:34Speaker 00

  And we go, why is Marketing Agency Matt coming to AppSumo? They're coming to AppSumo because they're spending monthly on expensive on software. But as an agency, as you know, revenue is feast or famine. You might have 40% churn in one month, but your expenses stay the same. And so they're coming to AppSumo to, to reduce their monthly expenses on software. So at the time, we were maybe doing one software deal a quarter because they're hard to do, hard to negotiate. I go, what would happen if we did one a month? So we tried that for the following quarter as an experiment. One of our frameworks is called test then invest. And we tried that and guess what? I, revenue went up. And I'm like, well, what would happen if we did two a month, three a month, four a month?

• 39:18Speaker 00

  And every quarter, we kept increasing it to the point where now we were launching, got to the point where we were launching one software lifetime deal every single day. So 30 a month. And of course, when you're selling more of what your ideal customer wants, what ends up happening? Not only does your ideal customer start coming to you with more loyalty, they start referring to you more in the communities that they serve. But guess what? Even solopreneur Sally, Enterprise and Ethan, the other customers that we were quote unquote ignoring, they benefit because now we can negotiate better deals because we're able to drive more revenue to the founders of those software deals. And so all things being equal, our customer lifetime value overall went up. Our customer acquisition costs were slashed.

• 40:03Speaker 00

  Every single KPI in the business went up and to the right. And all things being equal, our business tripled.

• 40:09Greg Isenberg?

  So testing, like, how should, how should people think about how many of these test and invests? That, you know, should they be running a year or a month? Or how to think about it?

• 40:19Speaker 00

  Eighty, twenty. So 20% of your money, time and energy should be spent on these experiments. I'll give you a good example. We would, we would think about a hypothesis. One of my hypotheses in 2018 was if the, the number one way we acquire customers is through referrals. So people sharing their referral link. Would they share more if we paid them instead of giving them credits? So basically an affiliate model. And so we literally with our top 1,000 shares emailed them and go, hey, for the month of October, if you share, use your share link, we will pay you via PayPal instead of with AppSumo credits. By the way, Greg, completely manual. We were literally logging, it was literally a spreadsheet and I manually PayPal each individual.

• 41:04Speaker 00

  And I look at the data and it was a marketed increase month over month. That alone was enough for me to invest into proper software, proper tracking software, and actually launch our affiliate program in the following year. Today, that, that, that revenue channel does multiple eight figures in revenue for AppSumo. And so when you're thinking about testing and investing, your core team should probably be focused on what's working. So for us at the time was email, was email was our number one channel. Don't distract your core team. It's now your job. The founder's job is to look and dig for oil and then hire to scale it. So it's the founder's job to discover revenue. And I think this is one of the biggest mistakes that founders make is they hire to discover revenue.

• 41:49Speaker 00

  What you need to do is hire to scale revenue because it's your responsibility to discover it.

• 41:53Greg Isenberg?

  I want to talk about team for a little bit. So we've got an executive team. You know, I think we're doing a good job. I don't know what, you know, I'm trying to figure out, how can I take my executive team to the next level? How do I identify holes and places where we can double down?

• 42:12Greg Isenberg?

  How should I be doing that?

• 42:14Speaker 00

  So there's only two core functions of every business, sales and delivery. You first and foremost need to ask yourself, where is the bottleneck? Meaning, do I have a bottleneck in sales? Meaning, is there not enough leads? Is there more leads than we know what to do with? We don't have enough salespeople? Is there enough salespeople, but we don't have enough proper onboarding process? Or after onboarding, is it the delivery side? Is delivery not fully automated? Or is the quality not up to par? Or are we experiencing high churn? Those are your two executives, your top two executives. Let's call it chief revenue officer and your COO, your chief operating officer.

• 42:56Speaker 00

  From there, it's your responsibility to determine where is my zone of genius? I think that oftentimes the quote is hire great people and get out of their way. I think that's a terrible idea. I actually think it's much better to hire people actually in your zone of genius. So if for me, I, my zone of genius actually at AppSumo was more on the sales side. So the very first executive that I hired was actually in charge of sales. Why? Because it allowed me to know what I was looking for, know what genius looked like in that, in that regard, be able to properly train that individual and then know whether or not they were doing a good job. If instead I hired a CTO, I have no clue if that individual is doing a good job. I have no idea what greatness looks like.

• 43:40Speaker 00

  They could end up just telling me complete lies and honestly, it would be a complete mismatch. So for you, when you're thinking about your executive team, we have to ask ourselves first and foremost, do I have the right executives at each, strategic flywheels are a huge component of it. Do I have the right executive at each corner point of my strategic flywheel? Do I have the right executive in order to drive sales? So if I send out a tweet and we get 100 more leads, can that VP of Sales actually go and close them at a north of 50% close rate? And then if that person is able to close them, can we properly deliver it? And if not, there's probably something broken down in your value chain. And it's your responsibility to go and look, well, is it on sales or delivery? And if it's on sales, where is it broken down?

• 44:23Speaker 00

  And how do we hire an executive for just that particular function?

• 44:26Greg Isenberg?

  So I buy that. A key component of it though, is figuring out what your zone of genius is.

• 44:36Greg Isenberg?

  Question is like, how do you identify that? How do people identify what their zone of genius is?

• 44:43Speaker 00

  When you look at your calendar, where do you get excited versus what do you push off? If you get excited for certain calls, if you get excited for certain areas, where are you tinkering in the morning before you have any meetings? That's your zone of genius. If you find yourself dreading a sales call, that's an area for you to get out of. If you find yourself excited in order to tinker with the latest AI tool or finding yourself excited to jump on a customer call, not a, not a sales call, but an existing customer, you're probably thinking more in terms of delivery. And so ask yourself, where does your motivations go when you have an empty calendar?

• 45:19Greg Isenberg?

  That could be a cool exercise to give to your, your team, right? You could say like, I'm gonna, you know, create a Google Doc and I'm gonna, you know, list out the five things that give you energy and the five things that suck energy away from you.

• 45:33Speaker 00

  Totally. I mean, to be honest, most people should be able to knock it off at the top of their head.

• 45:38Greg Isenberg?

  Totally. I already like in my head, I know.

• 45:39Speaker 00

  Yeah, exactly. So like, I mean, we don't need to make this esoteric like, like two day retreat. Like, tell me about your feelings.

• 45:46Greg Isenberg?

  Take ayahuasca.

• 45:48Speaker 00

  Just get one, get one shot in the company retreat. No.

• 45:51Greg Isenberg?

  Turns out I love sales.

• 45:54Speaker 00

  Exactly. Like, let's not, that's the problem that most of these frame, they over engineer everything like, oh, let's spend nine weeks to think about our core values. Bro, move on. Let's go. Let's move quick. So like, just tell me where your zone of genius is and let's get it off the plate. And by the way, eventually your job, so the founder is the hardest, hardest working person in the room. The CEO is the laziest. The job of the CEO is to have nothing on their plate. I had maybe one meeting a week on my calendar. You have to get eventually everything off your plate. And so forget your zone of genius. Eventually both sales and delivery was off my plate. Where in the beginning I was writing every piece of copy, closing every deal, doing every customer support ticket, sending out every email. But eventually got to the point where I was thinking two, three, four, or five quarters

• 46:39Speaker 00

  ahead in the business, that's actually the ultimate goal for every founder that wants to transition to CEO is how do I become the laziest person at the company?

• 46:46Greg Isenberg?

  I think that's a Jeff Bezos has a quote on that where

• 46:50Speaker 00

  That's right.

• 46:51Greg Isenberg?

  Right around on stock price, you know, when I think the, you know, Amazon's stock price was going up a lot and some analysts asked him, you know,

• 47:00Speaker 00

  Congratulations.

• 47:01Greg Isenberg?

  Or yeah, congratulations. You've done so well. And he's, he basically was like, oh, you should have congratulated us three years ago.

• 47:07Speaker 00

  That's right.

• 47:08Greg Isenberg?

  Because it was, it was three years ago that we put in the work.

• 47:11Speaker 00

  That's exactly right. And to me, individuals like Bezos, Zuckerberg, like those are the rare, the reason they are so successful in the game of business is because it's so rare to have a founder also be a great CEO. The reason they are the top 10 richest people in the world is the founder is an artist. Whereas the CEO is a manager. So hard for you to put down the paintbrush and then pick up the clipboard. And so for individuals that have successfully made that transition to all the riches go the spoils. And so for those individuals where as Jeff said, don't congratulate me on this quarter because that quarter was baked three years ago. That's a perfect example of Jeff, who was very much in founder mode, has now transitioned to CEO mode. And he's

• 47:56Speaker 00

  thinking about, well, how do we get on the moon? Right? How do we get on Mars? Like he's already thinking about things five, 10 years from now that have nothing to do with the socks that got shipped to me this morning.

• 48:06Greg Isenberg?

  He recently said that, uh, what's the name of his, uh, Blue Origin? Is that what it's called?

• 48:12Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 48:13Greg Isenberg?

  He recently said that he thinks Blue Origin is going to be bigger than Amazon.

• 48:16Speaker 00

  I believe it. Yeah. And that's like, that's a multi-decade business.

• 48:20Greg Isenberg?

  Yeah. And, and is that, is he thinking too far ahead, do you think?

• 48:25Speaker 00

  Well, you have the luxury to, right? Because guess what? He's no longer driving to and from UPS in order to ship his packages.

• 48:31Greg Isenberg?

  Like, if you have a seven-figure business, should you be thinking 15, 20 years in advance?

• 48:34Speaker 00

  Absolutely not. Yeah. If you've got a seven-figure business, you probably don't have enough. You're in the awkward haircut phase, right? Your hair is not too long, not too short. Nobody's looking in your way. You kind of look weird. Meaning, you don't have enough profit to hire a proper exec team, right? You've got a ragtag group of individuals. You're all wearing multiple hats. The only thing that matters is probably hitting this month's numbers. So, no, yeah, you shouldn't be thinking about 15 years from now. You don't have that luxury.

• 49:01Greg Isenberg?

  Cool. Dude, I'll end this by saying I love you.

• 49:07Speaker 00

  Yeah, Greg, this is fun, man. By the way, you know, I was thinking back to when you and I first connected. It was actually like in Clubhouse 2021. I was looking back through our DMs. And I remember just being like, number one, like, super, super blown away by what you were saying back then. And ended up realizing like, oh, wow, like, this individual actually walks the walk, talks the talk. I think you and I were joking, most people in our space, sometimes like, they're essentially Hollywood actors, and they're getting puppeted, these talking points. But it was very clear to me on that Clubhouse conversation, way back when, that it was that you actually walk the walk, you talk the talk, and it's been fun watching your journey and consuming your content.

• 49:46Greg Isenberg?

  I appreciate it. I will say, I got to think bigger, though. You know, I don't want to be one of those people that is complacent. I don't want to grow 10, 15, 20%, you know, a year. And the reason, it's not a financial reason, it's just a, I like to play, I like to play games, and I like to win games. It's really fun for me. And

• 50:17Greg Isenberg?

  I think it would also be really cool if I can bring lots of partners, employees, teammates, and allow them to buy their house of their dreams and help them win at their games. So thanks for helping me think bigger. And like I said, we don't do pods like this, really. We really focus on the tactics for ideas. But I'm happy this exists because this is the foundation that everyone needs. Nine steps to nine figures, baby.

• 50:50Speaker 00

  Love it.

• 50:51Greg Isenberg?

  Where could people get to know you more?

• 50:54Speaker 00

  Honestly, X is probably the best place. So just look for me.

• 50:56Greg Isenberg?

  Not Clubhouse?

• 50:57Speaker 00

  Not Clubhouse. Yeah. Talk about retention.

• 51:00Greg Isenberg?

  All right, my man.

• 51:01Speaker 00

  All right, brother. Great catching up, my man.

• 51:03Greg Isenberg?

  See you later.

• 51:03Speaker 00

  Cheers.

• 51:04Greg Isenberg?

  Peace.