My Secret Framework for Building $1M Products

Today’s episode features Jake Knapp (creator of the Design Sprint), Jonathan Courtney (Founder and CEO of AJ & Smart). We explore how to evaluate and build successful AI products. They use Jake's Foundation Sprint framework to analyze JC's concept for an app that helps entrepreneurs balance content consumption with creation. The conversation demonstrates how to move from initial idea to clear differentiation strategy, emphasizing the importance of first principles thinking before technical implementation. Timestamps: 00:00 - Intro 01:36 - Startup Idea: Hit Me App 04:28 - The Foundation Sprint Overview 05:16 - Step 1: Customer 07:50 - Step 2: Problem 12:25 - Step 3: Capability 15:20 - Step 4: Insight 23:34 - Step 5: Motivation 31:44 - Step 6: Competitors 38:57 - How to use AI in the Development Process 41:55 - Differentiation Analysis 51:58 - Reviewing Foundation Sprint Click Book: https://www.theclickbook.com Key Points: • Introduction to the Foundation Sprint framework for evaluating startup ideas • Discussion of building AI wrappers and product differentiation • Exploration of a case study: “Hit Me” - an app for controlling digital consumption • Detailed walkthrough of the basics canvas: customer, problem, capabilities, insights • Analysis of differentiation strategies and competitive positioning 1) The Foundation Sprint Framework: • Start with the basics • Define clear differentiation • Map possible product forms • Test & validate assumptions Key insight: Most founders skip this critical planning phase! 2) The Basics Framework includes: • Customer identification • Problem definition • Special capabilities • Key insights • Core motivation • Competitor analysis Pro tip: Write these down BEFORE touching any code! 3) Real Example Breakdown: JC pitched his “Hit Me” app idea: • Target: Entrepreneurs (25-40) • Problem: Digital overconsumption • Insight: Consumption vs Creation balance • Motivation: Personal struggle with anxiety • Competition: Self-control & existing blockers 4) Key Differentiator Exercise: Plot your product on scales: • Speed (not important) • Intelligence (basic) • Ease of use (very easy) • Price (free) • Focus (targeted) The goal: Find your unique position in the market 5) Major Insight: Most digital wellness apps focus on REMOVING distractions The opportunity: Build tools that REPLACE consumption with creation This is the kind of differentiation that makes marketing easy! 6) Framework Benefits: • Clarifies fuzzy ideas • Forces first principles thinking • Reveals hidden opportunities • Saves time & resources • Prevents building "Homer's Car" Notable Quotes: "It's hard to build when your hands are on fire." - Greg "If you don't have clear differentiation, you need to be a god tier marketer to sell something." - JC 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 FIND JAKE ON SOCIAL X/Twitter: https://x.com/jakek Website: https://jakeknapp.com/ LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jake-knapp/

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

• 0:00Greg Isenberg?

  We've got Jice Cream, the man who needs no introduction, Funnel Master, and then we've got Jake Knapp, who originally comes from Google, created, helped create the Design Sprint. And I think Jake, what I want to get out of this, this whole episode is to teach me, and by virtue of me, everyone, how to build a product that has the highest probability of success. So that's what I want to do. I want to, I want to build an AI rapper startup, but I want to build it with the highest probability of success. And I want a framework and a process and a methodology to help me get there.

• 0:52Speaker 01

  Amazing. So yeah, that sounds like super fun to talk about because that's what I've been obsessed with for a long time is trying to figure out how to get, how to get the best out of a good idea. And also even how to evaluate if we've got a set of ideas, which one should we pursue first? And then how do we tune whichever one seems the most promising into like the best form of it? That's going to be different. It's going to feel like it's worth people paying attention to. And, and then how to experiment on it once you, once you find it. So yeah, let's, let's do it. That'd be wonderful.

• 1:24Greg Isenberg?

  All right.

• 1:24Speaker 02

  I have like an app idea, a rapper idea that I'd love to launch. And I was wondering, maybe could that be a good thing for Jake to help evaluate? And help me figure out how to actually make it successful? And I actually haven't pitched this to him.

• 1:40Speaker 01

  I don't know. I'm really curious about what it is.

• 1:43Speaker 02

  I kept it a secret, so it's like authentic.

• 1:46Greg Isenberg?

  Don't ask a question you know the answer to. Sly devil, you. Yeah, of course. Let's go.

• 1:53Speaker 02

  All right, Jake, listen, I have this idea for a GTP rapper.

• 1:58Speaker 01

  GTP?

• 1:58Speaker 02

  GTP rapper.

• 2:01Speaker 02

  It is, so I've got this idea. I'm just going to like build it using all the fancy AI tools that are out there. It's called hit.me.

• 2:10Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 2:10Speaker 01

  Yep, okay.

• 2:11Speaker 02

  Hit.me.

• 2:11Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:12Speaker 02

  It's a way for me and other people like me, so like knowledge workers to control their dopamine, to get a dopamine hit.

• 2:20Speaker 01

  Oh, hit me with dopamine.

• 2:22Speaker 02

  Hit me with dopamine, right? It's for people who just want to be like, I don't want to fall into the doom scrolling of being on X, being on Instagram.

• 2:30Speaker 01

  I just need a dopamine hit.

• 2:31Speaker 02

  I just need to-

• 2:32Speaker 01

  I know that's what I need.

• 2:32Speaker 02

  Yes, I just need a time controlled dopamine hit of like the top things I want to know for my X account, the top things I want to know from whatever. And so that I can still get the dopamine hit, feel less FOMO because I don't want to delete my apps and become like a zen monk. And yeah, I don't want to doom scroll, but I still want to, I still want to know what Greg's up to.

• 2:56Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, this sounds like actually this is kind of an interesting idea.

• 2:59Speaker 02

  Plus AI.

• 3:00Speaker 01

  I just kind of like to say.

• 3:00Speaker 02

  Plus AI.

• 3:01Speaker 01

  And AI.

• 3:02Speaker 02

  AI dot AI.

• 3:03Speaker 01

  And could it also be crypto?

• 3:05Speaker 02

  It will not yet have a crypto element, not today.

• 3:09Speaker 01

  Okay, yeah, I love it. I love it. This is a good idea. Okay, so well, maybe this, shall we, should we just jump right into the framework that we use? So this is, this framework is what I use with startups that we invest in, Character Capital. So it's a tiny VC fund, we're investing in like pre-seed startups. And often they're at this state, like they, you know, smart founder, got an idea, haven't built anything yet, or just starting to toy around with something. Let's get off to the races. So shall I share my screen and we just like?

• 3:45Speaker 02

  Yeah, do you want to go into tutorial mode, just like?

• 3:47Speaker 01

  Is that fast or should we talk more first?

• 3:49Greg Isenberg?

  What did I talk, what did we, what did we say about?

• 3:52Speaker 02

  He won't ask questions you know the answer to.

• 3:54Greg Isenberg?

  Exactly.

• 3:55Speaker 02

  This guy just wants straight into tutorial. Let's fucking do it.

• 3:58Speaker 01

  Can you get me more cable over there so I can kind of squeeze this over here?

• 4:00Speaker 02

  Seven more cable or like six more cable?

• 4:02Greg Isenberg?

  I want the sauce. I would like, I would like the sauce.

• 4:07Speaker 02

  Show me sauce.

• 4:08Speaker 01

  Show me sauce. Okay, okay, let's do it. Share a screen.

• 4:11Speaker 02

  It's a very sauce based audience.

• 4:14Speaker 01

  So this is the Miro template for the foundation sprint, which is the, that's the method. So like Greg said, I created the design sprint. This is sort of the prequel to the design sprint. I mean, created it more recently in the last few years, but it's something you do before a design sprint. So it's perfect for this moment where John's got this idea. He's ready to rock. And just like a quick overview before we dive in, like the, the big steps of this would be firstly, want to get into like the basics. Just want to identify like crisply, what are the, what are these key elements of what you're doing? Then we want to talk about differentiation. And then we want to say like, okay, within that sort of idea that you have, what, what are the different forms that it might take? And maybe

• 4:56Speaker 01

  we can do a quick pass on which of those forms would be best. We'll have to go quick if we're gonna, you know, not take forever doing this, but let's just jump into this, like this customer thing. So who, like, who's the customer for this? Can you kind of give me a, okay, a few, it doesn't have to be one, you can give me like more than one, and then we can choose.

• 5:14Speaker 02

  So for me, I think it's initially mainly guys, just because I know guys, you know?

• 5:20Speaker 01

  Yeah, you know, guys.

• 5:21Speaker 02

  I'm one of the guys.

• 5:22Speaker 01

  But you need to find like, what do you mean by guys? Like,

• 5:24Speaker 02

  Guys?

• 5:24Speaker 01

  What does guys mean?

• 5:26Speaker 02

  Okay, are we really gonna, are we really gonna start this question?

• 5:29Speaker 01

  No, like, what's the age range? What's the age range?

• 5:31Speaker 02

  I think it's.

• 5:31Speaker 01

  What's the, is there, you said?

• 5:33Speaker 02

  Twenty five. So I think it's knowledge workers. I think it's like 25 to 35, maybe 25 to 40. Definitely, you know, working in tech or product space or entrepreneurs. Actually, I think maybe mainly entrepreneurs. It's, it's people who are, and it doesn't have to just be guys. It's just, I happen to be a guy and I'm thinking about this at a very basic level. It is.

• 5:58Speaker 01

  Sexist.

• 5:59Speaker 02

  Very sexist. It's a sexist product. No, but the idea here is that it's guys who are like, ah, I really need to keep up with all the things that are going on in the entrepreneurial space. I don't want to miss out on some new tech thing. I don't want to miss out on like this deep seek thing that has happened, but I also don't just want to read the news. I want to be looking at social media and seeing like the cutting edge stuff. But also what happens is when I go.

• 6:22Speaker 01

  Okay, wait, shut up for a second.

• 6:23Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 6:23Speaker 01

  Because that's gonna be the next thing.

• 6:24Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 6:24Speaker 01

  So I just wrote down two, based on what you said. One is like guys, knowledge workers slash entrepreneurs, maybe 25 to 40.

• 6:29Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 6:30Speaker 01

  Or we could just say like entrepreneurs, like.

• 6:32Speaker 02

  I think entrepreneurs is the, for V1.

• 6:35Speaker 01

  Okay, let's just call it, we'll, we'll lock that for a second. So it's cool.

• 6:37Speaker 02

  Sexy entrepreneurs.

• 6:38Speaker 01

  Yeah. Oh, sexy entrepreneurs. Yeah. I will put that in. Not bold in text. Oh no, it's gonna be in bold. Okay. Sexy entrepreneurs.

• 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

• 7:30Greg Isenberg?

  the traction that they need. So you can check out the link to startupempire.co in the description.

• 7:37Speaker 01

  Okay, so then, problem. Okay, so because you started talking about the problem.

• 7:42Speaker 02

  Yeah, okay, I went too quick.

• 7:43Speaker 01

  What is the, like, you hadn't read the book.

• 7:45Speaker 02

  I think digital addiction is one of them, and the sense that we're just spending hours on social media, even though that's, you know what it is? Consumption versus creation.

• 7:58Speaker 01

  Ah, okay.

• 7:59Speaker 02

  Overconsumption, instead of actually creating things is the problem, and the feeling of dark emptiness that comes with that.

• 8:06Speaker 01

  So of those, which would be like the one? Like, digital addiction, spending hours on social media? I know they're all like-

• 8:12Speaker 02

  Overconsumption.

• 8:13Speaker 01

  Overconsumption.

• 8:14Speaker 02

  Yeah, so like, it makes you feel like you're getting stuff done, but actually, all you're doing is consuming information.

• 8:20Speaker 01

  Okay, overconsumption, that's the best label for you.

• 8:23Speaker 02

  This podcast doesn't count as that.

• 8:25Speaker 01

  No, no.

• 8:26Speaker 02

  Right, Greg?

• 8:27Speaker 01

  This is pure, pure meaning.

• 8:31Speaker 02

  Yeah, there's-

• 8:31Greg Isenberg?

  No, this is sauce. Sauce. This is pure sauce.

• 8:34Speaker 02

  This is 100% sauce.

• 8:38Speaker 01

  Okay, so we've got entrepreneurs.

• 8:41Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 8:42Speaker 01

  And we've got, uh, overconsumption. That's our problem. Okay, so-

• 8:50Speaker 01

  What's a special capability that might give you an edge?

• 8:52Speaker 02

  So that, so just to clarify, do you mean what gives me personally as the entrepreneur making this product an edge?

• 8:58Speaker 01

  Yeah, you Jonathan, you're building this thing. What's like your, you know, if you imagine other team, like somebody else somewhere got the same idea right now. What's sort of special? And I'm going to ask you, by the way, I'm going to ask you like, what's your capability that might give you an edge? What's your insight that might give you an edge? What's your motivation for doing this? Might give you an edge? Cause any of those things.

• 9:19Greg Isenberg?

  I want to interrupt. I just want to say one thing. The beauty about this whole process, because I bet you people are thinking, it's not like we're talking about, should we use Bolt or Lovable? Or, you know, which tool should we use? This is back to first principles. It's like a first principles way of figuring out how to build an AI wrapper startup idea, right?

• 9:43Speaker 02

  Absolutely. And this is like, I guess when startups come to you guys, that's where you don't necessarily care, especially with something like this, exactly the tools they're going to use. It's, does this even have space in the market?

• 9:55Speaker 01

  Totally. Yeah. I mean, that's the thing. It's like the, I know from working with hundreds of startups over the years and seeing everything from like Slack and Uber to a lot of companies that just went out of business. Which by the way, I mean, that can happen even if you're really smart and have a good idea, but like the, the difference of the core thing, that technology ultimately will matter when you're building it. But like the core thing is like, does it solve a problem? Are people excited about getting this solution to the problem? And usually like you just thought of this idea, I don't know, today or like recently, maybe 15 minutes ago. But like usually working with a startup and they've been doing this thing for like them thinking about it for a while, right?

• 10:36Speaker 01

  Like maybe weeks, months, you know, maybe, maybe even like a couple of years, like, oh, should I, should I go ahead and do this? And even still, even if you've been thinking about it for a long time, it is rare that people are totally dialed in on the first principles, on the basics. Always helpful to say, well, let's just back off of the tech stack. Let's just. Talk about who's the customer?

• 11:00Speaker 02

  And I, yeah, I think like Greg, I know you don't talk about this too much on your podcast, but one of your companies runs design sprints a lot. And I'm sure you've experienced a company coming to you guys and being like, it's so nice to also just have the time and space to think about these things. Like, most people just dive right into the business, but being able to have someone, even right now, I'm getting caught up in this and I'm like, it's such a pleasure to just be able to have them headspace to think about it. And it can, it's already bringing up new ideas that I wasn't even thinking about in the first place.

• 11:33Speaker 01

  And it's fun to be the outsider here, too. Like, I love getting to ask the questions and I'm sure if you're the entrepreneur who has the idea already, you probably have a friend who would love to ask you the questions and like, you know, learn about it.

• 11:46Greg Isenberg?

  Yeah, I think, I think it's really hard to build when your hands are on fire. Period. Like, if your hands are on fire and you're just like, you see a viral tweet and you're like, oh my God, I need to go build what this person is saying really quickly. You kind of need to take a step back and be like, okay, whoa, whoa, whoa, what am I doing here? Why am I doing it? For who? Like, what, that's why I like this framework. So yeah, let's, let's keep going.

• 12:12Speaker 02

  Okay. So you asked me what my special capability is or something? What was your question?

• 12:17Speaker 01

  Yeah, right. Your capability and like, there might be more than one. I mean, I know you, Jonathan, you have many capabilities, but it's like, what's the thing that if you, if you imagine the typical person who might compete with you, who's also probably got their own capabilities, what's the thing that really like is a standout thing for you?

• 12:33Speaker 02

  I think what would be, what I would bring to the table would be like packaging up an idea. So like positioning and packaging, probably the, the mark, direct response, marketing angle. It's in a nutshell, probably I would have stronger marketing skills.

• 12:54Speaker 01

  Yeah. Funnel, funnel, funnel master.

• 12:57Speaker 02

  Yeah, the funnel, I think funnel building.

• 13:02Speaker 02

  Yeah, that kind of stuff. It would all be around marketing. And then one of the advantages would be design, because I'm a designer.

• 13:10Speaker 01

  Design?

• 13:10Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 13:11Speaker 01

  Also, you know, I don't think it comes across in the podcast or even in person, but you're funny. You have a good sense of humor and it might, that might be an advantage.

• 13:20Speaker 02

  So that's even a thing. Okay.

• 13:21Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 13:22Greg Isenberg?

  What about unfunny?

• 13:24Speaker 01

  Unfunny also is an advantage. Like, yeah, absolutely.

• 13:29Speaker 02

  It's a huge advantage. By the way, Greg, do you want us to zoom in more on these sections?

• 13:36Speaker 01

  Yeah. You know what? I think the only way I can do it is to make the window smaller, which I will do now.

• 13:41Greg Isenberg?

  Oh, baby.

• 13:43Speaker 02

  Yeah. Is that better for you?

• 13:44Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 13:44Greg Isenberg?

  Yeah. And if you don't mind, because there's audio listeners, just like whatever you're seeing.

• 13:51Speaker 01

  Yeah, right. Audio. Sorry, audio listener, that I wasn't doing that all along. Quick recap, quick catch up for audio listeners. What we've got here is...

• 13:58Greg Isenberg?

  You don't need to forget. Forget it.

• 14:01Speaker 01

  We're doing sticky notes on a virtual whiteboard. So that's, that's what you missed. Okay. So here we got packaging an idea, funnel master, positioning design. Which of these stands out to you as like, yeah, that's probably the thing or the two things I'd hang my hat on here.

• 14:14Speaker 02

  Okay. I think if I was, I think what would make me difficult to compete with would be the funnel part.

• 14:21Speaker 01

  Yeah, funnel master.

• 14:22Speaker 02

  Funnel.

• 14:23Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 14:23Speaker 02

  And I think the design element, because a lot of people who build these are developers.

• 14:30Speaker 01

  Right.

• 14:30Speaker 02

  And I'm a designer, so I would just come at this with a different angle and I'd be able to make a nice interface for it. And I think that would be important for this particular challenge.

• 14:39Speaker 01

  Love it. Okay. I'm going to grab those two, make them big. So we've got this little running tally of quick decisions. By the way, if you're doing this on your own, or if you have like a team, this will take longer. Jonathan's just one person.

• 14:52Speaker 02

  Look at the one behind us. You did this with a team today. I guess we can say they're like pip decks.

• 14:57Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 14:57Speaker 02

  And how long did it take for this one exercise?

• 15:00Speaker 01

  Exercise, two hours.

• 15:01Speaker 02

  Two hours.

• 15:02Speaker 01

  There's a few little buildup steps before, but yeah. So it's like, this is probably normally going to take.

• 15:05Speaker 02

  Flying through it.

• 15:06Speaker 01

  Yeah, we're flying. Okay. Insight. Do you have like a, something that you get about this that other people do not get?

• 15:13Speaker 02

  I think that this is one of these things where I actually am. Going through cycles of digital addiction and it's kind of like eating my own dog food or something. I have this problem. I've tried, I've spent a lot of money buying products to help solve this problem. They haven't solved it.

• 15:32Speaker 01

  Okay, but those don't quite reach the level of an insight.

• 15:34Speaker 02

  What do you, what's an insight? I need to.

• 15:35Speaker 01

  Well, it's like, for example, AI can help with this. Like, a lot of people have taken a crack at doing this, but nobody has unlocked the power of like AI plus design equals something really special.

• 15:54Speaker 02

  Okay, I think that a missing element from all of this and all of the products I've seen out there that attempt to do something like this is they end up replicating a non-stop scrolling system that can be refreshed. My insight here is you have a specific amount of time to use this per day. And so, once your time is up of like 30 minutes, I think time might be an element.

• 16:17Speaker 01

  Time capping.

• 16:18Speaker 02

  Time capping. The usage might actually be an element that other products might not be able to combine with the AI and design and et cetera.

• 16:26Speaker 01

  Yeah, okay.

• 16:29Greg Isenberg?

  Tell me, Jake, tell me if this is a, an insight.

• 16:33Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 16:33Greg Isenberg?

  So, one of the things I like to do is use Google Trends to figure out if, like, I might have an idea that there's something worth building in this space, but I like to know the monthly search volume and how it's trended over time. So, when I look at, for example, phone addiction, maybe I can share my, so if we look at phone addiction, can you see my screen?

• 16:59Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 16:59Speaker 02

  Yeah, look at that.

• 17:01Greg Isenberg?

  So, this is like, as a startup builder, this is what you want to see, literally up and to the right. So, and you know, I use a tool, I'm not like involved or sponsored by any sense, Glimpse. It's like, kind of layers on top of Google Trends. So, if you look at 2008, you're looking. Yeah, you know, 18,000 searches a month, which by the way, there's still a huge, there's still a market for that. But now we're looking at hundreds of thousands or 100 plus thousand searches per month.

• 17:39Greg Isenberg?

  My guess is it's only going to get bigger too. So the insight here being that, and then by the way, I also like kind of looking at, you know, what kind of questions people have, like how to reduce phone addiction.

• 17:50Speaker 01

  This is a cool app. Yeah, this is cool.

• 17:52Greg Isenberg?

  How to, how does grayscale help phone addiction? By the way, these questions really helped me on being like, oh, maybe I should have like a grayscale product feature.

• 18:01Speaker 02

  This is really cool. Yeah. Also great for YouTube video keyword research.

• 18:06Greg Isenberg?

  Yes.

• 18:07Speaker 01

  Witness the, what, what's going on in that? What years are the dip in like?

• 18:13Speaker 02

  Covid maybe because people didn't care about it.

• 18:16Greg Isenberg?

  Well, it's like they were at home, right? So like the, the phone addiction was less severe.

• 18:22Speaker 02

  Yeah. You're not in the toilet, like at a restaurant on your phone and being like, what am I?

• 18:29Greg Isenberg?

  Totally.

• 18:30Speaker 02

  Who am I?

• 18:31Greg Isenberg?

  You, you can also see, you know, certain countries are more addicted to their phone than others, which I find really interesting.

• 18:41Greg Isenberg?

  So like, for example, like the Philippines, people are really addicted to their phone there apparently. Singapore, like,

• 18:49Greg Isenberg?

  they're really addicted to their phone. So my question to you, Jake, and I'll, I'll give the baton to you. Back to the screen share.

• 18:58Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 19:00Greg Isenberg?

  You know, is this an insight? Does this consider an, is this considered an insight in your framework?

• 19:05Speaker 02

  Just say no, and then stop talking just flat out.

• 19:08Speaker 01

  No.

• 19:12Greg Isenberg?

  Damn.

• 19:14Greg Isenberg?

  Damn. And that's the podcast.

• 19:20Speaker 01

  No, I mean, I think it is. So I was like, that's a, you know, the, the downside with that insight is that you were able to get it from, from Google Trends. So presumably anyone could access it. The best insights are ones that for some reason, because of your unique sort of situation. You have a peek into something that nobody else does. And, um, but you know, those aren't necessary for a great product. They're just often those are like really special. It's clear from that chart that like Apple's sort of screen time features and all that stuff. It's like, it's not making a difference. Like this is still a problem. So, um,

• 19:58Speaker 02

  I was always a Band-Aid solution just to make them seem like they cared.

• 20:02Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah. But it would definitely push you, John, to say like, okay, this is a legit problem. I can, I can definitely like sniff test it with trends. But is there something that you think you know about this or, or, or guess about this? You don't think other people guess?

• 20:19Speaker 02

  I think that, um, not many people know yet the destructive results of consuming versus creating. And I think that it's only starting to like slowly make its way into the zeitgeist. I don't even think the average entrepreneur who spends loads of time even listening to all of this stuff about cold showers and all of this stuff, yet knows the destructive power of consuming more than you create. Um, the depression, the anxiety, all of these things. I'm like always studying things like anxiety, trying to solve my own life problems.

• 21:01Speaker 02

  And a huge, huge amount of information is just starting to come out around consuming versus creating being a cause of a lot of issues. And I think not many people have been digging into that insight as much as I have on this topic.

• 21:17Speaker 01

  Totally. That certainly isn't like, I just read a great, and it was kind of like a niche post about how having high agency is correlated with just like overall like happiness, life satisfaction. And the author identified consuming versus creating among a long list of things. It's like, that's a, a great way to give yourself like high agency. But it's not something that you've heard. That was the first time I heard a glimpse of it. And then I was shocked that you were talking about it because I'd never heard it. So that's, yeah, that's a new, that's a new thing.

• 21:46Speaker 02

  I've only started talking about it in the last two weeks because I'm like, oh my God. I, I was, I was stuck on the consuming is bad because you're getting like lots of bad stuff and you're numbing yourself. I didn't think about the fact that consuming is bad because you're not creating. And now, by the way, doing this, Uh, foundation sprint. I know, I don't know if this ever happens. I'm like, wait a minute. I don't want to make a GTP wrapper that's about giving you the information from X and all these places. I want to make a GTP wrapper that focuses on helping you figure out how to switch consumption into creation in certain points of your day. I don't know if that's part of how this works, but I just like that it gave me a random idea that,

• 22:31Speaker 02

  wait a second, why would I focus on that thing when this is, this insight is the core of the problem? But I don't know.

• 22:39Speaker 01

  I mean, the reason why we're doing the basics, like before we do the approach is for that very reason. Like, we want to make sure that the approach you take is the one that best solves the problem.

• 22:47Speaker 02

  This is, you know what? This is one of the challenges. And I'm, Greg, you've probably seen this again with LCA. Sometimes when people are in a design sprint, they're like, oh, I now want to do something different. But in a design sprint, it's hard to get off the train because it's powering forward and like,

• 23:02Speaker 01

  Clocks ticking.

• 23:02Speaker 02

  They've already paid for the fucking sprint as well. So you don't want to, but like the foundation sprint, what I like about it is that you have, I, I feel like the client, again, I'm thinking about it from an agency perspective. The client has the opportunity to just explore a bit.

• 23:16Speaker 01

  Right, right. Yeah, yeah. It's a little bit, you, you have more freedom. You're like, you have a little bit more slack in this.

• 23:21Speaker 02

  Cool. Maybe let's just keep, keep going on. By the way, I'm not kidding. Right now I'm like, I actually don't want to share this idea because I want to do it. So.

• 23:29Speaker 01

  We can delete the podcast.

• 23:30Speaker 02

  Yeah, let's just delete. Greg's probably going to be like, it sucked so much anyway. He doesn't want to put it out.

• 23:35Greg Isenberg?

  We'll see. We'll see if this is a good idea by the end.

• 23:37Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Jake's gonna rate it.

• 23:40Speaker 01

  Yeah. So motivation, like what is of all the things you could do, why would you do this?

• 23:45Speaker 02

  I, this is probably getting a bit too personal, but uh, I have.

• 23:51Speaker 01

  Make it deep.

• 23:51Speaker 02

  Yeah, I have like generalized anxiety disorder, uh, which is like a, you know, everyone has, everyone says they have anxiety. So whatever. It's like the, one of the things. And I've come to a strong realization that it gets much worse when I'm consuming more and more and more. And it's much better when I'm in a more creation mode.

• 24:15Speaker 02

  At like sitting on, watching YouTube videos all day, even if they're really interesting and about business. If I don't pair that with actual action, it makes life worse. So I have a selfish motivation to create things that.

• 24:32Speaker 02

  Increase my ability to create.

• 24:34Speaker 01

  Yeah, okay. I've written that.

• 24:36Speaker 02

  Is that a good motivation or is it too like soft and personal?

• 24:40Speaker 01

  Yeah, it was really soft and personal and like, kind of like.

• 24:43Speaker 02

  I'm sorry, guys.

• 24:47Speaker 01

  No, that's good. Like, that's, I think that's what this should be, right? Like, the, the reason this is split out from the other stuff is sometimes this is what makes the thing great. The, the creator of the thing is like, hair on fire about something that other people are not so motivated on.

• 25:05Speaker 02

  Yeah, scratch my own itch.

• 25:07Speaker 01

  Yeah, or, or, or, you know, sometimes it's not their own itch. It's like, no, this is this problem I see that I really want to solve or like, whatever it might be, but that it's special and it really drives you, it can inform how you differentiate.

• 25:20Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 25:21Speaker 01

  So it's good to tune into that. So I think, I think that's a good one. I would, of these, like, what do you think of the phrasing, want to solve this for myself?

• 25:28Speaker 02

  Oh, there's one more thing.

• 25:29Speaker 01

  Do it, yeah.

• 25:30Speaker 02

  Uh, and actually, it might even be stronger than all of these. It's like, I think back to my teenage years when I used to make comic books. I was in a band and I used to make little video games and all of this stuff. And I was really proud of the stuff I got out. And I think of the last 10 years, I'm like, I just spent 80% of my time just consuming social media and didn't create things. And I think like, uh, one big motivation is to not regret not creating things.

• 26:00Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 26:03Speaker 02

  Greg's like, I need to get these guys off the podcast.

• 26:05Greg Isenberg?

  What about, no, I was just thinking like, what about helping people? You know, this is about.

• 26:10Speaker 02

  So I have to say.

• 26:12Speaker 01

  Jonathan's associate.

• 26:12Speaker 02

  No, I want to be really honest for being here. I actually think first, at least for this challenge, I think first about like what selfishly I'd love to exist for myself. And then I'm, and, and with all the things we end up doing at my company, I'm like really pleasantly happy that it also helps other people, but I always want to make the thing for myself first, or I won't care as much. I don't know, that's just my own, it's cool if it helps other people, but I will only really care about it if I feel like this is something that would have helped me 10 years ago. It's like, what would have been amazing if it was there 10 years ago for me? That's what I want to make.

• 26:57Speaker 01

  I think, yeah, you go.

• 26:59Greg Isenberg?

  That's a strategy. That's certainly a strategy.

• 27:02Speaker 02

  Well, you're more strategic about these things. And so I would never just go, I would like, call you up and call Jake up and then be like, guys, so how do I not just make this a Jonathan product? You know?

• 27:12Greg Isenberg?

  Well, what worries me about a Jonathan product is, and I want to put this, Rafa, our producer could maybe put this image up. Have you ever seen the Simpsons episode where Homer designs his car?

• 27:28Speaker 02

  No.

• 27:29Speaker 01

  We gotta be able to find that.

• 27:30Speaker 02

  But you know, okay, I get the general idea that it just becomes so specific to.

• 27:35Greg Isenberg?

  Hold up.

• 27:36Speaker 02

  Okay, bring it on.

• 27:37Greg Isenberg?

  Homer's Homer's dream car. There it is.

• 27:42Greg Isenberg?

  That is Jonathan designing his app.

• 27:45Speaker 02

  Yes. Okay.

• 27:46Greg Isenberg?

  The, the issue I have with that, with this is.

• 27:50Speaker 02

  That's my app.

• 27:51Greg Isenberg?

  That's what I have.

• 27:53Speaker 01

  Literally has a car.

• 27:56Greg Isenberg?

  So the horn at the top, I think, from what I remember from the 90s plays like La Cucaracha. When you, it's like La Cucaracha, La Cucaracha. Yeah. You know, so sometimes what sounds great to you

• 28:11Greg Isenberg?

  isn't what sounds great to others. So that's the, that's what I'm hoping this process.

• 28:16Speaker 02

  Oh yeah. Actually, I guess there will be. Yeah, you're right. Yeah.

• 28:19Greg Isenberg?

  Has guardrails.

• 28:21Speaker 01

  Here's how I think about this. Uh, let's see, let me get out of this.

• 28:24Speaker 02

  Yeah. What would you say to that?

• 28:25Speaker 01

  Yeah, I, I would say that here we start, oh, this is, is this, which one was I editing?

• 28:33Speaker 02

  Oh yeah. That's a laptop you're using.

• 28:34Speaker 01

  This is a laptop.

• 28:35Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 28:36Speaker 01

  Ah, I see. Right. Okay. Yeah. No, here we go. So, uh, the thing about this is we started off, we talked about who's the customer? What's the problem you want to solve for the customer? And we talked about, right, Jonathan's capabilities and insights. The thing about the motivation is I just personally, like if I'm investing in a company, I'm, I'm a little nervous if their motivation is just money. Just because that's like, well, yeah, of course, like that should come if you do a good job here. But it's a little hard to tap into what's special about that. It's hard to like, create, drive or fire out of that to do something unique and opinionated. It's, it's actually fine with me if it is sort of selfish. I think there is a category where it's like, gosh, for this personal reason, like.

• 29:21Speaker 01

  I saw my parents struggle with this. I saw, you know, I have friends who struggle with this, or I've, I work in this, you know, I work with this group of people, whether it's like Jonathan, maybe he is mentoring entrepreneurs and he sees them struggling and he knows he wants to help people like that. If that's sincerely true, well then like, great, like, maybe that's it. But if the sincere reason is he wants to solve it for himself, and we still did also start by saying like, yeah, but who are the people who will use this? And like, do we think, what problem do we suspect they have? I personally think it's fine for him to be, to be honest and say like, yeah, but like, really, my motivation is I want this thing for myself. I think there's great stuff that comes, can come from that. You know, we just, it has to be balanced with that other, those other elements.

• 30:03Speaker 01

  And ultimately, it has to be balanced with experiments, should probably design sprints. We're going to prototype the thing, put it in front of those customers and see like, okay, do they also share the problem you have? Okay. Do they find that Homer's dream car for you is like just garbage for them? Or are you on to something? So anyway, I guess, I like just sort of labeling it here because it's like, we're not going to change Jonathan's mind that that's why he's motivated. So like, fine, like.

• 30:29Speaker 02

  Yeah, great. I want the Cucaracha.

• 30:35Speaker 01

  What would your horn play?

• 30:36Speaker 02

  My horn would play.

• 30:51Greg Isenberg?

  You didn't add. You didn't add a human trumpet to the unfair advantages.

• 30:57Speaker 02

  Hell yeah, human trumpet. No one's ever asked me to human trumpet. I've never gotten the opportunity to human trumpet on this podcast, but finally, I hope that doesn't get cut out.

• 31:07Speaker 01

  So which of these would you choose, John?

• 31:10Speaker 02

  Um, honestly, if I'm looking at it, I would go for the more positive thing. It's I want to create.

• 31:16Speaker 01

  Want to create.

• 31:17Speaker 02

  And I, I want to replace consumption with creation, or like, change the pie chart to like 80, 20 creation, consumption.

• 31:25Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 31:27Speaker 02

  But Greg's podcast doesn't count and I would listen to that every day on repeat while I'm creating.

• 31:32Speaker 01

  Okay, let's move on competitors. How do people try to solve this today? What do they do as a workaround? Or are there other products?

• 31:38Speaker 02

  So I got a little bit stuck here when I was trying to fill this out. I was thinking like, like the competition here, or at least people would believe the competition would be something like Brick, you know, this thing that blocks your phone, News Feed Eradicator, Freedom, which you use and talked about before. Honestly, the grayscale thing in the iPhone and even the iPhones built in stuff.

• 32:02Speaker 01

  Like the screen time stuff.

• 32:03Speaker 02

  And another competitor is like, basically like movements, you know, like no social media movements and no news movements, like those types of things, digital detox retreats and things like that.

• 32:20Speaker 01

  Okay, cool.

• 32:21Speaker 02

  I see all those as my absolute enemies.

• 32:24Speaker 01

  So which of these enemies is like the 800 pound gorilla? Like what's like, you know what I think is missing from here is honestly, like people just try to white knuckle it, like they try to.

• 32:31Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 32:32Speaker 01

  Self-control.

• 32:32Speaker 02

  Yeah, self-control. Yeah.

• 32:34Speaker 01

  Try to use self-control and feel bad.

• 32:35Speaker 02

  And honestly pisses me off so much when I talk to people about this topic and they're like, oh, I'm just gonna like, or I have a friend who's like, obviously is as addicted as anyone else. And he's like, yeah, I'm just gonna, yeah, it's great. And he's like, yeah, I'm just gonna like, you know, man up and like, whatever. And it's like, yeah, that doesn't really work. Like it's too good, you know, we can't stop. Yeah, I think probably self-control is the most common thing that people say to me is like, the thing they're going to use instead of all these things.

• 33:07Speaker 01

  Yeah, I don't think people really.

• 33:08Speaker 02

  I didn't think about that.

• 33:09Speaker 01

  I think it's like, I mean, people, some people do, but like, it's almost no one compared to try to use self-control.

• 33:14Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 33:15Speaker 01

  That would be my opinion.

• 33:16Speaker 02

  I think that's a really, I was genuinely not thinking of that.

• 33:19Speaker 01

  So if we grab this set, okay, let's just say like, all of these are your competitors, but like the most important one maybe is self-control.

• 33:29Speaker 02

  And is that accurate? So when I read the book, I wouldn't have thought that you could put something like that in there.

• 33:35Speaker 01

  You don't have to, the book's garbage. You just need to buy it. No, I think, I mean, I don't know, like that part, I, I think we, you know, we sort of talk about like, competitors might be products.

• 33:49Speaker 01

  Competitors might be a substitute, so substitute of like, I use, yeah, like, I'm using this thing to solve that problem.

• 33:57Speaker 02

  I do this instead.

• 33:57Speaker 01

  I do this thing instead. And sometimes the competitor is nothing. Like, there is actually no thing that solves it, which can be mean it's, oh, it's a great opportunity. There's no competitors there, but it can also mean like, the problem's not that bad. People aren't motivated to solve it. And the fact that like, none of these other, like, you would definitely give me pause here that people have tried all these things and none of these is like, like exploding because people don't really want, maybe they don't really want to solve it.

• 34:24Speaker 02

  I think it's also that we don't understand why we're addicted to this stuff.

• 34:29Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 34:29Speaker 02

  And we have not created other better substitutes to, like, why would you not open up this box that does everything for you and hits you with dopamine all day long?

• 34:40Speaker 01

  Right.

• 34:40Speaker 02

  And I will also say, you can also say to yourself, yeah, well, I don't do this drug and I don't do party, I don't party all the time and I don't, like, you can say, I don't do all these things.

• 34:51Speaker 01

  I mean, you can't say that.

• 34:52Speaker 02

  No, I can't say that, obviously. So, you know what I'm talking about? But like, other clean eating people can say, I don't do all this stuff. But then you feel like, oh, well, it's innocent. I'm just spending 80% of my life scrolling. But I think that there's a strong sense of, there's the negativity that comes from that. The negative consequences are way more extreme than people believe. Me, me, me, me, me.

• 35:19Speaker 02

  And again, I just want to be clear. It doesn't mean I'm saying people shouldn't use these, shouldn't consume and shouldn't just chill and shouldn't like, switch their brain off sometimes. It's the ratio that I'd like to solve with a product.

• 35:35Speaker 01

  All right, I'm going to grab this stuff over and just kind of bring it together. So we have one quick, quick little, little one-stop shopping to see all this. So the customer entrepreneurs, and delete the word sexy because frankly, offensive to.

• 35:50Speaker 02

  Very offensive.

• 35:51Speaker 01

  So we're just going to make that entrepreneurs. And the problem is this power of consume versus create. And the advantage.

• 36:01Speaker 02

  The sexy power of consume.

• 36:03Speaker 01

  The sexy power of consume. Your advantage is you're sexy over consumption.

• 36:09Speaker 02

  Over sexy consumption.

• 36:11Speaker 01

  Wait, how did I get over consumption there? Oh, that's the problem.

• 36:16Speaker 02

  Jake's like, what's a laptop?

• 36:18Speaker 01

  It's a laptop. What's a trackpad? Okay.

• 36:21Speaker 02

  People are going to be asking, what's the software you're using? Oh, no, it's written on the top left. It's a whiteboard thing called Miro. It's good if you want to use a whiteboard thing, and it's actually a good one. We do, I mean, we don't get any, there's no affiliate link or something. Oh shit, okay. Okay, actually, then you disclose that. Okay, I have nothing to do with Miro. And I think it's a good one of those whiteboard things. And I think it's also free.

• 36:46Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's pretty great. It's pretty great. But I am incentivized to say so. Okay.

• 36:51Speaker 01

  So we've got, yeah, your customer entrepreneurs problem, overconsumption. Your capability is design and funnel master. Your insight is your power of consume versus create. Your motivation is wanting to create. And then we're going to plunk in these competitors with self-control.

• 37:07Speaker 02

  I'm going to destroy them.

• 37:08Speaker 01

  The 800, yeah, you're gonna.

• 37:10Speaker 02

  They're gonna be gone.

• 37:11Speaker 01

  Rip these guys to shreds.

• 37:12Speaker 02

  I'm gonna deep seek them.

• 37:15Speaker 02

  I'm gonna seek them deeply.

• 37:17Speaker 01

  Gorilla, self-control, all these other guys over here. Now, this is like, look, this stuff, it's called the basics. And like, if, I don't know. For some people, they're like, see this? And at first blush, you're like, this is kind of stupid. Like, of course I know this stuff. Why would I need to like fill out a canvas?

• 37:35Speaker 02

  Changed, I mean, all the stuff I wrote is so much like, it's actually really helpful to see this in a scannable one pager.

• 37:43Speaker 01

  It's kind of nice. It's kind of nice. And the key thing too here, and you know, I don't know, like, I can't. How long have we already gone? How many, I don't know how much time we have left to go. But like, one of the key things here is you've got all this stuff in the basics. And then now it's like, okay, my brain is totally primed to think about differentiation. Do I have the opportunity to differentiate from these competitors? Given my advantage, my whatever combination of capability, insight, motivation? Can I realistically make something that's just going to totally destroy those competitors? And can I frame the world in a way for these customers, for entrepreneurs in this case? That they're going to see that and be like, oh, my God, yeah. Well, I'd never thought about things that way, but I want that thing that, you know, that does it. So.

• 38:28Speaker 01

  So it's a good, it's really good warm up, right? Even, even if you didn't have the magical experience of Jonathan of being like, oh, that changed the way I saw things a bit, even if it was just laying out what's in your head. I feel like this is a very powerful way to prime yourself to think, do I have a market? Do I have an opportunity here?

• 38:45Greg Isenberg?

  So Now Jake,

• 38:47Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 38:47Greg Isenberg?

  I don't know if you've ever done this, but have you ever done something like taking a screenshot of, for example, the basics, going to chat GPT or chat GPT pro and being like, I'm thinking about creating a startup. This is the idea. What am I missing?

• 39:07Speaker 01

  I don't think that would be a bad idea, but I don't do it because my experience with experimenting with it has been that the, the way chat GPT looks at the world, it just tends to be like, kind of the oatmeal version of things. And I'm so much more interested in like the opinionated, like weird versions of things that people come up with. I still feel like for weirdness, humans have like kind of an advantage at that. And, and so I, I like, I like the founder's take more than that. And that said, it's not going to hurt to do that. And I could totally be wrong. And I'm sure like thousands of people would shout at me like, you're wrong. Like you can totally get that great stuff from it. That's just been my experience.

• 39:50Speaker 01

  We had, we had a founder recently who actually ran an entire design sprint. This is a smart guy, like co-founder of Google Gemini, a real smart guy who left and founded a new, a new startup. And he's like, you know, great, we're running this design sprint together, running this foundation sprint together. Great. But I want to see what, I'm going to create like some different GPTs, have them run through as if they were a team, right? Like see what they produce in their own foundation sprint and their own design sprint. And, you know, we looked at it and it was kind of like, eh, like what you came up with was so much, so much spicier as a, as a human going through it. But again, like your mileage may vary. I wouldn't, I wouldn't like, uh, die on a hill saying that, but that's, that's my experience so far.

• 40:36Greg Isenberg?

  My take, yeah, so my take is I would go through this process, you know, yourself or with a team, humans only, just pure,

• 40:46Speaker 01

  completely pure.

• 40:48Greg Isenberg?

  Once you're done it, then you can do two things. One is show this to other people and get feedback. And the other thing is show this to AI and get feedback.

• 41:00Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, yeah, I mean, that's the thing. Like if you, I feel like if you rely on it to do the thinking for you, you will miss, you know, God, honestly, even if it does come up with a great thing, not stepping through and processing it yourself. I think it's hard to have the motivation to, and the conviction to go after the thing.

• 41:23Greg Isenberg?

  It's hard, it's hard for it to click, right? In your brain.

• 41:26Speaker 02

  Hard for it to what?

• 41:27Greg Isenberg?

  Click.

• 41:29Speaker 02

  Hard for it to what?

• 41:31Greg Isenberg?

  What?

• 41:40Greg Isenberg?

  Got it.

• 41:42Speaker 01

  Differentiation, I mean, should we, should we dive in and do this?

• 41:45Speaker 02

  I mean, look, it's up to Greg.

• 41:47Speaker 01

  Yeah, is it still saucy or, you know?

• 41:50Speaker 02

  I'm still, I'm actually quite excited about, I kind of want to do this now.

• 41:55Greg Isenberg?

  Yeah, that's, that's a rock.

• 41:56Speaker 01

  Okay, well, so for this, this whole part, what we're trying to do is create a two by two. We're trying to create like business school one-on-one diagram where you're plotting your competitors and you're in the upper right of this two by two diagram and they are totally pressed out of that quadrant. They're somewhere in the like L shape of other quadrants that I like to think of as Loserville. You're going to push them down there. So like in this diagram we have here, here this, zoom in there. In this diagram, like the target is for like you to be up here and every competitor, including the 800 pound gorilla to be down there.

• 42:34Speaker 02

  Crummy.

• 42:35Speaker 01

  Crummy, yeah, differentiator on one side, crummy opposite on the other. And so that's what we're going to go for. Now, I feel like a lot of people do think about differentiation, but I just don't know how often folks dig really deep into it, thinking about differentiation from the customer perspective at the very, very inception of a project. And it's a tremendous opportunity. If you start there, you define this very special way that you're going to frame your solution against the competition from the beginning. And then you prove that with design sprints. And then you build that and execute it. Then you're not, you're not sort of slapping positioning on at the end when you're doing marketing or sales. It's like truly embodied in the product.

• 43:20Speaker 01

  And it becomes really easy to talk about. It's like, this actually is what the thing is. This is why it's special. And then you're also giving your customers a tool to talk to other people about it. Because that, you know, it will deliver on the promise. So anyway, that's differentiation. I think a huge deal, but I think you have to dig deep to get exactly the right differentiators. So that's what this little, the step by step we're about to do is all about that.

• 43:42Speaker 02

  By the way, and what you just said there, if you don't have clear differentiation, you need to be a god tier marketer to sell something. If you do have clear differentiation, it's very easy to market the thing. How do I know this? Because I market other people's stuff a lot. And sometimes when it's just a vanilla thing and it's like, when I say like, oh yeah, what's the difference between this and this? And they can't explain it. I know this is going to be a slog.

• 44:11Speaker 01

  And that's probably not that infrequent for a company who's already built something.

• 44:15Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 44:15Speaker 01

  To not know how to describe.

• 44:16Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 44:16Speaker 01

  I've certainly lived that, building products.

• 44:18Speaker 02

  Or to not be able to say, oh, it's a little, you know, it's, this is why this is different from the other things. It's, even if they can't describe the overall thing, I just wanted them to be able to say, okay, so, but how does it compare to your direct competitor? Like, why is that different?

• 44:35Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 44:37Speaker 01

  Well, shall we jump into this?

• 44:38Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 44:38Speaker 01

  Okay, so this first step, a little, I'll give a little verbalization of this for people who aren't on video. It's just a series of scales from, the first one is from slow to fast, like, you know, one through seven, slow to fast, a line, a scale. The next one, not so smart to smart, hard to use to easy to use, expensive to free, and so forth. There's a few of these, and I call these like the classic differentiators. These are things that lots of products have differentiated on in the past. They're things that people sort of readily understand what these are, and they're certainly not the full comprehensive set of things you could differentiate on, but it's a great warm-up for thinking about differentiation.

• 45:20Speaker 01

  So Jonathan, what I'm going to ask you to do is like, bearing in mind what the competitive, you know, alternatives are today, for solving this problem, how do you think your product could stack up? And maybe you can even like, like, drive here and just copy that little blue sticky note and place it on the bar wherever you would say like, could you be faster? Sometimes this won't make sense.

• 45:41Speaker 02

  Yeah, but I think I got a feel for it just by looking at it. I'm just going to do that right now.

• 45:47Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 45:47Speaker 02

  Silently.

• 45:48Speaker 01

  Yeah, and I'll narrate. I can narrate what you're doing, unless Greg has something, you know, to say, since we're just monologuing.

• 45:56Greg Isenberg?

  I have something to say once you get to the expensive and free.

• 45:59Speaker 02

  Yeah, you should. I think, I think this product's speed is like zero of zero importance, so I'm just going to like drop it in the middle.

• 46:05Speaker 01

  Doesn't matter.

• 46:06Speaker 02

  Yeah, it doesn't matter. I would say it's actually also not super smart. I would use a relatively, it would be a relatively off-the-shelf use of some sort of chat GTP or any, I would basically not need a lot of intelligence.

• 46:22Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 46:23Speaker 02

  Very easy to use.

• 46:24Speaker 01

  Very easy to use.

• 46:25Speaker 02

  Yeah, I would definitely start this off free.

• 46:28Speaker 01

  Definitely free. Okay, did you want to interject there, Greg?

• 46:31Greg Isenberg?

  I did. So, one of the things I've been noticing in software land at least is, there's, there's this shift from software as a service to pay per use. So what I'm thinking is, like, what's hard for me about this framework is, is thinking about, okay, it's not as simple as free versus expensive. Sometimes it's, the differentiator could be the type of business model. How, how should I think about that?

• 47:06Speaker 02

  That's a great question.

• 47:07Speaker 01

  I think that if you are thinking about it, so the next step after this is like custom differentiators, like what are, what are the ones that you think would apply and would be useful for separating from the competition? And I think it's possible that the, the way people pay for it could make a ton of sense here. That could be the thing that makes it stand out and makes you say like, God, that's much better. I'd much rather, I'd much rather pay a subscription for getting my CDs mailed to me than, you know, rent them one at a time at the video store to use like the Netflix sort of example. But, um, but for now, like I think free, free isn't especially powerful concept. And this is not to say it's not

• 47:47Speaker 01

  better, right? Than, than like as a business model. It's just that in this world, on this first set of activities here, where it's like, these are things that you can kind of take to the bank that customers will understand. Free is instantly understandable and like, you know, it, it makes a huge difference. If you've ever read Predictably Irrational, there's like a lot of studies around how insanely irrational people act when something is free. So that's, that's my pushback here. I would also say that a very good argument against this is that sometimes expensive is actually the selling point. Like the fact that it's the luxury version, the expensive version is part of what makes it appealing. And that totally can be true. It's just, that's more likely to be like, in our special

• 48:29Speaker 01

  case, that's a custom one over here. These are just sort of the dumb set, right?

• 48:35Speaker 02

  Um, I think it's a relatively one size fits all. Does this mean one size fits all versus focused? What would that mean in this context? Like with a product that I'm talking about?

• 48:51Speaker 01

  Uh, yeah, like it might be really focused on the exact thing you think your customers have. I mean, honestly, like screen time and like all of these, you know, you listed off a bunch of competitors that are sort of general purpose for, like I, I don't really, I'm feeling like I use my phone a bit too much. And you're specifically trying to solve the problem of

• 49:17Speaker 02

  Consumption versus

• 49:18Speaker 01

  Overconsumption, right? And these are not, these are not like laser focused on consumption. So I could imagine that you might say, I think I can really differentiate on being focused for entrepreneurs.

• 49:28Speaker 02

  Okay. So in that concept, in that context, I would say it's focused.

• 49:31Speaker 01

  It is focused. Okay. And then

• 49:33Speaker 02

  Simple.

• 49:34Speaker 01

  It's complicated.

• 49:35Speaker 02

  Simple.

• 49:36Speaker 01

  It's going to be simpler than those other options.

• 49:37Speaker 02

  And then integrated versus siloed, I think it's probably quite siloed. I think this would be like a stat, like completely standalone.

• 49:46Speaker 02

  I don't know exactly if it would need to interact too much besides pulling stuff from other places.

• 49:51Speaker 01

  And like, this is good that not all of these are like to the right. You know, this isn't like, oh God, you got an F and P.

• 49:57Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 49:58Speaker 01

  No, it's like, it's good that these things are spread out like this. Okay, so now we're going to do the same thing, only I want you to come up with your own differentiators.

• 50:06Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 50:06Speaker 01

  That you think are especially special.

• 50:08Speaker 02

  Okay, I think that one of the big, now that we've gone through this process,

• 50:13Speaker 02

  most of these products are about, they're about like removing this stuff from your life and replacing it with like nothing, right?

• 50:23Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 50:23Speaker 02

  This is like a product that has,

• 50:29Speaker 02

  it replaces the bad stuff. It replaces the consumption with creation ideally. So I don't know exactly how the product would do this yet, but an example of this that I would have would be you're about, you know, at 8:00 PM, maybe this product saying, you're probably about to sit down and watch Netflix. How about this instead? Here's like a suggestion on how you can create versus consume. Or you maybe type in, I'm about to sit down and watch YouTube for four hours. And it's, and it's like, hey, if it's Greg's podcast, that's fine. But anything else, maybe you could do a, like, you know, maybe it's like, what were you thinking of watching? I was thinking of watching loads of business or politics.

• 51:14Speaker 02

  Well, how about this instead? Something that would maybe scratch the itch, but in a more, in a less dopamine dumping way.

• 51:22Speaker 01

  Yeah, well, let's just put like a tiny bow on this little part. I wrote, well, what you were saying, I wrote like, replace distraction to remove distractions. Like your competitors are removing distractions.

• 51:32Speaker 02

  Yeah, exactly. They're about removing, I'm replacing.

• 51:34Speaker 01

  And I also wrote a scale of like creation dopamine as like the good thing. I give you dopamine for creating.

• 51:39Speaker 02

  Versus no dopamine.

• 51:40Speaker 01

  Versus no dopamine.

• 51:40Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 51:41Speaker 01

  Like remove the dopamine.

• 51:41Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 51:43Speaker 01

  So that's, yeah, okay. So this is like, anyway, let's just like zoom out for a second. I'm literally zooming out on the whiteboard, but like zooming out in terms of where we are. We started with talking about. Okay, you've you've got this idea for a GPT wrapper and you're trying to figure out what form should it take? Is there something there? This process is a way to just kind of define, well, what is it? What are the basics of this thing? Who's the customer for it? What are we trying to solve? What can I do that's special here? What can my team do that's special here? Who are the competitors? And then starting to think about, how can I craft the story around this? Before that, I even know exactly what I'm building. What's the story I'm likely to be able to to really win on? Both win on execution, win on telling that story, marketing that story? That's what John's trying to do right now.

• 52:28Speaker 01

  He's thinking about like, okay, I'm not going to be, you know, a smarter alternative than the other products. It's not going to be faster, it's going to be more integrated. But maybe some of the things that really matter are this notion of like, creating a different kind of dopamine. Not just saying like, it's dopamine or no dopamine, but saying, no, there's a different, this is going to offer you something different. And we would continue on with this. But in terms of evaluating whether this idea is promising or not, you know, already, even though we're probably about like halfway through this whole, this whole foundation sprint method, which by the way, is all in this book, click, which John keeps putting his phone on, so I can't pick it up easily. But we're about halfway through there. And to me already, this is feeling like, yeah, there's something, it feels like there's something unique there. There's something that's like,

• 53:11Speaker 02

  I was just getting started.

• 53:12Speaker 01

  Feeling a bit of special.

• 53:13Speaker 02

  We're just going to keep going after Greg hangs off the phone. We're like, yeah.

• 53:17Speaker 01

  Yeah. So anyway, that's the, that's, that's kind of the, the thought process with this framework so far.

• 53:22Speaker 02

  And you just keep going and it kind of bring, it keeps like bringing your vision and strategy into, into like clarity from blurriness to clarity. But it, but the, in a nutshell, it's about finding your key, it's about finding what makes you different and what will help make your product stand out in the market.

• 53:41Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's right.

• 53:42Speaker 02

  Is that in the nutshell? Is that what you'd say?

• 53:43Speaker 01

  In a nutshell, it's about, you know, you have the seed of an idea. This is a great, very first thing to do. Can you make it special?

• 53:51Greg Isenberg?

  Yeah, I think a lot of people who listen to the show, I mean, their idea, guys and girls, right? So they have a lot of ideas. The thing with ideas is you kind of, you start really with, you start in the fog. You're in the fog and your goal is to, by the way, you're drunk on the fog. Right? Like you are so excited about this idea. You want to get going. And I think it's helpful to just, You know, John used the word like clear, kind of clear it out or clarify it. What I like about this method is it forces you to kind of go through the fog lifting experience. And then at the end, you could be like, you know what?

• 54:36Greg Isenberg?

  I don't want to build this homework car. Like, there's too much competition, or I can't differentiate, or I don't have an advantage. Or you know what? I'm actually not that motivated. And I encourage people to actually like sleep on this. Like, just, you know, sleep on this before you invest your time and energy into something. And then, so I appreciate you guys coming on. We'll include a link to the book.

• 55:04Speaker 02

  Actually, can I say one thing? People should not go and just buy the book because your audience doesn't want to sit down and read. They be too lazy. They want to get started straight away. So if they go to, you can decide whether to leave this in or not. If they go to theclickbook.com, they can get this template. They can get all of that other stuff months before the book comes out and just be totally badass immediately.

• 55:28Greg Isenberg?

  We'll include that. And like always, I'm always in the comment section. So feel free to leave a comment for me, but also for everyone else. And look forward to see what everyone, you know, builds through this framework. And Jake and John, thanks. Jake and Jice Cream, actually.

• 55:49Speaker 02

  Yeah, I can't believe you called me John.

• 55:51Greg Isenberg?

  Well, it says Jake and John, so I was just looking.

• 55:53Speaker 02

  Oh, that's actually the.

• 55:55Greg Isenberg?

  That's actually fake news, you know?

• 55:57Speaker 02

  She calls me Jice Cream because my name is J Ice Cream on Twitter, on X.

• 56:04Speaker 01

  I have a lot of regret from you about that.

• 56:08Speaker 02

  That gamer tag? Oh, great.

• 56:11Greg Isenberg?

  See you next time, guys.

• 56:12Speaker 02

  Dude, you're a legend. Talk to you later.