How to Test Your Business Idea Without Wasting Time & Money with Mark Pincus

Your next million-dollar business idea might be closer than you think, but how do you know if it's actually worth pursuing? I'm sitting down with Mark Pincus, founder of Zynga and the mind behind games like FarmVille and Words With Friends, to break down how to turn your instincts into products people actually want. Mark shares his powerful Proven, Better, New framework for testing ideas, avoiding costly mistakes, and figuring out what will sell before you invest all your time and money. We even put his strategies to work LIVE on one of my own businesses, and he shares how to use AI, customer feedback, and simple game mechanics to create products people keep coming back to. Whether you're launching something new or trying to scale what you've already built, this conversation will help you make smarter decisions, find your next winning idea faster, and have a lot more fun building your business. This episode is brought to you in part by Mark Pincus and Life at the Speed of Play. Check out our Sponsors: Shopify - Launch your business before Black Friday, go to http://shopify.com/happy to start your free trial. Monarch Money - Get your first year of Monarch Core for half off at http://Monarch.com with code EYH. Northwest Registered Agent - Visit http://northwestregisteredagent.com/EarnFree and start using free resources to build something amazing. Fabric - Join the thousands of parents who trust Fabric to help protect their family. Apply today in just minutes at http://meetfabric.com/EARN. Meetfabric.com/EARN. Quince - Find the fall pieces you’ll reach for most at Quince. Get free shipping on your order and 365-day returns and when Quince asked how you heard about them, let them know it was here on Earn Your Happy. Gloss Genius - Run a business that takes appointments? Use code HAPPY at https://glossgenius.com/earnyourhappy for 50% off your first two months of a premium plan. Faire - Sign up today and get 50% off your first wholesale order, up to $100 at http://faire.com/happy50. Terms may apply. Life at the Speed of Play - Go to http://getmarksbook.com/earn to get two copies for the price of one—one for you and one for a friend. HIGHLIGHTS 01:48 How Mark Pincus went from dreaming big in the Midwest to building Zynga. 05:45 The surprising way Mark uses everyday consumers to predict which products will succeed. 10:58 How Zynga tapped into an overlooked audience to create massively popular games. 14:53 How to develop a product mindset that helps you recognize winning business ideas. 16:55 Why your instincts might be right even when your business idea is wrong. 19:25 How I applied the Proven, Better, New framework to build Glōci. 23:50 How to make your product stand out in an already crowded market. 29:20 How to study successful competitors instead of reinventing the wheel. 32:36 The success metrics every entrepreneur should establish before launching. 34:35 How to tell whether your product or your marketing is the real problem. 38:01 When to pivot your business idea without abandoning your original vision. 40:34 The untapped opportunities in AI and consumer products. 45:48 How adding fun and gamification to your business can increase customer retention. 50:06 How to use AI to research competitors and make smarter business decisions. 52:53 How to test your business idea before investing time and money. 54:57 Why your next big breakthrough might come from an idea nobody else is willing to try. RESOURCES Learn how to turn podcast guesting into massive sales, ⁠⁠save your spot for the free live training HERE⁠⁠! Make your own ⁠Million Dollar Media Kit HERE! Try glōci for 40% off your first order with code HAPPY at checkout - head to getgloci.com FOLLOW Follow me: @loriharder Follow glōci: @getgloci Follow Mark: @markpinc

• 0:01Speaker 00

  This episode is brought to you by Shopify. Ready to launch your business before Black Friday? Go to Shopify.com/happy to start your free trial. Monarch Money, Monarch breaks the debt cycle, turning that endless gloom into a plan with an end date. Use code EYH at monarch.com to get your first year of Monarch Core half off at just $50. Northwest Registered Agent, Northwest gives you access to thousands of free guides, tools, and attorney drafted documents to help you run your business with confidence. Visit northwestregisteredagent.com/earnfree and start using free resources to build something amazing. Indeed, spend less time searching and more time actually interviewing candidates who check all your boxes.

• 0:45Speaker 00

  They're giving Earn Your Happy a $75 sponsored job credit. Go to indeed.com/podcast right now and support our show by saying you heard about Indeed on this podcast. Life at the Speed of Play, Mark is offering our listeners two books for the price of one. Go to getmarksbook.com/earn. Sequencing, sequencing.com is offering your listeners up to 10% off your full genome test plus free shipping. Go to sequencing.com and use promo code EARN for 10% off.

• 1:20Speaker 00

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• 2:44Speaker 00

  AI now, I think it is either created for people, a lot of excitement because things are just going fast.

• 2:50Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:50Speaker 00

  But it's also created a lot of the mentality of like, can I even do this? Can I even get this out there? How do I know what's good?

• 2:58Speaker 01

  Go do your homework. I see too many founders, they mistake passion for necessary domain expertise. And I'm not saying you need to go be an expert, especially with AI, but don't fail for the wrong reasons.

• 3:19Speaker 01

  So my idea for you is just have a section you call like the green room or something where you just, you just record, start recording when we have like our preamble talk. And you know, that stuff, I just find more, kind of more interesting stuff comes up there.

• 3:39Speaker 00

  Yeah, I feel like every single podcast that I do, I'm like, what we were just talking about that I wish I would have hit record on.

• 3:45Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 3:45Speaker 00

  So yeah, um, you know, I noticed that you are from Chicago. Were you born and raised there?

• 3:51Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 3:52Speaker 00

  Okay, I'm a Midwest girl. So

• 3:55Speaker 01

  Where are you from?

• 3:56Speaker 00

  Um, I'm originally from Upper Michigan, the Upper Peninsula.

• 3:59Speaker 01

  Uh, do you show on your hand where you're from?

• 4:00Speaker 00

  I show, well, you're on the lower, but I show on the upper portion of Upper Michigan. So I'm way up here and then lower peninsula is down. Am I doing it right? I can't even tell.

• 4:10Speaker 01

  The UP, yes.

• 4:12Speaker 00

  The UP, but I love that you knew the hand. That's how I've shown where I live my entire life. I'm like, I'm here, I'm higher than Toronto. So if you hear a Canadian accent, that's why. So born and raised in the Midwest. So for you, you know, I was really thinking about this and you have gotten, you've literally lived a crazy life. Like really?

• 4:33Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 4:34Speaker 00

  You have gotten to be in rooms with people that like I have been listening to, reading about, like just learning about your career and everything that you have done too. I'm like, oh my God, I'm talking to the guy who did Words With Friends. This is in Farmville. This is so crazy. There are so many questions that I have for you around that, but one of, one of the first ones is that you grew up in the Midwest. Now my, you were Chicago, so a bigger city. But in the Midwest, there is a little bit different of a mentality around like big dreamers and people who have big visions. And I personally did not feel like the environment around me was nurturing that whatsoever. You might've had a different experience, but can you tell me what your experience was like?

• 5:18Speaker 00

  And have you, have you always thought big? Did you know that about yourself?

• 5:24Speaker 01

  Hmm, oddly, I did always have these kind of big dreams and fantasies, but I never had any sense of like, any sense at all of how it would happen. In fact, my, growing up in Chicago, you just, it's a great city and I just assumed that's where I'd live my life. And you know, when I got out of college, I interviewed and tried to get jobs there and couldn't get a job in Chicago. When I, I went to business school and I got out and I still couldn't get a job in Chicago. It was like these sleepy, you know, investment firms or, I don't know, there just wasn't any obvious career other than like going and working for my dad, which was a hard no for me.

• 6:08Speaker 00

  What was that? And Mark, what did you think you were going to be like?

• 6:11Speaker 01

  Oh, well, my dad built this financial public relations firm. It's like a version of PR that's investor PR. He pioneered the whole category, built a nationwide firm over 38 years. And it was, it was really successful. And then after 38 years, it was acquired by a big ad age conglomerate of ad agencies and PR firms. And yeah, and he wanted me to like go work in the business for him. And, and I definitely was not going to do that on many levels.

• 6:49Speaker 01

  And yeah, I had no idea. I just wanted to be an entrepreneur and just also was very much like my dad. And in the sense that I think my mouth gets me in trouble. Like I can't stop myself from speaking up when I think that I see a truth or I think we're doing something stupid. And it doesn't matter if I'm the lowest employee on the totem pole or the chairman, I speak out the same way. And it's funny, as the chairman, when you do it, it has more weight, but also people feel a little bit like you're overpowering as the chairman, but I'm no louder or more intense than I was when I was like the most junior employee. But so I tried to get back to Chicago and I just, I just couldn't.

• 7:33Speaker 01

  And, and then for a long time, it seemed like you couldn't do tech anywhere but Silicon Valley. Now you can do it anywhere. So now it, obviously it's happening everywhere. But yeah, now, now I'm not motivated to go back to Chicago. But I, but I miss the mentality and I, I refer to my family and friends. And I refer to the Chicago kind of Midwestern smart pragmatism all the time. It's really like my target user for everything I do.

• 8:06Speaker 00

  Mm hmm. Yeah, I would love to know, what do you think is one of the main things that you took with you throughout? When you were building everything that you could refer back to from being raised in the Midwest? I know, I feel like I have gotten ahead of the game because of a lot of things with growing up that way, living in California now. I'm like, you just have to show up and you can kind of win here.

• 8:29Speaker 01

  Because I've been focused on consumer experience, consumer internet, consumer tech. I just always in my mind, I'm thinking like, will this play in Chicago? And I, it's such a barometer to me on politics, on culture and on like accessibility of these products. And I think Chicago to me is kind of like the beginning of the mass market. Like until it works in Chicago, it's not going to work. After it works, it will work. And people there aren't like just in love with tech. And so it's like, okay, will they use email?

• 9:10Speaker 01

  I'm like, oh, they don't use email yet. And I was like, they don't like Blackberries. They think they're weird, you know, they, and they're all using Blackberries, you know, and then they're not using iPhones. And, and I just think there's a very smart pragmatic mentality that is like, I'm not going to just.

• 9:28Speaker 01

  Crawl across glass to use this stuff the way you people will in the Bay Area because you just have to try every new thing. And when I see my family wearing Aura rings and talking about it, I somehow luckily invested in the first round of Aura. And I never invest in hardware. And I like, that was interesting. What I saw by, I have five, I have a niece and four nephews who all grew up in Chicago and mostly live there. And they're committed gamers. They were important to me with Zynga. They all fell in love with the show Silicon Valley. That blew my mind. I was like, oh, my God, they get these jokes and they like this.

• 10:11Speaker 01

  Okay, we've penetrated the culture enough that that's kind of interesting in Chicago. You know, so there's just, and I maintain that mentality. I, I don't force myself to use these products. And I don't, I won't read instructions. I don't care enough, even though I'm in that world to, even, you know, in the game industry, I wouldn't ever force myself to play a game. And my niece and nephews, they're committed gamers. So they were into stuff that wasn't going to make it to the mass market. But, but they were also just, I don't know, they just always were like my little laboratory of five.

• 10:53Speaker 01

  You know, and, and my sister who lives in a suburb, we grew up in the city, but she lives in a suburb of Chicago. And I, I really tune in to, to their, they, somehow they helped me just have a deeper sense of like, even in politics, like the way, it was so fascinating to watch the way that they were, they felt the same kind of distrust and distaste for Biden and the Democrats, but not enough that they were going to like vote for Trump. They kind of wanted Trump to win, but they weren't going to vote for Trump. That's where I saw like Chicago. I don't know, jumping around, but that's.

• 11:38Speaker 00

  No, you're, you're actually explaining exactly what I say to, so obviously coming from the Midwest and spending majority of my life there from, I lived there until I was 30 and now I'm 45 and I've spent the rest of that time in California. I got a pretty good taste, obviously, my whole life.

• 11:53Speaker 01

  You lived, you lived in Chicago or where?

• 11:56Speaker 00

  No, I'm sorry. I, I've lived in Milwaukee, Madison, Waukesha.

• 12:01Speaker 01

  My mom, my mom and stepmother both grew up in, in Milwaukee. My mom grew up in Mequon.

• 12:08Speaker 00

  Yep. Yep. No, all about Mequon, had friends there. Yes. So that is, you know, where I spent majority of my life. And when I would come out here to the coast, even with different ideas, I ran big women's events, did a lot of entrepreneurial, like digital products, wrote books, things like that. And I always remember thinking like, you know, I'd talk to some of my coastal friends and they would just be talking about super, maybe spiritual woo things way over people's heads. And I'm like, this isn't quite there yet. Like you're, you're really in a small bubble and you don't know it at all. I was like, I go home, they're like, what are, what are you doing? Like, what is your life? It's so crazy.

• 12:53Speaker 00

  So it's always been really grounding for me. And I would watch as other books, I released a book at the same time as this other woman released a book. And I remember thinking, that's such a, a basic book in the best way. I was like, she's saying the most basic things. And I released our books at the same time and her book just sold millions and millions of copies. And we were friends at the time. And I was like, she went for the very, like, it was saying the things that the whole middle of the country still really needed, which is such a bigger market. And we forget that, we forget what the market actually is. So.

• 13:29Speaker 01

  And that's, and that's how I thought about my book. I have four sisters, two bio sisters, two stepsisters.

• 13:37Speaker 00

  I love this for you.

• 13:39Speaker 01

  Yeah. Yes. So I grew up with all these sisters. And, and our target audience for Zynga's games were primarily adult women who nobody thought all, games were made by dudes, for dudes, and no shock, women were not playing the dude games that were made, you know, that were tank explosions and I win, you die. And, and even inside Zynga, it was kind of a necessary evil that pretty much all of our game designers were men because we couldn't find, we eventually found some female, like, we couldn't find female ones.

• 14:21Speaker 01

  And we needed game designers and they would kind of be mansplaining. You know, look, women don't like competition. And I'm like, the four sisters, I gotta tell you, they like competition, just not the way you frame it. Like they can get super competitive. And so we brought competition into our games in a way though, that I believed was more accessible and interesting to women. Like in Farmville 2, we had a monthly competition, but it wasn't zero sum. It was like, who could grow the biggest, best tomatoes?

• 15:02Speaker 01

  But it was like, and we had co-opetition and we, it's more zero, non-zero sum. Like games like Settlers of Catan where, you know, you win, but I won by more. You know, not like chess or not like PVP and stuff. And it worked and, and women loved competition, you know, in, in that context. So, and then in writing the book, I, I had this hope, this dream that it could play to a nurse in Indiana or a stay at home mom in Chicago who's wondering like, how do I get back in the workforce or start a business? So I was, I was trying to write it for both.

• 15:47Speaker 01

  I was, I was trying to be like the show Silicon Valley that played for both.

• 15:51Speaker 00

  Yeah. No, I think it's amazing and I want to dive into that because, you know, you've talked so much about, a little bit, we're tapping in a little bit to how you're thinking and also why so many of these things have been so successful for you. So your book is Life at the Speed of Play. And this is truly about helping us all test our ideas. And so this is where this gets really interesting for me because right now there's, I work with entrepreneurs in a lot of different ways. So I get to see different people's ideas, especially with AI now. They're just, I think it is either created for people, a lot of excitement because things are just going fast. But it's also created a lot of the mentality of like, oh, can I even do this? You know, like, can I even get this out there?

• 16:36Speaker 00

  How do I know what's good? Because AI is kind of just telling us everything is good. Like, oh, that's genius. You should absolutely do this. So I would love to learn a little bit.

• 16:45Speaker 01

  Although I think I've overtrained my Claude because I, I put up, I, I put, you know, I, I put a few pages into my profile so it persistently feeds that as, as a pre-prompt. And it's made it too, I think, too negative. Because it's always like, let me start with the counter argument of why this is not a good idea and done by everybody already. And then here's the idea and it's a three to 5% probability of ever making it to the level that you want. I'm like, okay, all right, Claude, I won't do it.

• 17:24Speaker 00

  You're like, I need to put a little delusion back in.

• 17:27Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah. I need a little delusion back in my, I'm going to say be, be a little bit, you know, build some hope.

• 17:33Speaker 00

  But send your part human.

• 17:34Speaker 01

  But, but the, the real, the point of my book, first of all, I'm trying to get a vibe across, which is a product mindset, which is like building this approach to everything we do. Every time we consume something, we're potentially learning. It's a learning moment about a product. Like, it doesn't matter if it's a food, a movie, or especially trying other products for the first time. You know, we can get in this mode of becoming students of ourself and using ourself as a focus group of one, be like, oh.

• 18:15Speaker 01

  I like that. That was magical. That was a shelf moment. That's bad. That's boring. That's, I'm turned off. So just this mindset. I taught my twin girls and their friends math during the pandemic, and we called it daddy math. And I was just trying to teach a math mindset to them, not any particular math knowledge. And so it's kind of similar. I'm like, how do I kind of get you excited to be in this mindset? Because you're going to get better and better. Once you do it, it's going to make you better at everything you do. And then I also wanted the book to be, I like to say,

• 18:56Speaker 01

  like a cheat code for anyone. We've all had some friend who came up with an idea and their passion, and they want to go do it. And you're like, yay, good. I don't want to make you, I don't want to unsell you on it. But go do your homework, because you're going to fail for the wrong reasons. And, and I see too many founders who mistake, you know, they mistake passion for, for, for necessary domain expertise. And I'm not saying you need to go be an expert, especially with AI. But some of the basic points I wanted to get across in the book is like, don't fail for

• 19:35Speaker 01

  the wrong reasons. And, and the biggest thing is, I try to get these two points across in the book and in my Stanford class, which is, okay, you have winning instincts and losing ideas. Like, learn to separate the instinct, this thing in your gut that tells you, oh, maybe I do want an AI agent assistant. Maybe there is something there. That's a, there's this gut feeling of, okay, there is something there. But then we put an idea on it, and that's coming often, almost always from our ego. And, and the idea is probably wrong. Or it's either slightly wrong

• 20:17Speaker 01

  or very wrong. And oftentimes, it's very basic things in your idea that aren't even the new innovation zone you're excited about that are wrong. That's to junior, people who are new to product making, try to make everything new. And they just try to like, come up with something that's never seen.

• 20:41Speaker 00

  Yeah, something that's not out there, hasn't been heard before.

• 20:45Speaker 01

  But every part of it. And instead of saying, a really, really experienced, like, real master of the craft, will be so good at knowing what's out there that is already brilliant, and copying that, and then saying, really, my idea is right here. It's just in this one part. And, and that's where I'm innovating. And I'm going to spend all my time on that one part, and none of my time on the other parts. And I'm, so I'm going to check the box, and I'm going to copy all the other parts

• 21:26Speaker 01

  that have been done brilliantly before me, and then just go to where my innovation is. And then, at least, if I fail, it's for the right reason, because my innovation didn't speak to the market. And I'm going to test, in the time it would have taken me to try to rebuild everything here, because I'm copying the rest, I'm going to actually test four, or five, or 10 ideas in my innovation zone, and not be trying to reinvent the wheel. I don't know if that's too abstract, but it's, it's just such a core point. And if, if your listeners could just get that, it's going to move them ahead by light years.

• 22:11Speaker 00

  You guys know I'm all about turning big ideas into something in reality. But here's the thing, not every idea deserves your time, energy, and especially your money. That's why I want to tell you about Life at the Speed of Play, launch products people love, the new book from the legendary Silicon Valley entrepreneur, Mark Pincus. That's Mark with a K. It's an instant national bestseller. And in just 170 fast-paced pages, which I'm all about, Mark shares invaluable life skills and his battle-tested, easy-to-follow framework for quickly testing ideas, getting real feedback, and figuring out what is worth pursuing. He's one of Silicon Valley's most prolific idea generators. And this isn't some stuffy business book. It feels like sitting in

• 22:55Speaker 00

  this kitchen, getting advice straight from someone who's actually done something huge. Because how many of us have spent months overthinking an idea, wondering if it'll work, instead of actually testing it? That's exactly the cycle this book helps you break. And Mark has a special offer for our Earn Your Happy listeners. Go to GetMark'sBook.com/earn, and get two copies for $32. That's just $16 each. And Mark is personally paying for your second copy, because he knows entrepreneurship can be lonely. Keep wanting to give it to a friend who's ready to make something happen. Again, go to GetMark'sBook.com/earn.

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• 24:52Speaker 00

  There was a stretch in my early twenties when I was chipping away at credit card debt. And it honestly felt like it was never going to end. I'd make a payment, I would feel good for a day, and then I'd look at the balance and feel like I did nothing. And what changed everything was finally seeing a finish line. That's why I love Monarch's Debt Pay Down Simulator and Visualizer. It shows your exact debt-free date based on your real balance and payments. And you get to watch that timeline move. Every extra payment, the date gets closer. That kind of visible progress keeps you going. And my favorite part is playing out your options. You

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• 26:14Speaker 00

  Okay, so let's, let's chat about that in some terms of some, some different things. So the reason I'm tracking, I have a physical product as well. It's, it's a daily beauty supplement. But what I did is I noticed a habit that I did every day, which is drink a hydration stick every day of my life. And I noticed a lot of my friends do, people in sports.

• 26:33Speaker 01

  My son and I do.

• 26:34Speaker 00

  Yeah. And I was like, this is a habit. I know that I also want a daily consumable. I know that I want a subscription-based thing. I know this really, really well in this modality. So what do I need to change now about this to stand out in the market? And there wasn't, I think I only found like, one or two sticks like that, that focused on your skin and beauty. And so I went in and changed ingredients for skin and beauty, but still did a bit of the electrolytes.

• 27:02Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 27:03Speaker 00

  And so that, that was like, what we really focused on. I'm like, okay, let's find proven things with proven ways that it's delivered with this, you know, what we know on subscription. That's what we wanted. We wanted a repeatable thing so that it was on order, and we could have a strong subscription base. And then that let me really focus on figuring out, I mean, which has been a challenge in and of itself, is creating a little bit of a new idea around that. I will tell you, that's been a challenge. But I can't imagine all of it being a challenge. Because we talked about gummies for a while, and that was new. And I'm like, I think that's too new. I'm like, this is too heavy of a lift. So I understand it in terms of that for sure. And this just makes sense to me. And then also, we work with a lot of people, and I, I also have them.

• 27:48Speaker 01

  But that already, yeah, maybe you didn't need my point.

• 27:50Speaker 00

  Yeah, go ahead.

• 27:51Speaker 01

  You already did. That's a perfect case of proven better new, right? Because you already get it. I mean, you already, just on your own, are going the way I would have advised, which is, like, most people would skip the hydration part. You're like, no, no, no. That's already proven, right? People, so you're like, yes, I'm going to take the hydration you already want, and the way you already consume it. But now, mine also does these other things for you. And that's new, not better. You know, people mistake, they get better wrong. Because better is 10 out of 10 of the existing users would already, would all say they want that. You know, that's why better is

• 28:34Speaker 01

  much smaller increments of innovation. Like, better is half the price. Or, you know, it's a deliver, like, I, this would be a dumb one. And maybe this would be new, not better. But to me, it's better. I don't know why these hydration packs are so hard to open. But I, it drives me bananas every day. I have to like, I don't have scissors around to open this fucking thing.

• 29:00Speaker 00

  Right.

• 29:01Speaker 01

  So I have to go find a knife and which is steps and I have five kids and I am like military precision in the morning. In order to, two of my, my teens have a 15 minute window, sometimes 12 minute window. And they expect me to get them breakfast. Like literally this morning, I had a four car pileup because my partner handed me our toddler. She's like 21 months and she's like, I gotta go brush my teeth, take her over. Like, okay, got her. I walked downstairs with her and then my four year old comes down and he's like, daddy, I want a smoothie and breakfast. And I'm like, okay. So I'm holding her in one hand. I'm trying to get him breakfast.

• 29:45Speaker 01

  And then the 16 year olds come down and they're like, I can't believe that you didn't make me breakfast and they're hurt. Like their feelings are hurt. They're emotional.

• 29:53Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 29:54Speaker 01

  So I'm like, okay, okay. So I'm like, 16 year olds, Georgia Carmen, I need you to go and feed Chia. Well, I put sausages on for you and then I'm gonna like, give Enzo a hydration, you know. What he doesn't call a hydration drink. He calls it, he says electrolytes. Like give him his electrolytes.

• 30:17Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 30:17Speaker 01

  But, but that's more steps because I pull the packet out. Now I gotta find some way to open it. So anyway, I'm geeky out on this one thing, but I'm like, I think it could be a better, not even a new. Like you might get 10 out of 10 people who have the packets who say, yeah, a fast open would be a better. But it's like little teeny.

• 30:39Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 30:39Speaker 01

  Little things, but that are really, really noticed. So anyway, and then you're new and I agree. You need, it has to be enough of a novel idea to get people's attention. And it's not a static world and the context matters. And people forget that too. And I probably didn't stress that enough in the book, which is what moment are we in? What moment is your market cycle and your customer in? If it is fairly mature and their behavior is set, you gotta be a lot more novel to get their attention. If it's newer and it's AI, you don't have to be new. Like AI is the new. It's just now with AI, like the same thing you do. Here's your weather app. Now it's smarter.

• 31:25Speaker 01

  And that might be enough. So, so we gotta think of the context and you know, for me, I think it's the drink mix is more mature for us. We have our new tablets and we've got these two, I don't know how they got there, two other kinds of things that are hard to open. And so, you know, I don't even know how I'd find a new one and buy it. So for us, it would have to be, you know, significantly novel to get our attention. So anyway, I interrupted you.

• 31:55Speaker 00

  No, I love that too. We actually solved that problem with the packets because right away our first batch, they're like, this is so hard. And we're like, okay, we're gonna solve that. So we now have solved that. Um, but I love that you literally had that same problem. Okay. So let's talk in terms of how people should be thinking when they are, because you have the proven better new framework. And we just talked about it a little bit. Can we talk about it in terms of when someone is also, I have a lot of people who do like digital products. Or um, even when they are creating, I don't know if you, you know, know about like different entrepreneurial masterminds. Or when they're going in, speaking on a stage, like how can we actually implement this way of thinking into our life?

• 32:38Speaker 00

  I know you talk about it in your book, but if I was starting with um, a new idea, what do I sit down and do? Am I going through the framework? Am I gonna use, you know, am I going to use a lot of AI for research? What does it look like?

• 32:55Speaker 01

  Do you wanna throw, throw out some, make up some ideas so we can, so it's not so abstract for people? Give me the idea for your new digital.

• 33:04Speaker 00

  Okay. Well, I just, I launched one, I launched one that's doing pretty good, but I can tell you the new idea because I wanna make it a lot bigger.

• 33:11Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 33:11Speaker 00

  So right now I am um, doing a six week accelerator where I teach people how to be like uh, the best podcast guest. And storyteller and monetize, monetize the podcast.

• 33:26Speaker 01

  Wait, you're teaching people how to be great guests?

• 33:32Speaker 00

  Yeah, essentially.

• 33:33Speaker 01

  Help them monetize their product or help the podcast monetize?

• 33:36Speaker 00

  So essentially it's learning how to profit off of other people's podcasts. And that is by being an incredible guest, but also learning how to sell without being salesy on someone else's podcast.

• 33:48Speaker 01

  Okay. Which funny, it, it reminds me, in an earlier career, I was at TCI and Liberty Media and we owned QVC and eventually Home Shopping Network. And I was amazed that, you know, Martha Stewart could go on there and sell like thousands of knife sets, you know? She was good at that, at least in the old form. Um, okay. So, so your product though, is selling people. In, in what form? Is it a course? Is it a newsletter? What's the product?

• 34:20Speaker 00

  It's a six week accelerator and I chose that because I know I have liked being in those and it worked.

• 34:26Speaker 01

  So it's like a live online zoom for six weeks. So it's like a course. Okay. So our, our product is an online course, right?

• 34:37Speaker 00

  Correct.

• 34:37Speaker 01

  Okay. Okay. And so before we get to the proven better new, so what is, what is the instinct beneath this product idea for you? Can you, can you tell me that, not the exact idea, but what is the instinct that you feel?

• 34:52Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 34:52Speaker 01

  What's going on?

• 34:53Speaker 00

  Yes. I was on a walk and I recently, um, my husband and I have a, a mastermind where we help uh, like six and seven figure entrepreneurs. Scale their businesses and we had in one of the masterminds, offered them to be on my podcast as part of signing up for the year. And I ended up doing these uh, 30 podcasts with them and noticed that even though a lot of them were brilliant. They really struggled to be clear, to know what their message was, to know how to share what they did. They all asked me, was that good? Was that okay afterward? And so I was getting this gut hit that I have done 1,700 episodes of podcasting.

• 35:33Speaker 00

  And I was like, I must tell people what I have learned because I know the difference between what is good and what is bad. And when it's gonna go well and when it's not within like the first five minutes. And so I like deeply wanted to show people that they're missing a big sales channel in their business by not finding this very important storytelling skill.

• 35:53Speaker 01

  You had an instinct that people could be using this medium much more directly.

• 36:00Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 36:00Speaker 01

  And they could be monetizing it. And, okay. So you had an instinct about that. You packaged it in one idea format, which is an online course.

• 36:09Speaker 00

  Mm hmm.

• 36:09Speaker 01

  There?

• 36:10Speaker 00

  Yep.

• 36:11Speaker 01

  I, we could try this. I don't know if this would work, but I could turn it to my whiteboard and we could try to put proven better new up. Let's try it.

• 36:18Speaker 00

  Yeah. I love it.

• 36:19Speaker 01

  Okay. I don't know if you can do this, but I'll try right big.

• 36:22Speaker 00

  Yep. You're good.

• 36:23Speaker 01

  So, so that what's proven, there's, there already are online courses, right?

• 36:30Speaker 00

  Correct.

• 36:31Speaker 01

  Okay. So there's online courses. Um, and is there any that you think of that are partic, that are really big and successful that you admire?

• 36:41Speaker 00

  Um, yes. My friend Amy Porterfield has one that helps essentially one of the, she was one of the main people to help people just take their business online. Like teach them how to do online courses in general.

• 36:54Speaker 01

  So we also could go even more broad. So there's online courses we could think of as proven. There's also, have you followed this French guy? It's a one man show and he has this, this AI that you give it an idea. And it invents the business for you. You pay like 20 or a hundred dollars a month. I'll find the name, but.

• 37:15Speaker 00

  Okay.

• 37:16Speaker 01

  He invents a business for you and the AI does everything and it markets it and does the whole thing. But so they're out, these like AI business in a box.

• 37:27Speaker 00

  Mm hmm.

• 37:28Speaker 01

  That might be more broad than your idea, but, but at least you could say online courses. And then what I encourage you to do in the proven is go into, at, at every level of the experience of the most successful ones. What is it about the way that product experience works, the way it's packaged, the way it's marketed? That you can copy, that you admire and you can copy and break it into like every single thing. Where do I find it? Where's, how did I find it? What's the advertising for it? What's my onboarding experience? What's, how, how long is a session?

• 38:09Speaker 01

  You know, how many people are in it? How, but like every single aspect of that as your base case. And then better, I don't know what, you may not have anything better. You may not, because is 10 out of 10 people in your friend's course gonna wanna sign up for your course? Probably not.

• 38:30Speaker 00

  Mm hmm.

• 38:31Speaker 01

  So probably not have a better. We gotta be realistic about that.

• 38:34Speaker 00

  Yeah. Yeah.

• 38:35Speaker 01

  Really hard to get to.

• 38:36Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 38:37Speaker 01

  And then new.

• 38:41Speaker 01

  This is, I presume, the only course of its of its kind, right? You're the first and only course that you're talking about that wants to teach you how to monetize.

• 38:54Speaker 00

  I think I found two others, but they're different. They're not, they're not teaching the, the exact things that I'm teaching in here.

• 39:02Speaker 01

  Okay, and it's great to have strong competitors. People forget that. And we also have to assume that, that the new is, is going to fail. Cause new usually does fail. And so the other side of it to think about is what, what would you do if you knew? If it's three months from now or 12 months from now, and you knew that your idea, first of all, do you know what, do you have an idea in your mind of what success is? Do you know the metrics? Do, do you know? In three months and 12 months, what level of success would you be like? Fuck yeah, I'm, I'm going all in on this.

• 39:47Speaker 01

  And what level of failure would you pull the plug on? And what's the awkward middle? Like, do you have that in your mind?

• 39:54Speaker 00

  Yeah, yep. Based on other things that I've launched throughout the last 15 years. I have an idea of the rate, which I would like it to grow. And what I think is like a good rate. Yeah.

• 40:05Speaker 01

  So there's some level of, of, of subscription in this and revenues and growth. Okay.

• 40:13Speaker 00

  Yep.

• 40:14Speaker 01

  Great. So, and if, if we turn the clock forward six or 12 months, and this didn't work, would you scrap it? Or do you believe in the idea enough that you would try a different variation of it?

• 40:30Speaker 00

  I believe in the idea enough that I would try potentially a different delivery or way of packaging.

• 40:37Speaker 01

  And do you have any idea now what that might be like?

• 40:41Speaker 00

  I'm already seeing, so I was doing all myself to my audience. So it was me promoting to my audience, my email list. Now I'm seeing that I think I have some really good affiliate partners that I'm working on. But I'm also learning that I, I've been invited into rooms on stages. That works really well. And then also to these people who are already speakers and who have books, they're like my prime target. Cause they're all wanting to.

• 41:09Speaker 01

  Okay, but so, so let's separate two points here, right?

• 41:13Speaker 00

  Yep.

• 41:13Speaker 01

  You're talking about marketing and acquisition versus the product, right?

• 41:18Speaker 00

  Okay, yes, yes, yes.

• 41:19Speaker 01

  So, so, so the one thing we want to be careful about is we don't want to see you go for a year and have this be a meh. And have you say, well, now I'm just going to try some different marketing. The question, I want to get to a more core, core question of is there any signal that you could get that tells you that this is a good or bad product idea?

• 41:43Speaker 00

  So I just did a, yeah, yeah. So, okay, so this is helpful. We just finished our first round of it and we did a big survey out to them. So we did like a 20 question survey that we paid them to, uh, uh, we, we tried to get as many as we could. So we just gave them like a $10 gift card if they filled it out. So I did get a lot of great data from that. And it was.

• 42:04Speaker 01

  Is there a second course? Would you know, because people they, they re-subscribe to a new course? Or is there, is there a level of recommendation to, that you'd want? Or, because what I'm looking for is how do we, let's separate the product from the marketing. We gotta be careful that we don't just presume the product's right. And we just keep going at it and it's not hitting the metrics you want. And you're like, well, now I should just try a different marketing. What if your product isn't quite right? So.

• 42:38Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 42:39Speaker 01

  That's, that's the thing. I'm not, I have no judgment about if it is or isn't right. I don't know. Sounds smart to me, but, but we need to build a test. There's, you're kind of talking about top of the funnel. Like, that's really important and, and people don't test that enough early on. We tend to build our product and then try to market it. And you can test top of the funnel. And some of the best product makers don't build the product until the top of the funnel gives them signal. So you could also do that. But then there's just the product itself. And is it a good enough idea?

• 43:21Speaker 01

  Or is it tuned in to the signal that you have the instinct for? To make it, because we could try to come up with other. You have this instinct that, let me, let me try to state your instinct a little bit different way. Without sounding arrogant.

• 43:39Speaker 01

  Maybe your instinct is podcasts could be monetizing far more than they are. You've got people's attention and engagement and some level of trust. And like QVC or Home Shopping Network, right? The whole point of those channels and people viewing them was to buy stuff. And maybe we haven't really even touched the tip of the iceberg of the amount of e-commerce that could be happening through podcasts. And there's one version, which is advertising and kind of the infomercial of, I've got your attention. While I've got your attention, I'm going to try and convince you to get a ramp card. Okay, that's the old version.

• 44:24Speaker 01

  There's another, there's other ways you could test this that might unlock far bigger levels of monetization. And that sounds to me in a lot of ways, like your most core instinct. And then on top of that, you're like, okay, I can make a product that helps people who are trying to sell products use this medium better to do that. But if that didn't work and you still believe in that instinct, you might go back to the product itself and try different things. You might say, you know what, I'm going to actually vertically integrate. And I'm going to try to, I'm going to try to generate

• 45:08Speaker 01

  fine products that lend themselves really well to podcast types. And then find the experts, package them, put them on podcasts where it's very intentionally focused on selling their products. I don't know. If we rolled the camera forward a year and this didn't work at a product level and you believed enough in the instinct, we might go back and try different variations of the instinct.

• 45:35Speaker 00

  Yes, that makes, that makes sense because I'm kind of already, I, I did a sale off of the backend of this one, kind of dabbling in something else. Cause I'm like, I could also see it be this. So yes, I, okay, now I'm fully in.

• 45:49Speaker 01

  I'll give you my version of that. I have a couple of just global instincts that have just been true and kind of haunted me my whole career. The most basic one, that's so basic and obvious that it'll sound a little stupid is, but sometimes I'm like Captain Obvious. That's kind of consumer.

• 46:10Speaker 00

  Which kind of works.

• 46:12Speaker 01

  It does. Sometimes it works. Is, my whole career is about making this medium more accessible to normal people. That's it. My first company, Freeloader, was like, I want to make the internet faster and more accessible to normal people. Zynga Games were about making games and, and social games more accessible to normal people. That's why we made them familiar games, farming or, you know, Words with Friends. And that's why we, we made them, you didn't have to learn rules. And you could justify the time because you were playing with people you knew. So things like that.

• 46:55Speaker 00

  There was a stretch in my early twenties when I was chipping away at credit card debt. And it honestly felt like it was never going to end. I'd make a payment, I would feel good for a day. And then I'd look at the balance and feel like I did nothing. And what changed everything was finally seeing a finish line. That's why I love Monarch's debt pay down simulator and visualizer. It shows your exact debt free date based on your real balance and payments. And you get to watch that timeline move. Every extra payment, the date gets closer. That kind of visible progress keeps you going. And my favorite part is playing out your options. You can run different payment scenarios side by side and instantly see

• 47:39Speaker 00

  which one gets you debt free the fastest. You're in control of the plan. Monarch takes that heavy endless feeling and turns it into a plan with an actual end date. And a quick check in on my phone means I always know where my money is. Going from this will never end to a date you can circle on the calendar. That feels like freedom. Write your own money story with Monarch. Use code E Y H at monarch.com to get your first year of Monarch Core half off at just $50. That's 50% off your first year at monarch.com with code E Y H.

• 48:18Speaker 00

  Between this podcast and my Beauty and Wellness brand, some weeks, everything is on fire and I need help yesterday. And if I had to hire a new podcast producer tomorrow, I wouldn't just post must edit audio. I'd want someone who's worked on conversational shows, gets my style, can handle the chaos from one day to the next, trying to fit in four podcast episodes a week, all of the ads that I have to put on the podcast. So this is a job for sponsored jobs. Sponsored jobs boost your posts in search results so you can reach people with the skills you actually need and you only pay for results. Sponsored jobs posted directly on Indeed are 95% more likely to report a hire than

• 49:00Speaker 00

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• 49:43Speaker 00

  When I launched Glossy, my drinkable skincare brand, I was obsessed with the formula. The product was my baby, but the store part felt way more intimidating. And that's a big reason we built on Shopify in the beginning, because you really don't have to be an e-commerce expert to get up and running. And that's a big deal in the beginning of a business. And here's the biggest lesson I learned about the holidays. You do not want to be building your store in the middle of the rush. You want to be set up, you want to be tested and ready before the traffic hits. So two things I love. First, Shopify mobile app. I'm on planes, I'm on stages, I'm here recording with you, and I can still check my inventory, help a customer, see payments right from my phone, which is so much fun. And that's

• 50:25Speaker 00

  the second they check out. So Shopify checkout with Shop Pay converts up to 36% higher than the competition. When you've worked that hard to get someone to your site, that last click matters. So if you've had a business idea sitting in your notes app for way too long, this is your sign. Launch before Black Friday, a time of year when more people are already shopping and ready to buy. If you're ready to launch your business before Black Friday, go to Shopify.com/happy to start your free trial. That's Shopify.com/happy. Go to Shopify.com/happy today to hear your first.

• 51:05Speaker 01

  Anyway, so that's like this global, make it more accessible. The other one I call the cocktail party, like this social thread is that I just have this kind of global, career-long instinct that we're all kind of looking for the cocktail party and that what we care about most of our lives is social. And what this improving relationships, staying close to people we love. And so everything I do comes back to those two. So in this moment, I'm thinking a lot about and even dabbling in building around AI agents and assistants. And some I call it hiding in plain sight or hiding in the middle of the pack, because

• 51:48Speaker 01

  that is not a novel, new idea. Right now, it's like a cliche. You know, when Meta is like, you know, canvas bombing us with billboards for Muse and...

• 52:05Speaker 00

  Dots.

• 52:06Speaker 01

  Yeah, I am not giving you a groundbreaking or your listeners a groundbreaking idea. But what I'm thinking about is those, these products are very Silicon Valley, too much for me. And they're very masculine Silicon Valley. And I, at the risk of sounding like I'm mansplaining, you know, my opinion, they're not designed for my family in Chicago or nurse in Indiana. They're, they're not looking for an empty prompt box and they type something in. They didn't wake up this morning thinking, what's a new way I can use an AI agent? Where in Silicon Valley, everyone's geeking out and they're on X and they're like, oh, here's

• 52:49Speaker 01

  a prompt you can put in your Muse that'll save you money and the California tax database, you know, or, you know, arcane nerdy thing. And so I'm thinking a lot about, well, how could this fit into their existing lives and behaviors in ways that are additive in their life and in their flow in a way that has some magic moments, some surprise and delight. And, and the other theme for me is fun. No one's thinking about how these are fun. There's nothing fun about Muse. There's nothing fun about Instinct or Dots. There's really nothing fun about using ChatGPT. And it's always an afterthought. And then they

• 53:34Speaker 01

  look at games and fun like a almost necessary evil. And then they make it fun in some lame way, like, look, here's a pet, here's a virtual pet. They always go there first, the virtual pet. They're like talking down to people. Yes, maybe someone would get addicted to a virtual pet or, you know, spinning a wheel to gamble on something. But that's not actually, it's, it's not fun in the way my nieces and nephews in Chicago would like it to be fun or I would like it to be fun. It's just, it's a very, I don't know the right words

• 54:13Speaker 01

  to put around it, but it's, it's not intelligent. Like, like Curb Your Enthusiasm was intelligent, or even the humor in Silicon Valley was intelligent. It wasn't talking down to people. It was like, not everyone got the joke. And that's fine. But it was, it was fun because it's like, you kind of were like, getting to be inside the room in Silicon Valley in a way that you could see the ridiculousness of it. But it wasn't making it slapstick and stupid. I don't know if it's making sense, but there's a way they miss everybody. Because they can

• 54:52Speaker 01

  make products just for themselves and just too nerdy and not getting it in terms of like, that no one else is looking for these things. And then when they finally do want to market to, you know, I called my nephew Ned in Chicago and I said, I want to get where, where are you on these agents? And he's like, what do you mean? I'm like, well, have you seen Muse? He's like, yeah, there's a billboard in Chicago for it. And I'm like, have you tried it? He's like, nah, no, I know I should get it, but it's not like, it's not on my list today. I don't need it. You know, there's, there was nothing about it that he felt like he

• 55:32Speaker 01

  needed to go and find it, you know, or go and install it. So, so anyway, I'm, that's just the zone that I'm in. I'm like, I'm wondering in this moment, like, okay, something isn't connecting. Like, we all in Silicon Valley are living and breathing by AI. It's like, obviously, it's the only thing we talk about. And it's like, did you try this yet? And then you're embarrassed you haven't. But that's not what everyone's talking about in Chicago. A hundred percent, you know, they're not like, did you know that a new version of Claude just came out that can do blah, blah, blah? No, they don't know or

• 56:13Speaker 01

  care. So anyway, so that's, that's, that's the zone that I'm thinking.

• 56:20Speaker 00

  I love thinking that. You just made me think about, because I, I actually, fun is like a very core, just like experience in my life that I think is really important. And it made me go, oh, I've never actually been like, how could I make this more fun for my people so that it's just like, maybe a new thought of an experience? Like, I didn't know learning like this could be this much fun. So that's interesting.

• 56:44Speaker 01

  And let me give you even like a little bit of a hack around fun. That maybe you know this, but we found in years and years and years of mobile research and consumer research and focus groups and metrics and blah, blah, blah, blah. We just kept coming back to one simple truth that is always true. And you probably know this. If people engage with your product every day, multiple times a day, like eight times a day, you also will have higher retention, right? That there is a direct and you could

• 57:24Speaker 01

  argue causal relationship between daily engagement and monthly retention. It's obvious and it's true. Yet, we don't gamify that engagement and we don't, we kind of just ignore it to a large degree. Like we're just like, I'm gonna build my product and I hope it's useful. But what would it look like if you started putting in game mechanics? What would it look like if you started trying to reward and incentivize people who are trying your online course to actually be participating in your community message threads five to 10 times a day? And you could really, really gamify it that like, if you, you know, post

• 58:09Speaker 01

  more than 10 times a day, you know, every day for a week, you get your next month's subscription free. I mean, you could go really far with it, right?

• 58:19Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 58:19Speaker 01

  But what's crazy is even when you gamify it that much, it tends to just work. So even though you're like, well, am I just incentivizing people to do something? You are, but there's something in our brain that also kicks in. So there's all these game mechanics, like that's called a drip reward, you know, leaderboards. And there's things like that, that we can incentivize people to engage a lot more with our products and it works. And we can just try to stick fun things in. Like you could, in the, you could have like a seventh inning stretch in the middle of your online course and be like, you know what, um, we're gonna

• 59:01Speaker 01

  offer everyone a 15 minute break. And we're also going to host everyone, encourage everyone to go play this game together. And the top five people on the leaderboard are going to get next month free. Or I don't know, just it could be really cheesy and it can work. So.

• 59:21Speaker 00

  Yeah. And we have so much, I mean, now we do have so much access to AI that these things are not, they're not as challenging for people to add in. They're pretty, they're pretty basic. So and just trying something which, which is huge. So that's, I, I feel like you've already made me think so differently because I have been, I think that I am such a, um, such a tester of things. Like I'm such a student that it's easy for me to go and do maybe new or, or maybe better, but.

• 59:54Speaker 01

  You're using, you're an amazing student because you're, you're using every term the way I meant it, which doesn't happen that often.

• 1:00:02Speaker 00

  Okay. Well, that makes me so happy. And hopefully people, hopefully people listening, you guys truly, this book is a, is a framework from one of the best minds in the world, which is so cool that I get to chat with you. What would, so for you right now, your focus truly, which I, I think that was just the, I think one of the coolest things is knowing some of the biggest thinking is truly getting to look at, you know, how could I, how can I just make this more fun? And I think that question alone can make all of our products so much better. And I know for you, you had mentioned, you know, in the beginning, you said, I really intended for this book, like I really wanted kind of this more mainstream

• 1:00:46Speaker 00

  entrepreneurs, or, um, I, I think you had mentioned female entrepreneurs. Like what's the, what would your vision be of how people use this? And how is their life better after the book?

• 1:00:57Speaker 01

  Well, there's a few different threads that I tried to weave through the book. Who knows to what level of success I get there. But one is these kind of founding philosophies and life philosophies. And, and I write, I start the book talking about the book of life and about knowing our why and being intentional and holding ourselves accountable to that. And a lot of people have told me that's useful in their lives, far beyond starting a company. It could be useful in your marriage or, you know, in how you think about your relationship and where you are and things. So holding ourselves accountable

• 1:01:38Speaker 01

  to ourselves as we go through our lives is important. And, and thinking upfront, like what, if I'm founding a product, whatever, what, what does success look like? What is, how ambitious am I or not? And it's, there's no judgment. That's one thread. Another is just, let's, let's just give you the mechanics to do this, to give you much higher odds of success. Let's, let's get you good at, and you can upload my book and have Claude, you know, or GPT, your favorite AI can actually let you hire me working for you as your product

• 1:02:23Speaker 01

  manager, that I can do benchmarking and proven better new for you. And it's really shockingly good at it. So benchmarking, looking at who's already successful, close to what you're doing, and making sure that you get a PhD in their product, their customer, their success, that you're spending more than half your time looking at the other products you admire and just, you know, navel gazing. And we just spend too much time on our own. Also with that, being grounded in what speaks to you. If you're building a product for using

• 1:03:07Speaker 01

  yourself as the focus group of one, really getting good at using, you can move so much faster if you can use yourself and, and finding the people around you that really represent your audience and then looking for true signal and really looking for that intellectual honesty, that deeper, deeper truth without no emotion, no ego. The closer you are to the truth, as brutal as it is, you know, the, the faster you're going to get to the true signal. And then, you know, they're using this framework, building your own cadence

• 1:03:45Speaker 01

  and feedback loops to be disciplined about this. I just, for myself, for everybody, I really think that you can just change your odds of success. And, and going to the end now and working your way backwards, saying it's six months from now, it's a year from now. What was success? What was my bar that I feel is great? Or I'm gonna pull the plug? And now how do I come back to today and test? Is there other things I can test for? Are that, can I start testing ads for my product before I even build it? You know, and, and be brutally honest about what do I need to see? What do I need? Not just to

• 1:04:30Speaker 01

  believe to be true to win, what has to be true for me to win? And I just think you can get better and better and better at doing this. And it doesn't even matter if this product idea works. What matters is that you get better. So that when you do it again, you're 10 times as good at it. So you took something away from this. And yeah, and, and I just think you can just inflect your odds of success and, and have a lot more fun doing it. And I want to do put in the plug for fun, that there is no product that can't

• 1:05:09Speaker 01

  include fun, that you can't somehow be making something about it fun. And so much of fun is like silly and like breaking the rules. And like my friend Bing Gordon would say an OMFG moment, like I, I can't believe someone just stuck that in an ad or, you know, and, and come up with these, these crazy instincts and then have fun trying them. And, and so much of this is realizing that nobody else has it figured out either. It doesn't matter if you're inside Google or, you know, Mark Zuckerberg's conference room

• 1:05:51Speaker 01

  at Meta, or Salma, Sam Altman's room, or Sequoia, the top VC. They kind of have nothing figured out beyond you. And, and they kind of know that too. And that's why we keep seeing like some 23 year old came up with an AI assistant when we thought that was already being done everywhere. And it's worth $10 billion. You're like, how did that just happen? Right?

• 1:06:18Speaker 00

  Mm hmm.

• 1:06:19Speaker 01

  It's not, it's not the 23 year olds know something we don't. It's that they're willing to try something that we're not. And so go be the 23 year old, you know, go, there is no dumb idea, you know, there's only untried, untested ideas.

• 1:06:35Speaker 00

  Hmm. I love that. And I'm so excited for everybody to read this. Really helping you find your winning idea faster and how to think in that way. So you're really helping us just be much better thinkers.

• 1:06:48Speaker 01

  And, and I'll also tell your, say to your listeners that I wish I'd put it in the book, to my signed books I put it in, that they can find me on X, at Mark Pink.

• 1:07:01Speaker 01

  And, and I try to reply to any, you know, intelligent, decently respectful comment.

• 1:07:09Speaker 01

  And, and that is kind of my social network. So.

• 1:07:12Speaker 00

  Okay. So fun. We'll put that all in the show notes, you guys. You can go find him, follow him. But below is also the link to the book and make sure you go grab it because it's an incredible read. And thank you so much for coming on the show. This was so fun and even getting to workshop with you.

• 1:07:29Speaker 01

  Yeah. And, and I need to take your course because I'm doing these podcasts and I'm so terrible at selling and promoting my book. In fact, I'm, I, I do such a bad job at it on these podcasts because I don't, I'm not good at staying on message or, you know, whatever, that I've realized my hack is, I shouldn't even mention is, I now realize, oh, I don't like Ari Emanuel has a new book. I'm not gonna buy his book. I'm just gonna listen to his podcast because you get all the good stuff on the podcast, you know?

• 1:08:07Speaker 00

  Yes. No, you're better than you think you are. And for sure, I'm just gonna send it to you. So you can go and check it out. But I can't even, I can't even imagine you on like, on storytelling times 10 because you're already such a good storyteller. So.

• 1:08:24Speaker 00

  All right. I appreciate you so much. This was so wonderful. And you guys go down and grab the book, check out the show notes. And until next time, earn your happy. Bye, everyone.