The best way to build an audience in 2025 (My 4-Step System)

How to build an audience in 2025: https://www.startupempire.co/build-an-audience I’m joined by Jonathan Courtney to jam on how to build an audience in 2025. We explore various tactics including finding your unique format, implementing consistent systems, and measuring progress against clear goals. Timestamps: 00:00 - Intro 01:58 - The ACP Framework 04:06 - Step 1: Identify Who You're Creating For 10:05 - Step 2: Find Your Format 19:43 - Step 3: Build Systems That Stick 24:52 - Step 4: Pick ONE Primary Goal 28:08 - Where to Begin? The Reply Guy Strategy 31:08 - WHY Building an Audience Matters Key Points: • ACP framework for building an audience in 2025: Audience (people passionate about your niche), Community (hardcore followers), and Product (what you sell) • The four-step playbook includes identifying your audience, finding your format, creating systems, and setting goals • Starting as a "reply guy" on platforms like X (Twitter) is recommended as a low-pressure way to begin building an audience • Building an audience serves as an "insurance policy" that provides options for future business opportunities 1) The ACP Framework: Your Foundation A = Audience (people passionate about your topic) C = Community (your hardcore followers) P = Product (what you sell to them) The KEY insight: Start with audience FIRST, then community, then product. Why? Because audience-first gives you OPTIONS and CONFIDENCE when you launch. 2) Step 1: Identify Who You're Creating For Don't just create random content. Be strategic! • Focus on people interested in YOUR specific niche • Understand what they're NOT getting from others • Find your unique "sauce" (Greg gives away ALL his startup ideas) • If not getting engagement, start one level broader than your niche Example: Jonathan's company wanted to be known for design sprints, but started with broader UX content to build audience first. 3) Step 2: Find Your Format Your format is HOW you deliver your content. This is CRUCIAL but often overlooked! • Test one format each business day • Look for formats OUTSIDE your niche (don't copy what's saturated) • Consider what's working platform-wide (short-form video in 2025) • Focus on what feels NATURAL (or you'll quit) • Test for 90 days and let data guide you Remember: Formats have lifecycles! What works today might not work in 6 months. 4) Step 3: Build Systems That Stick The difference between creators who quit and those who succeed? SYSTEMS. System breakdown: • Build a "creative faucet" routine (what gets your ideas flowing?) • Create an ideas capture system (Greg uses Apple Notes) • Schedule weekly time to turn ideas into content • Be strategic with timing (post when your audience is active) 5) Step 4: Pick ONE Primary Goal Don't try to do everything at once! • Choose ONE metric (100K followers? 25K email list? $1M in sales?) • Measure your formats against this goal every 90 days • Optimize for your goal, not vanity metrics • Remember: attention is SCARCE - build it as an asset The BEST advice: Just start! Don't get stuck in analysis paralysis. 6) Where to Begin? The Reply Guy Strategy Feeling overwhelmed? Start as a "reply guy" on X: • Less pressure than posting on your own profile • Lets you experiment with formats • Builds connections with established creators • Gives you confidence before going solo 7) WHY Building an Audience Matters An audience is your INSURANCE POLICY: • Gives you clarity into your niche • Creates a pool of potential customers/users • Provides job opportunities during recessions • Allows you to monetize when needed Notable Quotes: "The audience first approach gives you so many options, also gives you so much confidence when you release something and people actually use it." - JC "I think the number one reason why anyone should create an audience is to have something to fall back on, period. It's like an insurance policy." - Greg 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 JONATHAN ON SOCIAL X/Twitter: https://twitter.com/Jicecream LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jonathan-courtney-4510644b/ AJ&Smart: https://ajsmart.com/

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

• 0:00Greg Isenberg?

  What you're looking at here is my ex account. In the last 12 months, I've gotten 171 million impressions, almost 900,000 bookmarks, 100,000 shares. It's driven millions of dollars a year to my businesses, and it's also been a lot of fun. In this episode, I brought on Jay Ice Cream, Jonathan Courtney, where we talk about a framework that I use on how to build an audience just like this. I've never shared this document before. It's how to build an audience in 2025, the four-step playbook. I know you'll enjoy this episode. I can't wait for you to go through this with me.

• 0:44Greg Isenberg?

  And Jonathan asked some great questions and gave some good feedback. I loved this episode. It was super fun. It sounds basic, how to build an audience in 2025, but this is actually the sauce for how to do it. It took me 15 years to come up with this playbook. I'm sharing it with you for free. I hope it's super valuable and enjoy the episode.

• 1:12Greg Isenberg?

  I have a document of how to build an audience in 2025 and how I would do it, and it's a four-step playbook. Should we go through it?

• 1:21Speaker 01

  Hell, yes. And also, maybe link it in the... It's going to be linked in the description.

• 1:25Greg Isenberg?

  Linked in the show notes. Okay, so how to build an audience in 2025? And just pipe in with questions as you come... Pipe in, because I'm a plumber now.

• 1:36Speaker 01

  You're a plumber.

• 1:37Greg Isenberg?

  Yeah, right.

• 1:38Speaker 01

  You're really in the whole plumbing thing's taking over your life.

• 1:42Greg Isenberg?

  Totally. So I have this framework. I've bet my entire career on this framework. I built all my businesses around this. It's called the ACP Framework. So, A stands for audience, people in your niche who are passionate about the topic and underserved in some way. Community, C for community, which is your hardcore people. And P, product, it's what you sell to those people. So, I just wanted to like preface it that if you're going to build an audience, think of it as ACP. Like, start with the audience, then build the community, and then build the product.

• 2:24Speaker 01

  I just want to double down and say, I wish you could, can you just like post this every single day on your X account? Because the product-first approach works for some people, but the audience-first approach gives you so many options, also gives you so much confidence when you release something and people actually use it. Like, there's nothing more soul destroying than launching something and zero people are using it. And I don't, and I understand, that's also the thing that people will say in this, in the comments. Like, if you're a crazy, super-funded startup with millions and millions and millions of dollars to spend, okay, maybe you can start

• 3:06Speaker 01

  with the product because you have years to burn and like you can figure out marketing later or whatever. But for a bootstrap business, starting with the audience just is the most, like, that's what you have to do. It doesn't make sense to do it the other way around.

• 3:23Greg Isenberg?

  Exactly.

• 3:24Speaker 01

  Dig the well before you need the water, whatever. That's some saying I heard.

• 3:31Greg Isenberg?

  Totally. Yeah, I should, I should add that to the document. Dig the water.

• 3:35Speaker 01

  Dig, dig the water. What is it? Fuck, it's dig the well, dig the well before you need the water or something. Dig the well before you need it. Water the well before you dig the people. I can't remember. Piss in the well.

• 3:48Greg Isenberg?

  Yeah, there it is.

• 3:49Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 3:50Greg Isenberg?

  Okay. And then, so now that you understand the ACP framework, you're going to want to start with identifying basically who you're creating for. So, the way I think about it is, like, for me, I'm focusing on like people interested in startup ideas and, and building

• 4:13Greg Isenberg?

  Building their startup ideas using the ACP framework. So I basically exclusively post and consume content from people who are in my ACP startup ideas world. So that's identify who you're creating for. Then, really important, understand what they're not getting from others. So what can you do to stand out? Not like a not enough people, it sounds so simple, but not enough people actually take stock as to like what other creators are creating and then how you can be different. And then-

• 4:47Speaker 01

  Can you elaborate on that for one second? So understand what they're not getting from others. Can you tell me what you recognized that your audience was not getting from others that you were able to give?

• 4:59Greg Isenberg?

  Sauce.

• 5:00Speaker 01

  Sauce. So like, for you, sauce is like not holding anything back, just hears exactly everything. You know, execution's one of the hard parts anyway. So ideas, you're just giving them for free. You're not holding anything back. Is that what you mean by sauce? Or do you mean like ketchup?

• 5:18Greg Isenberg?

  I'll just give you an example. I tweeted about how I think that there's this opportunity to basically for vibe coders to band together and to build free versions of very popular legacy SaaS companies like DocuSign, like Figma, like all the Adobe stack. And I give a playbook for how I would do it. Now, this is something that I'm actively interested in. So I'm giving away the sauce, but it's not like I'm giving away the sauce because I'm like, well, you know, here's an idea. No one's going to execute on this. Like some people, a percent, a percent, maybe it's a, you know, a 10th of a percent,

• 6:02Greg Isenberg?

  but a 10th of that percent is going to go and execute against us and potentially compete with me on it. But I'm okay with that. I'm okay with it. So there are downsides. You do have, there are downsides potentially of giving away the sauce. But yeah, my point is- The larger point here is you want to stand out and it's really competitive now. So just try to create, you know, and the way to stand out might be by, you know, making, you know, sharing a lot of videos, sharing a lot of images, giving away sauce, writing long stories, figuring out what the format is, which is something we'll talk about next.

• 6:44Speaker 01

  I'm satisfied with that answer.

• 6:47Greg 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.

• 7:32Greg Isenberg?

  So you can check out the link to startupempire.co in the description. Cool. And then I just have here, note, if you aren't getting engagement, start one level broader than your niche. You need engagement for reach before you can specialize sometimes. So sometimes people, they'll start like an X account, for example, and they'll, they'll be like, but I'm not getting any engagement. Well, it's because, you know, you might've picked such a, such a small niche that you're just not getting fed to the app for the for you page. So sometimes you have to be a little more broad and then you can go a bit more specialized.

• 8:08Speaker 01

  I want to squirt in an exact example from my company here. We wanted to get known for being, back in the day, we wanted to, people to know us about like, we're doing design sprints. Basically, we wanted people to look to us for that topic. Back in 2016, it wasn't an interesting topic on the internet. So we kept trying and trying and trying and no one would watch our YouTube videos. Eventually, we kind of drew this, like, I sat down with my team and I drew this funnel. And like at the bottom of it, I was like, we want people to get to design sprints here. But like, what are the things that are more interesting to people?

• 8:51Speaker 01

  Okay, looks like design thinking is more popular than that, but it's still not very popular. What's like the thing above that? And at the time, we just said it's UX design. Like UX design is like the super broad, super popular topic that we can funnel them down to the more specific thing later. And so we started making UX videos on YouTube. And the annoying thing is those UX videos on YouTube are still our most popular videos. Like, one of our most popular videos ever is a Figma tutorial, even though that's nothing to do with what we do at our company, just because it went so, we needed to go so broad to bring them back to what we wanted to.

• 9:32Speaker 01

  So that was a situation where we were hitting a wall with a topic that just was too niche at the time. And so we had to broaden to UX, which was broader. Is that sort of what you mean by that?

• 9:46Greg Isenberg?

  Exactly. That's exactly what I mean.

• 9:48Speaker 01

  Yeah, that makes so much sense. That's actually pretty important.

• 9:51Greg Isenberg?

  Yeah, it's really important. And the other thing that's really important that no one talks about, about how to building an audience is just formats. Like, building, that's step two in the four-step playbook. You have to figure out what your format is. So what is a format? First, first and foremost, let's define what that means. A format could be, could be something like how Naval does these like one-line banger tweets that are like very philosophical, right? You know, he'll, he'll say these philosophical tweets, one line. He's not doing like long, long videos or long, long-form tweets or something like that. He's being very concise, he's being very clear, and he's being very catchy. And that's him.

• 10:35Greg Isenberg?

  Now, someone like me on my X, what you'll notice is I do a lot of like long, long, long form. Like, I write really, really long stuff. But that's because I want to give the sauce. And I can't give the sauce in one line, realistically. So what you need to do if you're trying to build an audience is to pick a, pick one format for each business day. And the goal here is you're, you're basically, you're gonna land eventually on one format that's gonna crush it for you. That's the goal. But sometimes it takes.

• 11:08Greg Isenberg?

  It's kind of like startup buildings. You know, sometimes you have to try a bunch of different things in your startup to see what's going to work and then you double down on the thing that works. So the way to come up with your format is to look for formats outside your niche. Copying what's saturated in your space makes it harder to stand out. Right? If you're just going to try to compete with Naval and try to do one line bangers, you're going to lose realistically. You have zero followers and he's got millions of followers. So the way to compete with Naval is actually not to copy with what Naval does, but look for formats outside of what that Naval niche is and see if you can apply that to your niche.

• 11:52Greg Isenberg?

  So for example, maybe a format might be like philosophical memes, something like that. And then the last thing before I'm curious to your thoughts, the last thing here is you want to, you want to consider, actually, there's a few more things.

• 12:10Speaker 01

  You're like, you just scrolled and realized you made way more things.

• 12:14Greg Isenberg?

  Yeah, well, I haven't, yeah.

• 12:17Greg Isenberg?

  Well, let me continue, let me finish formats and then I'd like to get your opinion on it. So you want to consider what's working platform wide. So for example, short form video in 2025 is working. Therefore, it might make sense if Naval was starting in 2025, maybe he would do short form video because the algorithms are favoring short form video. So consider what's working. You got to be silly not to consider what's working. Focus on what feels natural and enjoyable to make sure you stay consistent. I stayed consistent over almost 20 years of creating, you know, creating content in X because I found what was fun for me to do.

• 12:59Greg Isenberg?

  If you don't like creating video content, chances are you're going to churn, you're going to stop creating video content. So focus on what feels natural and enjoyable to stay consistent. And then test for 90 days and let the data tell you what's working on, if you know, if you're going to build an audience, let's say on X, you have analytics there. If you're going to build on YouTube, they've got even better analytics there. All these platforms have analytics and you're, you're silly if you don't look at the analytics and see what's working and let the data tell you. And then the last thing on format is remember that formats have life cycles. So.

• 13:38Greg Isenberg?

  What I mean by that is a format might be really popular.

• 13:44Greg Isenberg?

  And then it kind of like dies down and then people start ignoring it. So you always have to constantly reinvent yourself. Now that you the lifecycle used to have two years. Now it's like, sometimes it's almost like two weeks. But just, just be aware that formats have life cycles. So you always need to be looking at what other people are doing. Just so you have fresh insight into formats.

• 14:13Speaker 01

  This is really great. Can I like, I have, I have a couple of questions for what I'm imagining. Some people in your audience are going to be wondering. Maybe I'll start with a statement. Looking at this, it really reminds me, I recently listened to an episode of Tim Ferriss's podcast. No one should listen to that. You should just listen to this podcast. But I was just, you know, doing some research for your podcast, Greg. I would never listen to anybody else's podcast. Seth Godin was on there and he said, he had this great statement, which was, you know, he'll sometimes talk to people who are just like, they've just finished a book or they've just finished making a product or they have the idea and they've got everything ready. And then they're just, and then they're like, oh yeah, now I just have to market it.

• 14:58Speaker 01

  Like everything's done. Now I just have to market it. And he said something along the lines of, no, that means you just started. Because that's actually the hard part. Getting people to actually pay attention to what you're doing is so much harder than often just doing the thing and making the thing. Because often that's like something you're passionate about. So for me, I think a lot of people listening to your podcast might not understand the seriousness of what you're saying here, which is ACP is in order. The A is first, the audience is first.

• 15:36Speaker 01

  From what I understand from this, that's also your kind of thesis that the goal here is to start digging the well, to start bringing to Together your people. So when you do have something to share with them, when you do have something you maybe want to sell or whatever it is, they are there for you versus trying to claw that together when you have a product. And it also takes a long time. So it's not something that happens overnight. Building an audience is like, I don't know, doing index funds. It builds, the dividends build and compound over the years.

• 16:14Speaker 01

  And so, yeah, I think one thing that I'd love to hear from you is like, what would you say to the people, which there will be in the comments, who say, "Oh, if you build it, they will come." Like, Apple, you know, you just build a great product and people will use it. Like, what do you say to those types of people?

• 16:37Speaker 01

  It's not, I'm not saying they're wrong. Of course, there are edge cases where this happens. But what do you think about that? Like, if you're investing in a company and I was the CEO and I was like, "We're going to work on the product for two years. By the way, you're our investor. You have to pay us." And in that time, you know, we'll just release the product and everyone will want to use it. So.

• 16:59Greg Isenberg?

  Okay. Well, first of all, we have to agree that if you build a product, you need to sell that product. And if you sell that product, you need attention. And there's two ways to get attention. Either you get it organically or not organically. Another way to say that is free or paid. So if you're starting a startup, especially if you're bootstrapping it, of course, it's better to not pay for it than pay for it. And it's better for a few reasons. The first reason is by going through this four-step playbook, you're going to be at one with your audience and community.

• 17:39Greg Isenberg?

  And that's going to allow you to make a way better product with a better moat and a more indispensable business.

• 17:48Greg Isenberg?

  If you figure, if you go through this versus you just cheat, so to, so to speak, you rent the audience, you pay for it. If you go through this four step playbook, you'll be able to be, be able to create better ads in the future. Right? I'm not saying don't do ads. I'm just saying that the best ads start by being organic first. And then like, you know, some of these formats you can just use and, and for example, like I'm sure I can write a saucy startup idea.

• 18:27Greg Isenberg?

  You know, post and promote it via ads too, and it would work as well. I just don't do that because I don't particularly have a product I'm selling, but I, but I could, you know? And I think that's the best way to think about it.

• 18:39Speaker 01

  And with the free, free versus paid, it's not just like, but would you view it as like a, if someone was starting a business, a bootstrap business, or even an agency or a small business, would you say it's not even an option? Like you actually have to do this? Like if you're not planning on running ads, so you're not planning on doing paid. I, you kind of have to do this or else you just, everything has to be just your small word of mouth network.

• 19:10Greg Isenberg?

  I, I find it very difficult to make the case in 2025 to not be on social and not be going through this playbook. I just, I really don't understand why you wouldn't because this is your unfair advantage. This is literally your unfair advantage.

• 19:29Speaker 01

  Absolutely.

• 19:30Greg Isenberg?

  I'm going to continue. I want to go to systems because the reason I included systems, by the way, is because. Some people would, you know, if I just did audience and formats, like, you know, you, you, you might just stop doing it, basically. And I want to, I want you to have systems so that you actually do the ACP funnel and you actually go and build, build an audience. So let's start from the top. So build your creative faucet routine. So find what gets your creative juices flowing. So this could be starting a fresh account, following 50 people in your niche. And, you know, it might

• 20:12Greg Isenberg?

  be that, but it also might be, what might get your creative juices flowing might be like going to in-person events. It might be going for walks and listening to podcasts. Like, I don't know what it is, but figure out what your creative faucet, what turns on your creativity, create, you know, build that routine and then have an ideas capture system. So I use just Apple Notes, literally, where I write out some idea that comes to me while the creative faucet is going. And that might be when I'm on a walk and I might just like write down like this one idea for a potential tweet, or a video idea, or a newsletter, for Greg's letter, my newsletter. But have an ideas capture system. Why I use

• 20:57Greg Isenberg?

  Notes and not like a fancy Notes app is because it's everywhere. It's simple and I'm just trying to make it simple. Set, set weekly time to turn your ideas into products, content. So what I mean by that is, I, I, I think of my tweets, you know, podcasts, newsletters, almost as products, like that, I think, I think of like, I think of them as like minimal viable products. So, you know, every Friday, for example, sometimes I'll go and, or actually not sometimes, on Fridays, what I do is I, I turn my ideas and I, and some of them

• 21:39Greg Isenberg?

  are bad, some of them are good, but I turn them into long form tweets, maybe newsletters. And I'm not, you know, I don't work with postbridge.com, but uses, you could use a scheduling tool like PostBridge, or another scheduling tool, so that you just like, don't have to think about it and it's scheduled.

• 22:01Greg Isenberg?

  And then the last thing is for the systems piece is be strategic with timing. So match platform timing to audience behavior and mindset. So what I mean by that is you're probably, you probably shouldn't post on LinkedIn at three in the morning on Saturday night. You know what I mean? Yeah. So post when, also post when topics are relevant. So like the why now, now matters. If you're going to go post about deep seek in March 10, like it's too late, bro. You know, like that worked a month ago. That's not going to work as much now. Look for opportunities to join trending conversations. So this is news jacking. How can you jack the news?

• 22:42Speaker 01

  Jacking?

• 22:43Greg Isenberg?

  Yeah.

• 22:43Speaker 01

  How did I, that's something I do, but I think it's kind of different to what you're talking about there.

• 22:48Greg Isenberg?

  Yeah, I think so too.

• 22:52Greg Isenberg?

  I think so too, but can you tell me?

• 22:53Speaker 01

  Can you talk more about that? News? I thought I was the only one.

• 22:58Greg Isenberg?

  Talk more about your news jacking.

• 23:01Speaker 01

  I thought I was the only one who news jacked.

• 23:07Greg Isenberg?

  Okay. Well, maybe we can, we can move on from that. Put out content when it has the highest likelihood of success. That's the way to think about it. This is the systems you need so that you can actually put stuff out in the ether and do it with some level of consistency.

• 23:27Speaker 01

  Love that. And this is amazing. I love how I just came with a random topic and you're like, oh, I've already made an entire Google doc full of stuff for this.

• 23:38Greg Isenberg?

  And I haven't posted this publicly, by the way.

• 23:40Speaker 01

  Oh, great. So it's secret. It's secret. Only in this episode.

• 23:45Greg Isenberg?

  This was, this is something I, I, I did AMA in Startup Empire and I just started writing this out, but I haven't posted this publicly. Not because I've been gatekeeping or anything, just because I, it's in my, it's actually in my, like, I was going to post this publicly, basically.

• 24:08Speaker 01

  I think you've been gatekeeping it, to be honest.

• 24:13Speaker 01

  Is gatekeeping it, guys?

• 24:14Greg Isenberg?

  Yeah, I've been gatekeeping. No, I was, I think it's important to, like, I have like a bunch of of things like this where it's like, if I'm not feeling creative, for whatever reason, this is like evergreen content that like how to build an audience, like it's evergreen and I can always just post it.

• 24:32Speaker 01

  Everyone always needs this information.

• 24:36Greg Isenberg?

  Literally. Last thing, on the four step playbook, pick one primary goal. Now, for example,

• 24:47Greg Isenberg?

  what are you trying to do? You're trying to get to 100,000 followers in 12 months? Are you trying to get to a 25,000 email list? Are you trying to sell a million dollars through social? Just pick one thing. A lot of people here pick like multiple things. No, just pick one thing. And then measure the effectiveness of your formats against this goal. And you can do that on a, every 30 days, 60 days, 90 days. I think 90 days is, is good enough, but just make, make sure you're tracking or else you're, you're going to get a bit lost.

• 25:18Greg Isenberg?

  And then just remember that attention is scarce, build it as an asset, treat your content like a product, approach it with the same rigor you'd bring to a job, you know, you, you, you might look at a Naval tweet and be like, he just came up with, with this on the toilet, but I bet you he didn't. I bet you he used a system like this to actually. Yeah, maybe multiple toilets. He might have been on.

• 25:40Speaker 01

  He was newsjacking on two different toilets. He's never going to come on this podcast now.

• 25:44Greg Isenberg?

  Classic Naval.

• 25:48Greg Isenberg?

  Classic Naval. Optimize for your goal, not vanity metrics.

• 25:53Speaker 01

  I like that.

• 25:54Greg Isenberg?

  Yeah. Yeah. I think, I think a lot of people want to get to followers, for example. But I think what's more interesting is. Like even for this podcast, like one of my, you know, one of my metrics is comments and like positive, basically positive comments. So I care less about subscribers and more about positive comments.

• 26:20Speaker 01

  More the ones where people say we look like brothers.

• 26:22Greg Isenberg?

  Yeah, that's my number one metric, the one that says that we look like.

• 26:26Speaker 01

  Brotherly comment.

• 26:27Greg Isenberg?

  Yeah, the positive brotherly comments.

• 26:32Speaker 01

  I wish you're, I wish you weren't trying to get people to listen to this podcast so you could just name it stupid shit like this, because that would be the name of this episode, Positive Brotherly Comments.

• 26:42Greg Isenberg?

  Yeah, that'd be so good.

• 26:43Speaker 01

  Newsjanking edition.

• 26:45Greg Isenberg?

  Yeah.

• 26:49Greg Isenberg?

  Just start, don't get stuck on analysis paralysis, be patient, growth takes time. I started Twitter on Twitter almost 20 years ago. It took me, it took me until 2020 to get to 10,000 followers and I only really skyrocketed in 2020, but it's because I had, I, it took me 15 years basically to come up with this format and took me five years to execute against it. And I can't think of anything more valuable than this document. Like if you just do this.

• 27:21Speaker 01

  Amazing.

• 27:22Greg Isenberg?

  Yeah. If you just do this document, like you will win.

• 27:26Speaker 01

  Okay, I want to help your.

• 27:29Greg Isenberg?

  Yeah, I was gonna say like, you can have this, you can have a full-time job and do this on the side. You can go, if you want to go build a startup, you can make this a part of your routine. Like it doesn't matter who you are, but I just can't think of anything more important than this.

• 27:46Speaker 01

  It's really amazing. And I think it's definitely something that would be cool if you're sharing it in the, in the description here, because it's super helpful. What is like the, so someone is like right now, listening to us talk and they're a little bit like, oh my God, like this is so cool, but I'm slightly overwhelmed. If you were just to give someone one tactic or strategy to do on repeat, let's say they choose a platform, let's say they choose X or they choose LinkedIn, whatever, and their goal is to just grow their audience so that they can grow their newsletter, so that they can sell things, whatever. What would be the thing you'd say every day, just do this thing?

• 28:31Speaker 01

  To get to the first, you know, to start getting momentum, would you say it is the replying tactic? For like to get this, I think sometimes people need a sense of momentum and confidence that there's actually a point to do this thing so that they get like this dopamine hit from it working. And I'm wondering, what would you say is like the perfect way to start something like this that doesn't feel overwhelming?

• 28:56Greg Isenberg?

  I think X is the best place to start because no matter what you're building, because it'll allow you just to experiment basically with formats and X is the best place to be a reply guy. Basically. So I would say if you need a little confidence boost and you need a little dopamine,

• 29:20Greg Isenberg?

  being a starting as your MVP and as a reply is probably what you should do.

• 29:27Speaker 01

  For like 90 days to see if it's working and then tweak at 90 days.

• 29:33Greg Isenberg?

  Well, you'll, you'll also be able to, you're kind of like experimenting with formats through replies. So it's going to give you ideas on which formats to, to create through the replies. It's also a way less daunting to reply than to post on your own profile.

• 29:54Greg Isenberg?

  And that's because when you post on your own profile, it's like Jonathan Courtney is posting this, although you'll say anything.

• 30:01Speaker 01

  My opinion, this is my like, I'm telling the world this thing.

• 30:05Greg Isenberg?

  You're not, you're not scared of that, you know?

• 30:10Greg Isenberg?

  For better or for worse?

• 30:13Greg Isenberg?

  I think a lot of people do, and I understand why they do. They're, they're kind of, they're feeling, they feel sometimes that they're being judged by the content. And that's another reason why I think X is a lot of better, is a better place than, for example, Instagram, posting on your personal Instagram where people who, you know, see you as this particular person, all of a sudden you're talking about this like niche topic, business oriented topic, they're going to be like, I didn't follow you for your takes on AI for, you know, I followed you because like.

• 30:49Speaker 01

  Because you have great abs.

• 30:50Greg Isenberg?

  Because you have great abs.

• 30:52Speaker 01

  That's why people follow me on Instagram.

• 30:54Greg Isenberg?

  That's true.

• 30:55Speaker 01

  Can I, I don't know how much time we have left, but I, I have a couple of like, things related to the why of growing an audience, why I think, like, do you have like 15 minutes left? Or is it done? Or?

• 31:08Greg Isenberg?

  Just keep going.

• 31:09Speaker 01

  All right, well, I think that the end result, there's like a, I have a couple of different ways of looking at this, because the beauty of this conversation between Greg and I is that Greg is currently putting tons of love and effort into building an audience and it's working like crazy. And I'm lazy on the other side. I, like, six years ago, I started building an audience. I started building our YouTube channel, our Instagram, LinkedIn, all of this kind of stuff. And then I sort of just got a little tired of it and I turned down the, like, I turned down the amount of effort I was putting in. And the crazy thing about it is that the dividends that it still pays today,

• 31:52Speaker 01

  to just have done that six years ago is unbelievable. Like, it's, you're, you're building some sort of like a, a crazy resource or like a, what would you even call it? Like?

• 32:06Greg Isenberg?

  Asset.

• 32:08Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's an asset or it is like this well, it's, you're building something that you can keep taking from and keep, you know, getting benefit from even, even if you eventually lose, let's say, the, the mo, your mojo for it. So it's not one of those things that you have to, like, it's, it's not like this treadmill that you have to be obsessed with now for the next 80 years. I really pushed hard for about four years and the, the results of this, I'm still benefiting from today. And just an example of that, like, I'm bringing it back to the beginning of the podcast. This, like, product or whatever it is that I had, I had a thought about this morning.

• 32:52Speaker 01

  The cool thing about having an audience, the cool thing about, you know, moving maybe some of those audience to an email list eventually, or having them on LinkedIn or whatever, is that when the time comes, and maybe some of you guys saw this in our, in our circles over the last few weeks, we were doing a big promotion for this Clickbook, you and I were talking about it, that's when I then decided to switch on my social media, like, and ask for something for the first time in a long time. And the results of this are crazy. And this is something that just doesn't work if you don't have an audience. There's like, nothing can come with it. An audience is so unbelievably valuable. And also, like,

• 33:32Speaker 01

  Greg, your audience size is also extremely valuable to other people. Like, if you ever wanted to just say, you know what, I'm just gonna do sponsors, like, I don't wanna run my businesses anymore, it's too stressful, you could make crap tons of money just having your podcast, or doing sponsored posts, or whatever it is, not saying that's your business thing, but it gives you crap tons of options. And I almost look at it, it's like, if you build the system that Greg is talking about, we're not trying to sell you anything here, by the way, it's just like, if you do the thing Greg talks about, you almost get like this ability to switch on revenue if you have an idea for a product. And I love that.

• 34:16Speaker 01

  I love the idea of just being like, well, in three years' time, if I'm, if this company's not doing well, or if I don't like this job, then all I have to do to generate revenue is come up with an idea that this audience will enjoy, or this audience will find valuable, or this audience hasn't had yet. And that makes life and business feel much less tense, and also much more predictable. It's so much more predictable. Like, you know, we were talking again before this podcast, and we just know, like, when we're looking at something like that, it's like, oh yeah, that would make this much money. If you have no audience, if we had no audience, it would just be like, this is a cool idea,

• 34:59Speaker 01

  but like, how the hell will we find anybody to, you know what I mean? It's a completely different world you live in when you have an audience versus when you have no audience at all.

• 35:13Speaker 01

  And you know, even the companies where you think, oh, these guys don't do any social media and they still are successful. Like, I don't know, maybe you look at a company like Basecamp and you're like, oh, they don't, they stay away from all that stuff. Jason Fried and his co-founder wrote books that literally were New York Times bestsellers as a way to bring attention to their companies. Like, they're, they, every person who makes things that are interesting uses a lot of, or does marketing, either organic or paid. And I think organic marketing is just one of these insanely powerful tools for you just getting more options for your life and your business, so that you're also not stuck to having to do one thing.

• 35:56Speaker 01

  Like, if there was a crazy recession tomorrow, Greg, and let's say all your companies just failed and all went bankrupt, if you had no audience at all and you hadn't been doing this, I guess you'd be a lot more worried than you would be if that actually happened today. I think you'd be like, that really sucks, but also I also wanted to make this thing for a while, so let's see if my audience likes that.

• 36:19Greg Isenberg?

  I mean, I think the, the number one reason why anyone should create an audience is to have something to fall back on.

• 36:28Speaker 01

  Yes. It's insurance. That's the word I was looking for. It's like an insurance.

• 36:33Greg Isenberg?

  It's an insurance, it's an insurance policy. So it's, it's like, okay, I'm gonna dedicate four hours of time per week to this, and what do I get out of it? Well, for one, I get...

• 36:48Greg Isenberg?

  Clarity into my, into this niche I care about, which by the way, that itself is huge. Like clarity in the sense of like, okay, I understand what these people want, why they want it, their motivations, their incentives, that, that, that whole thing.

• 37:06Greg Isenberg?

  Two is whenever I need something from this group of people, at some point in the future, I could tap into it, just as if you tap into, you know, your retirement account. This is your retirement account, right? If you need to build a business, build a startup, you can tap into these people as potential customers, beta users, that sort of thing. If you want a job, all of a sudden you have all these people who are in your niche that have built in trust that you can message and be like, hey, it's a recession right now, but you've been following me for the last four years. You know, I'm really competent at XYZ. Can you hire me?

• 37:48Greg Isenberg?

  And I guarantee you that's going to work better than randomly applying on a LinkedIn post.

• 37:55Speaker 01

  It's so, so goddamn true. It's a feeling, it's like a feeling of something to fall back on, a feeling of a bit of safety.

• 38:02Greg Isenberg?

  Yeah.

• 38:03Speaker 01

  Also financially, I mean, like, it sounds ridiculous to even be sharing this, but I'm going on a trip to Japan soon and it's going to be very expensive. And I was kind of like, there was something I wanted to book, but it was very expensive. Right? You actually recommended it to me. And I was like, this is really excessive. But then I was like, but all I have to do is just have another idea for this to not like, to bump, give the business a really big bump so that it doesn't feel as silly to do this. And that also is something I'm just so grateful for, that I can just be like, oh, let's just, let's just do this thing because this is something our audience would appreciate.

• 38:46Speaker 01

  This is something that people who follow me would find valuable. And also it then mentally for me offsets some of the, what I perceive to be. Too much lavish spending, but it's something I want to do. And so I think this is a, this is the, this is very difficult to do if you don't have some, if you don't have an audience to present stuff to. And I'm not saying every single thing you'll present to them will work. But the fact that you have, the fact that you can be like, I'm interested in having this life experience and doing this thing. And I, to do this, would like to have a, like an increase of this much money. And then you can just go, okay, I'm going to turn it on then.

• 39:29Speaker 01

  I'm just going to switch that on because I have the energy, because I have the creativity right now. Having an audience allows you to also use your creativity. Because you're not then trying to figure out how will I get people to actually see this? So you can focus on making something interesting, focus on making the coolest thing. And then know that you can just sell it. It's really, I guess people are going to be like, yeah. I can imagine the first comment here is, we get it, build an audience.

• 39:56Greg Isenberg?

  Yeah.

• 39:57Speaker 01

  We're like trying to really selling the idea, but it's, it's just so, it's so important.

• 40:03Greg Isenberg?

  Yeah. What are you doing? Like, what are you, why are you listening to this podcast even at this point? It's like, nah, you know, just do it. It's like, why not? Why wouldn't you do it?

• 40:17Speaker 01

  You're looking at Greg and he has, you know, crazy, crazy audience. Guys, I have been very lazy on the social media front. And I want to give you an example. I started a blog two years, a blog, two years ago, because I was like-

• 40:33Greg Isenberg?

  Okay, old man.

• 40:35Speaker 01

  Yeah, exactly. I was like sub stack. Exactly. So I started-

• 40:39Greg Isenberg?

  What is that?

• 40:40Speaker 01

  Hello, children, would you like to see my blog? I started a blog and a podcast, which wasn't even on any sort of schedule. It's unscheduled. And I half-assed ran that now for the last two or three years. And it has a very small audience, very, very tiny. But whenever I tap into it, the first time I tapped into it was like a year and a half after I launched it. And I, really, it's, it's like, the, after one year, there was like 2,000 people reading it or something. It's very tiny. But even with that audience, because my niche in that case was business owners who are making more than a million already.

• 41:24Speaker 01

  I was able to run an event that brought in like $70,000 from that tiny, tiny amount of people who were reading my blog. So it doesn't have to be that you become as successful or as prolific as Greg. I think that would be a great target to have because, you know, if you aim this far, then you can only fall this far, whatever.

• 41:50Greg Isenberg?

  Aim for the stars and then you land on the moon.

• 41:53Speaker 01

  Exactly. Definitely don't aim for the moon because guys, uh, you, my lazy, my laziness level is just because I am like, kind of whatever. I built my businesses already and I'm, I'm being way, and I'm European.

• 42:09Greg Isenberg?

  Yeah, let's call it what it is. Let's call it what it is.

• 42:13Speaker 01

  I don't, I wish I had, I wish I had Greg's like enthusiasm and energy. But I want you guys to know that, you know, I, I post on LinkedIn maybe two times per week. I write my blog maybe once a month. I post on X maybe once a week. And that's way less useful and successful than the way Greg does it. But it's still better than nothing. It still has an outcome. And I think the, like, the, the barrier to entry to building an audience, people are often like embarrassed about just not having anything to say, not having anything to give because they're like, oh, there's already a billion people out there talking about the same thing. Well, just start the way that Greg talked about.

• 42:58Speaker 01

  Start replying to people. You'll find your angle. You'll find your voice. You'll find your format and then you'll find your specific way of talking and figuring things out. Last thing, just because other people are talking about a topic that you are interested in, let's say facilitation is one of the topics I talk about. Well, the other people talking about facilitation don't look like me. They don't sound like me and they don't act like me. So even though I'm often saying the exact same stuff, because we're all pulling from the same pool of information around facilitation, some people want to listen to me specifically talk about it because of the way I talk about things. And some people are very repelled from the way I talk. And so they want to talk about, uh, listen to the other people.

• 43:42Speaker 01

  So I think that's another thing people think. That there's no point in jumping into talking about startups, Greg. Like, there's plenty of people talking about what you talk about, but you talk about it in your specific way, even down to like with your vibe, with your energy, with who the amazing people you choose to bring into your inner circle and on your podcast, like J Ice Cream. Your angle, like your own personality will make what you do different, just automatically by who you are. So there's a, there's a quote in this book from Derek Sivers, Hell Yeah or No, and he said like, "Stop trying to be original.

• 44:24Speaker 01

  Sometimes just doing like bands that are successful often started out as cover bands. And the more covers that they played, the more like, the more it became their own thing." And it's like, he said, "It's like an imperfect mirror." So even if you try to copy someone, you're going to do that in an imperfect way that makes your version special.

• 44:48Greg Isenberg?

  Oh, I love that.

• 44:49Speaker 01

  It's really, it's fascinating. I think even the most successful products out there, you know that, you know Fortnite, the video game, the most successful video game of all time.

• 44:58Greg Isenberg?

  What's that? What's Fortnite?

• 45:01Speaker 01

  Okay, you're joking. But this is essentially a clone of a game called PUBG. And it, when it first came out, I remember being like, "Oh my God, that is so like embarrassing, like how much of a clone that is, even the fact that they fly in and get dropped down." And then it just became, it's, it's, it's, it's the same general idea now, but has its own vibe, its own thing. It became something completely different. And then there was another game that came out, which is like the, it's called Apex Legends, which is a clone of Fortnite, which also became successful and became its own thing and had its own, it was like a clone of Fortnite and Overwatch a little bit. And so with your content, originality is not the goal in the beginning.

• 45:46Speaker 01

  You're going to accidentally become original by just being yourself and having your own life experiences. Drop the mic! That's the point I was trying to make for the last 10 minutes.

• 45:58Greg Isenberg?

  Boom. Okay, I, that was amazing. I'm fired up. Before we, before we end on that video game note and on your X account note, you tweeted, this is your tweet, which by the way, there was one like to the tweet. I was the only person.

• 46:15Speaker 01

  This is a perfect example. I got one like. That's, guys, all of you procrastinating on not posting, I got one like. And I'm fine with that. What was it?

• 46:28Greg Isenberg?

  No, never played a Monster Hunter before, but I'm loving Wilds. The loop is so simple and satisfying. So I'm guessing Monster Hunter is a video game.

• 46:40Speaker 01

  Yeah, and I don't know why the no is there. That's not supposed to be there. That's a mistake.

• 46:45Greg Isenberg?

  Yeah, so this is, this is an example of not to do.

• 46:52Greg Isenberg?

  Start the J Ice cream format is just.

• 46:56Speaker 01

  Not copying my X account. It's so bad.

• 47:01Greg Isenberg?

  Yeah, just started with a no. Okay, so my question to you is,

• 47:08Greg Isenberg?

  is Monster Hunter a good game? Should people play it?

• 47:11Speaker 01

  I'm really enjoying Monster Hunter Wilds. I'm playing it on PS5. And if any of you guys want to play it with me, because it's an online game, please put your like Monster Hunter code in the comments of this video and I will connect with you. I'm desperate. None of my friends play video games. It's so annoying. Everyone's so serious. Everyone's like doing like real stuff. And I'm like, I also still want to play video games. So Monster Hunter Wilds, I've never played a Monster Hunter video game before. Super satisfying loop. By the way, relating to content, a lot of my content on my more successful channels, not X, is inspired by video games as well.

• 47:53Speaker 01

  So I'll often be playing a video game and I'll take an angle from it and turn it into an article or a video. So that's like something where one of my hobbies really influences the content that I create. And that makes, makes it different. I talk about video games a lot, you know?

• 48:12Greg Isenberg?

  Cool. I love it. This has been great. Jay Ice Cream, Jonathan Ice Cream, Jonathan Courtney, Jay Ice Cream. You call him what he is, what he isn't. He's the best. We're honored to have you. We're honored to have you. And this has been a lot of fun.

• 48:28Speaker 01

  Thank you for having me on. Thanks to the audience for always being so kind in the comments. Much appreciated. And please download that thing.

• 48:38Greg Isenberg?

  Are you priming the, are you priming the INCB?

• 48:41Speaker 01

  I really appreciate positive, positive comments. And I would also appreciate positive comments about my hair. I should have said this earlier because people, I guess on YouTube, don't always listen till the very end. But you, I would like some positive comments about my hair and also about my biceps.

• 49:00Greg Isenberg?

  Okay. Maybe we'll do a little poll. Who is better looking?

• 49:04Speaker 01

  Oh, no, don't do that, dude. I'll get fucking ruined.

• 49:07Greg Isenberg?

  No, no, no, no. No, no, no. It's, it's, we're, we're equal. We're basically the same looking, we're the same guy.

• 49:15Speaker 01

  I think you're like, you look more vital. I look more used up than you somehow.

• 49:23Speaker 01

  I look like the very tired version of you.

• 49:25Greg Isenberg?

  You look like, Jay Ice Cream looks like if Greg Isenberg went to a prison in Berlin for like three months.

• 49:34Speaker 01

  Wait, are we the same age? You don't want to say your age? I don't know.

• 49:37Greg Isenberg?

  I'll say my age. How old are you?

• 49:39Speaker 01

  I'm, I'm turning 37 next week.

• 49:42Greg Isenberg?

  Oh, wow.

• 49:43Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 49:44Greg Isenberg?

  Happy birthday. I'm 36.

• 49:46Speaker 01

  Okay, so there's actually no excuse for me to look this tired.

• 49:52Speaker 01

  Shit, I was hoping you'd say 30 and I'm like, that makes sense.

• 49:56Greg Isenberg?

  For real? I, I, you know, well, well, actually a question. Do you, do you have a nighttime skin routine?

• 50:02Speaker 01

  I, I'm lazy with it. I do put on a moisturizer, but I, the answer is no. I put a moisturizer on like every so often and then I don't wash it off until I have a shower. So the answer is no.

• 50:15Greg Isenberg?

  Okay.

• 50:16Speaker 01

  Do you?

• 50:18Greg Isenberg?

  When I was 30 years old, a friend of mine who I think at the time was 42 or something, he, his gift to me was the nighttime moisturizer, basically. And he, he told me, he was like, the reason I

• 50:40Greg Isenberg?

  Have I I'm 42, but I look 28 is because I've been using this since I mean, this is crazy. He's he had been using it since he was 17.

• 50:49Speaker 01

  What is it? Like, what's the brand of it? Like, is it like retinol and other stuff?

• 50:53Greg Isenberg?

  He was using keels. So he gave me keels. I don't use keels. Now I use like a fancy one.

• 51:00Speaker 01

  What is it? I want to know. I want to know how to look juicy.

• 51:04Greg Isenberg?

  It's called, I think I heard Tim Ferriss, Kevin Rose, people like that use use this cream.

• 51:15Speaker 01

  This night. Oh, shit, dude, I have to I have to go. I'm really sorry.

• 51:19Greg Isenberg?

  So on the next episode, we will talk about our nighttime routine and what creams we use.

• 51:25Speaker 01

  Yeah, sorry, dude. I didn't realize I have a call right now.

• 51:27Greg Isenberg?

  Later.

• 51:27Speaker 01

  Love you. Bye. Bye bye. Bye.