The IRL Tribes That Could Change Your Life

Today Greg is joined by Antonio Neves, the creator of the Man Morning Newsletter and community. In this episode, you'll hear how to build an IRL mastermind from nothing and the grittiness it takes to get into the most selective tribes in startupland. 

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LINKS FOR THIS EPISODE:
Production Team:
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https://www.manmorning.com/

SHOW NOTES:
0:00 - Intro
13:22 - Why proximity is a tool
25:54 - The good, the bad, and the ugly of Man Morning
35:50 - Greg answers community questions

Creators & Guests

Host

GREG ISENBERG

I build internet communities and products for them. CEO: @latecheckoutplz, we're behind companies like @youneedarobot @boringmarketer @dispatchdesign etc.

What is The Startup Ideas Pod?

This is the startup ideas podcast. Hosted by Greg Isenberg (CEO Late Checkout, ex-advisor of Reddit, TikTok etc).

📬 Join my free newsletter to get weekly startup insights for free: https://www.gregisenberg.com/

X: https://twitter.com/gregisenberg

LI: https://www.linkedin.com/in/gisenberg/

Free 5 day course on using the ACP method to turn strangers into customers via internet audiences and communities over here https://www.communityempire.co/

Greg: Okay, so here's where I want to start. I wanna start where we started, which was over 10 years ago, Los Angeles. We had a founder's mastermind. That's where we met. Describe to people what that, what that was, and maybe why you think it's important that people do it.

Antonio: That was one of the most, uh, Amazing experiences of my life and I've had the opportunity over my life to, to facilitate and lead many quote unquote masterminds, if you will. Uh, intentional communities coming together to make one another better. And when we did this, man, we had such an amazing group of individuals.

Of course, it, it was young Greg Eisenberg. I don't think you had your driver's license yet. We had people like Julian Smith of Breather fame and his, his new amazing, amazing coaching product. We had Rob Sandy, we had Dario Meley, we had Mulloon, I'm not gonna try to pronounce his last name right now. Uh, just a amazing group of people that came together to get each other better.

I think what's unique about it, Greg, is that in this age people are super, super competitive and, and they hold things super close to, to the chest and they don't wanna share what they're working on. But our intention was to come be vulnerable. Share what we're working on and then get input from like seasoned, accomplished, successful men to make it better.

And that's exactly what happened. And out of that very first weekend when we did that, when we've had more of those, some companies have been made, they've iterated, uh, you probably had two companies that were formed that weekend that have been sold, Julian Dario as well. . I like to think about it as some people call people out, that that group had called people up.

You know what I'm saying?

Greg: So, What we did is we rented like a, a mansion in la We got a private chef and we were there for 72 hours and you moderated the whole thing. And the way it worked was every founder would go up. I think there was a, not a whiteboard, but like a uh, blank sheet of paper post-Its exactly. And everyone would wear their heart on their sleeve and say, what's going well with their business?

What's not going well? and some people even just didn't even have a business but wanted to start something. why do you think that format works so well?

Antonio: Well, one, it was intimate, first and foremost. Uh, two, that format worked extremely well because in some shape or form, trust had been established. Not everyone in that room had had met one another previously, so they had trust because Greg knows this person, or Dario knows this person, et cetera. But also, it's very clear what the intention was.

I think a lot of times the reason why masterminds and these type of group things, they don't succeed or people don't get value out of them, is because there aren't clear intentions. There aren't clear metrics, KPIs, why we are here. You know, we we, before we even sat down and started breaking down business ideas, we ask some key questions.

We ask questions like, what does success look like when we're checking out of this, this mansion in a few days? For you to say this investment from a dollars and cents perspective, from a time perspective, et cetera, what is it gonna tell you that this was a. Successful. So we established that. Not only that, we did some intentional grounding.

I'm not sure if you recall, Greg, we went around the room, we talked about how do you like to receive feedback, do you wanna blunt, do you wanna direct or do you like to receive it a little bit differently? Because one thing we didn't want to create was, uh, an environment of posturing or creating people who are starting to get defensive.

You know, some people like top line bullet points, right? Some people need to pause before they hear anything. Some people like more of a story. Some people like to hear examples. So we set, created that container where people could come in with a clear intention of what the goal was. They could be successful in that.

And I, and I'll say the last thing, and we, I touched on this in the beginning, was the trust component of it. Like there was a, we didn't even need to say, Hey, what happens in this room stays in this room. We know these were good dudes who were vetted and there's gonna be confidential. And it, it, it was trust.

Greg: Rob Sandy, so this was a guy who. Our, our mutual friend Shane Mack was like, oh, Rob should really come to this event type thing. And we're like, okay, he sounds cool. He had a company called, it was called Vid io, now it's called Vid iq. It's one of the most popular tools for creators to use. None of us knew him he took a chance on us. Like he flew all the way down his concept was called, or he had built a prototype or early product called. Vid io everyone was like, is it video? Is it vid io? And he is like, I don't, you know, he didn't really know. And we're like, dude, if you don't know how to say the name of your company, you might need to change the name of your company. And he changed it to Vid iq. And the same with Julian, right? Julian came in and he was like, okay, this is, you know, my concept for this thing called breather.com. He had just bought the domain and he was open to feedback and iterated from it. And I think what's interesting about that weekend that we had and these types of masterminds is when you think of like founder events, right now you have these like really big South by Southwest type things, or Collision conference or all these really big events, You don't have enough sort of small, intimate stuff. You have big events and then you have, you're with your team and you're working with your team. So, you know, I just wrote a post, actually, I just published it and I said one of the biggest regrets in my twenties was not doing that event every single year.

Antonio: Those things are, are so transformative versus the big group type of, of setting, and they're revealing in many ways as well. I, I think for leaders and entrepreneurs who are building things, uh, nine times outta 10, you know, they look to be the individuals or they're the individuals that everybody comes to and assumes they're going to have the answers.

Uh, very rarely can they find them in a space of, of peers where, where they're not leading, where they can actually participate, they can get feedback, they can learn, et cetera, and not be the drivers. And for an, a dude like Rob and a dude like Julian, a dude like Dario, Mullo, et cetera, to come in and be willing to, to pivot, to hear some, maybe some, some, some critical feedback things that may not be easy, uh, but because sometimes you don't know someone well.

You're willing to hear that, right? Sometimes the people who are close to us, of course, we don't wanna listen to them, right? you gotta have that distance from individuals that you can build that trust with.

Greg: it's, it's building trust and it's, and it's also just being open to the feedback. deep down, I feel like a lot of us knew what we should do with our businesses, but we needed s someone to tell us, I, I needed like Dario to be like, Hey, this ist a, you know, this is a bad idea. you know, we've also had like quote unquote famous internet people come to this event, right?

We had, um, Sean Pry from my first million come to the event and he pivoted his product, shortly thereafter. I'm just wondering what advice could you give to people who want to start their own mastermind like this?

Antonio: Yeah. Uh, well one, even before we talk about that, I, I'm trying to flash back to the name of what your product was you were working on at that time. Uh, it was, uh, not flyby. It was, uh, what was it?

Greg: the initial, yeah, it was called Five Vi.

Antonio: Yeah, five, five. I forgot about that. That was, that was beautiful, man. Uh, I still remember like really enjoying that, being able to put in the subject matter, push and play and it being great. Um, but in terms of what you can do, like the strong components to have a strong mastermind, uh, one, you probably wanna drop the word mastermind because people hear that word, I think it scares people more than it actually excites them.

Uh, some recommendations, first and foremost, six. eight people max, probably six is the, is the perfect number of individuals. Uh, second, you wanna have a facilitator, some type of coach, a person that's guiding and leading the conversation, taking notes on the whiteboard, et cetera, picking up on things that haven't been heard.

Uh, I know there are a lot of masterminds that don't have facilitators or leaders, and I find that those typically don't work out well. You need that person, the referee, if you will, or the mc to move things along. But also someone who's has experience working with groups like that have a strong format to the day.

Uh, pretty much standard format for us is what someone would give the opportunity to present about what they're working on for 30 or for 45 minutes. And then we'd have a build session after that where we dig into it, we ask questions, we provide feedback, et cetera. Uh, we also had like quote unquote learning and development sessions as well, that that person that you hired a facilitator, lead that.

You should walk away knowing you learned something as well. You added something to your, your toolkit that you walked away with. Uh, make sure you don't have to think about things you don't want to think about. When we woke up, breakfast was ready, lunch was taken care of by that private chef. Sometimes we'd go out to a nice dinner in the evenings.

Uh, make sure outside of the build sessions and the learning that you're doing in this, uh, mastermind over the course of a day or a few days, make sure there's ample room for play. I mean, we, we did surfing lessons. We skateboarded, we, uh, dare I say, we went out,

We shot

guns. Like not just guns, but like these massive guns.

And what's cool about the play, the, the walk from the house to the restaurant or the walk from the house to the gym, or after you finish surfing, you're going back to the vehicle. Powerful moments happen then, because then like, it can be like kinda the one-on-one conversations and you're like, Hey, something you said earlier, you know, it's, it's really been sticking with me.

And so those moments are, are that downtime is critical so have a clear structure and format.

Have a facilitator, make sure you have some downtime and some play that's involved. Make sure you don't have to think about the eating and that kind of stuff. Um, move your body sweat and it can lead to, uh, an amazing experience.

Greg: The gun thing. Let's just talk about that for a second. So especially like the look on, on the faces of the Canadians who don't really like. You know, we had a lot of Canadians in the room and there's, you know, there's not many guns up, up north, so to speak. So I felt like the Americans had a bit more, you know, uh, they were more climatized to what a gun is and how it works.

And we went to, I don't know, I think it was like an Inglewood or somewhere

Antonio: No, it was in the valley somewhere.

Greg: it was in the valley. We walk in I just couldn't believe it. Like we gave our driver's license and they're just like, okay, like now go pick from these like 20 guns.

Antonio: And not just any guns. We're not talking about small pistols. We're talking, we're talking about big, massive, powerful guns. And all I remember is you getting one of those guns. And I don't think you probably knew at the time, now listen, you're Canadian. You wouldn't have known Right. How powerful this doggone thing was.

I can still see you shooting it. And it just taken your arms, just, you just flew you up. And I think I saw the shock in your face. Like, what a, what are we doing here? And, and B, that was, that was pretty awesome.

Greg: I didn't realize it, and I remember you telling me this. You're like, dude, like there's recoil. So when you shoot a gun, it's gonna hit back on you. You have to like kind of protect yourself. And it was in these moments of fear where we all got to know each other and that trust was built. So I think layering on you know, I'm not suggesting people need, you know, need to shoot a shotgun to, to, to build trust, but like, yeah, like things like this are going to build trust.

Antonio: Yeah, it's the things that happen. Some like even like when I think about the traditional like, you know, university experience, most of the learning that happens on a college campus, it doesn't happen in the classroom. It happens outside of the classroom when you're living, right? That's why as much as people are major proponents of remote work, and I have nothing against remote work, I am a strong proponent of in-person elements as well.

Like if you lead a remote team, it is so critical you get together, in my opinion. At least on a quarterly basis, face-to-face for a couple of days or a day because those collisions that happen when you're, uh, with one another are, are just so powerful. They're, they're just different. Re remote is great.

Video is great, and there's something magical special that happens in those conversations that happen again on the walk to the restaurant when you're leaving shooting guns that you probably shouldn't have been shooting. Uh, when you see someone, like you see someone get off of the phone like in a break of a mastermind, and you can tell they just had maybe a tough conversation with an employee or with a girlfriend or something like that.

That's where intimacy is created.

Greg: When people don't have access to these types of people, like what should they do? So for example, like someone's listening to this and they're like, wow, that sounds really cool that you had like the coolest bunch of people come together and you had a bunch of breakthroughs and a bunch of people raised hundreds of millions of dollars.

Some people took their companies public. I live in Idaho and you know, I'm working on a startup or I'm a product manager at Proctor and Gamble, but I'm like inspired by startups. How do you go from not having these people to having these people to showing up and at at an event like

Antonio: That's the biggest feedback I get. Like, must be nice, must be nice, Tony, to have this kind of community. Like, you know, my thing is I have this man mourning community, a newsletter here in Los Angeles, and we meet every Thursday and it's just a ridiculously amazing group of guys and their chapters that are popping up, popping up all across the country.

But the feedback, even in my book, stop Blue on Autopilot, is how do you find these people and, well, one thing I wanna remind everyone is that this crew, these people, one, they don't always have to be your best friends. I think we have to thank, we have to be really close with these people. Like they don't, they have to be people you respect, you have admiration for, but they don't need to be your best friends.

You kick it with and you talk to every single week. The mission is that you have a mission to be better at X, Y, or Z. So just so, just know that first and foremost. Uh, second, I always like to invite people to go where people grow. Go to find places where people are learning, you know, uh, in your local community, there could be a variety of places If you're in the middle of nowhere, some of those options may be virtual as opposed to in person.

But where there are people who are going to grow and learn, go there. That may mean you need to invest in getting on a plane and attending a conference every single year and mix it up going across the country, maybe even all across the globe where you can put some names and faces to the handles and the people you see on Twitter and then you see on LinkedIn and beyond.

So find those conferences and those events where people are mingling and get together and get uncomfortable and go to that. Um, guess what, this is breaking news for a lot of people, and this is the biggest resistance I see So I'd love to see your perspective on this is sometimes you have to write a check. I think people feel so much resistance for paying some for something. There are so many. Amazing online virtual communities that also have like in-person components, but you have to write a monthly check. It's a membership model, or you have to write an annual check to participate in these. And sometimes these things aren't necessarily cheap.

You know, you can look at something like, you know, Sam Pars building right now with Hampton. That's a nice check that those founders have to write. But the odds are that that check they write every single year or month, they're probably making that money back, like tenfold, if not more, based on the learnings that they're getting.

So whatever hesitation people have to, to writing a check, to being willing to invest in themselves, I just invite you to press pause. Like I, I'm a coach, I've been coaching, you know, leaders and executives for over 10 years now, and guess what? I have a coach that I write a nice, nice check to every single month.

I write a check to an on online community that I, that I'm part of, of other folks that work in my field and do similar work so I can learn and stay up to date with what's, what's happening. So, One, sometimes you have to write a check. These communities exist online. They are there. Join a, a cohort-based group learning something like community college that like, like, like you have Greg with, there's ongoing learning.

I just hear a lot of excuses for that, but it, most times it may have to start online, but then don't forget to get on a plane and go see folks face to face as well.

Greg: Yeah, if it was a few years ago, I would be like way more PG with my answer and be like, no, you know, make some, make a bunch of money and have it in a bank account. Once you have in the bank account, then go and invest in in it. And now just like being honest, like I was a, a teenager and like swiping my credit card and like getting on a plane to San Francisco to like meet people and that's kind of the price you need to pay for a seat at the table.

a lot of people expect to get into these rooms and they get frustrated when they can't. But either you need to fly to where these rooms are and where these events are happening and where these, you know, courses or events, you know, intimate gatherings are happening. Or the other idea is you, you do what the Summit Series people did.

Summit started off, uh, Elliot Biznow, uh, started off basically on a credit card. I think it was like in Utah or somewhere where he brought together a bunch of well-known entrepreneurs when he was like 21, 22, 23, put on his credit card and like just cold DMed them and hosted this event in Utah.

And it became a really big event now with like, you know, they just had one off Miami and Richard Branson I saw was there and all these people. Right. So what do you think about that idea of like, if you don't have that network actually just going in. Creating a landing page, creating a mission, and start cold DMing people.

Antonio: Yeah. Well I think that first one Elliot LA did was actually in dc. I remember hearing about that many years ago and different folks that were there. And briefly to, to your point, sometimes you gotta get on a plane and like you said, swipe that credit card. Before I, I became an, an author and speaker in doing the, the Man Morning community.

I was the guy that worked in the television industry in New York City for over 12 years for major networks. I was the guy on live TV as a correspondent with NBCs and P Bets and Nickelodeon, et cetera. And guess how that started? You moved to New York City with less than a thousand bucks in my bank account.

That, that cliche story. Three years later, I found my way on live TV every single day. But in between landing with less than a thousand dollars in my bank account and getting on live tv, one thing that I did, being a New York City, I did informational meetings every single week.

And what I've come to learn is that, and you know this, Greg, nine times out of 10 people are willing to help you. People are willing to support you, they're willing to give you their time, uh, if you ask for it. And second, if you happen to be there and if the people that you emulate, the people you respect, happen to be in San Francisco, they happen to be in New York, they happen to be in New Orleans.

If, even if you're not gonna move there, you gotta find your way there and put some, some, some faces to these people you see on the internet. And yeah, that means writing a check. That means buying a plane ticket. It may mean staying in an Airbnb or sleeping on someone's couch, but the most powerful thing you can say, if you're trying to get someone's time in that Twitter DM and that LinkedIn DM or that Instagram dm, Hey, I'm actually going to be in the Miami area in two weeks, Greg, for an event.

If you have time, I'd love to meet you and buy you a cup of coffee. Now, when you send that message, you may have no, no itinerary, no reservation made. But if Greg says, okay, great, I'll have a cup of coffee. You buy that ticket. I, I've done that many times in my life with, with success. Uh, now, do you need necessarily to start your your own event and put it on a credit card?

You absolutely can, but my suggestion for step one is just fly to where the people are. If they're in the bay, go to the bay, they're in Seattle. Take a week trip to the Seattle. Save your, save your coins and, and make that happen. People wanna help you, but A, you have to ask, and B, you gotta be there.

Greg: Dude, I remember one of the first times I went to San Francisco, swiped a credit card, get there, I had found on Facebook, there was this boat in the shore of the bay I don't know. I think it was like, honestly, 25 bucks a night. And I was like, perfect. I'm just gonna stay.

It's like $25 a night and it's other founders who are staying on this boat. I was like, kind of cool. I show up, it's like midnight landed with like my carry on. we're not talking about a super yacht. That that was the, you know, in my mind I'm like, oh yeah, I'm sure like It's pretty nice. No, no.

It's like, this is a boat that was like from the 1940s that was used in, in like World War II let's just say it was basically like sleeping on a floor of a, of a boat. And sometimes you just have to just do it and just be like, okay, like this is the price I need to pay if I want to get into this room.

Antonio: proximity is such a powerful tool and the story you just told Greg about sleeping on the, on a, on a, on the floor of a boat, right in San Francisco.

I stepped on the floor for over six months in Queens in New York before I ever got, you know, I was able to get, get a bed. Those are the stories, man. That's where you build up certain grit, you build up resilience, you build up some confidence in yourself. You start to have this track record and what you're doing also is like living. An interesting life. I love, someone told me once, live an interesting life. No one wants to talk to an old person who doesn't have interesting stories to tell. Right? and I even think about you even after you were quote unquote successful. I mean, you even went back when you went back to college in Alabama and lived that life.

And to learn more about your product and how to make that product even more successful. Do you know how few founders, even if they were successful, would be unwilling to go back and live on a college campus? Not, not very many, but obviously you built a little different.

Greg: Yeah. And I think, uh, well first of all, I appreciate that, but I also think, like, I hope people listening kind of get that gritty vibes that we're talking about, because I actually think that, you know, if you're going into startup land, you can't be soft. Like you need that grittiness. but at the same time, sometimes you can get lucky.

So one of the first times I went to San Francisco was on the boat, but. After I went back to Montreal and I was like, I, I never wanna sleep on that boat again. I had like nightmares. So I actually went into a Facebook group that was Canadians in Silicon Valley. I was a no one. I joined it and I asked, Hey, would anyone be willing to rent me their place in San Francisco?

An apartment at like a reduced rate. And there was a woman and her husband who said yes to me. They were starting a company called CloudFlare.

Antonio: Oh my gosh.

Greg: So, Cloudflare's, a 20 plus billion dollar company,

Antonio: Lord

Greg: Michelle's Zeitlin and her husband, Had moved into a two bedroom apartment and they had still this lease to this studio apartment, and they gave it to me for nothing.

because I, I was a kid, not because I I was well known at all. Like people will take chances if you shoot your shot.

Antonio: if you shoot your shot and you have a few things you can point to, right? Showing some, some track record, but again, most people are unwilling to ask. I've, during my early New York City days, I can't tell you that the amazing people, quote unquote successful people that I had coffees with that gave me their time, those 30 minutes.

What happens, Greg, is, you know, is most times when people give you that 30 minutes or that 15 minutes. Folks don't come up prepared. I've experienced that. I get, I get requests all the time for, can I get, can I pick your brain? I have 15 minutes. It's the same way you probably get it. And then I get, I jump on a Zoom or I jump on FaceTime, and the folks aren't prepared.

They haven't done their work. They, they don't, they don't have specific questions that they can ask. So I invite people to a hundred percent to, to be prepared in those moments because the truth is some opportunities do only come once. I think, you know, we have this, this mindset of, you know, it's never too late.

Yes, it's never too late. And the longer you wait to pursue something, the harder that it's going to get. So this is a reminder for all of us. That's something you've done consistently in your life, Greg. Something I've done consistently. You gotta shoot your shot and you gotta shoot it more often. You gotta follow up more often.

Some of the, the life-changing meetings for me, that first email that I sent wasn't responded to. That second email I sent wasn't sometimes the third or fourth follow up. When, uh, they finally get back to you. So keep shooting that shot.

Greg: You're shooting a new shot now with, uh, man Mourning

Antonio: Oh, man.

Greg: And it's a shot. So tell us, tell us the good, the bad, and the ugly of man mourning.

Antonio: Yeah. Well, man, morning. I'll give you just some background on it and how it was founded. You know, seven years ago, eight years ago, according to the internet, your boy Tony was living his best life ever traveling across the world as a speaker, publisher, Published multiple books, married newborn twins, living that dope Southern California life with the White House, with the white picket fence, not far from the beach.

Uh, according to the internet, I was living my best life ever, but behind the scenes my life was, uh, a hot mess. I was struggling. Even though my business was successful, I had primarily came from a nine to five background, and so I didn't know what it really meant to be. An entrepreneur. I, I was, so, I was struggling with the, the growth of my business, which, which is a good problem.

Uh, a guy that has experienced six different divorces. Growing up between my mom and dad, I was struggling with my marriage, you know, being married to my wife, and we were just going to marriage counselor after marriage counselor having a father. Growing up for a good period of my life, uh, I was struggling to connect with my kids, and I found myself in a spiral like a lot of men do.

I, I gained like almost 30 pounds of weight, man. I had like, I grew this big beard to hide the weight gain, which didn't hide the weight. By the way, fellas, if you gain a lot of weight, the beard doesn't hide the weight. It's just an indicator that you gained weight. Um, found myself drinking a little bit too much in the evenings.

Your boy even became a, a secret cigarette smoker behind the scenes amidst all of this, again, the internet, though, the internet said your boy, Was doing great. Um, and, but I was stuck. I, I was burned out and I started isolating. And I, when people would ask me how I was doing, I said, two of the most dangerous words a man could say, Greg, how you doing?

Two of the most dangerous words. Someone can say, I'm fine

Greg: Hmm.

Antonio: What do we typically say when we talk to our buddies? How you doing? Haven't seen you online in a lot. You haven't been posting? What's going on? I'm fine. thank goodness, because of my community here in Los Angeles, we started something called, we didn't call it man morning at the time, but we started getting together every Thursday at 7:00 AM for an hour long hike or walk.

And I met with amazing business owners, entrepreneurs. Some were married, some weren't, some were fathers, some weren't. But our mission every Thursday was to get together and just make each other better and be there for one another. And so I shifted from isolating and disconnection. To being fully connected and being seen, and I couldn't hide behind those two words of I'm fine.

Anymore. And, and since that started seven, eight years ago, where my life has gone is just, just a different magical level of places from business success with multiple books and the speaking, the marriages like strong and better, learn how to be a great father. Uh, and I can tell you other things, but what I wanted to do is now just to provide that kind of love and encouragement to other growth-minded men across the country and across the world who do wanna get better.

And maybe they do feel a little bit stuck, but they want that ongoing, uh, place to show up, if you will. So we started off with, uh, a newsletter that's happening right now that goes out every single Sunday, and we have a few thousand men on there at Mad Morning where each week she get insight on key areas of life to get better from health.

Fitness business, et cetera. We have different man mourning chapters growing now all across the country. There's a few global ones as well, of the feedback I've been getting from the men is that they finally feel like they have a place, they have a hub where they can actually be honest and, and they can be real.

Don't get me wrong, this isn't a place where dudes show up and complain and say, whoa is me. No, these are super successful men that are, are reading this and engaging in this, but it could be those men that have become a little bit disconnected from their life, maybe from their goals, et cetera. And this is just a place to, every single week to reset, to recharge and to to refuel for people.

Greg: How does, how does someone join like the Thursday man morning hangout? Like, can they, how does that, how does that

Antonio: Yeah, so the one in Los Angeles, uh, in, so we have our established group, but we invite guests. So like for example, if you're in town, like we get permission from the group, going back to buying and trust. Hey, Greg Eisenberg is in town. Dope dude, he's gonna, can he join us this week? And typically it's all good, so you can come join us for that.

Sometimes as attrition happens and people move to different parts of the country, we welcome in, you know, new men into our tribe. Uh, in the newsletter I talk about how people can start their own man mornings. So you got these starting in places like Ohio, uh, in Northern Florida and Tampa, and different areas of Arizona.

And typically what happens is you pick a day of the week where you get together. Typically, we recommend getting together first thing in the morning, seven or or 8:00 AM and that's very intentional. because I'm sure you agree with this, we found. That the conversations that people have at 7:00 AM over a cup of coffee or a cup of tea are very different than the conversations you have at 7:00 PM over a cocktail or a beer.

Don't get, don't get me wrong, we like to have adult beverages as well, but the intention when you start your day with this, this meet and is so powerful and we typically lead each session with, uh, one of two questions. We'll say, share something you're celebrating and share something that you're navigating.

And that just opens up so much. And we also have different type coaching type questions that we use. So we also just had our first, uh, every year we do a big retreat together. We did one, we rented a massive mansion down in San Diego and did that similar to what, you know, we talked about at the beginning of this talk last year.

We took not, we took all of all of our families to Italy for a couple of weeks. right now, for men, isolation, disconnection, not having a strong community of friends is a real important topic. And I, I don't wanna get too heavy on this, but if you look the numbers correct, like Like of the suicides that happen is 80% of men. And I think a lot of it is because at some point they kept saying the words, I'm fine, I'm fine.

But they really weren't. And something we take for granted is someone, say someone like you, Greg, we assume because Greg is successful. He posts life-changing content for us. He has these amazing communities. He has amazing things that he's building. Greg must be doing great. His life must be perfect, but you and I both know that, you know, everything's not not perfect in everyone's life.

Who's, who's winning maybe at business? So we want to create a safe place for folks to come share what's, what's really going on.

Greg: And actual, like the people who share the most perfect lives are the ones actually who are the most hurt and you know, are vulnerable in a lot of ways.

Antonio: check on your friends and even more, check on your strong friends. Check on your successful friends who you think are doing great. Greg, you and I do something that's so powerful and this is what the man morning ethos is all about, that I will, I, I'm gonna invite every person who listens to this to do, when, when you and I get together, whenever we get the chance to see one another, we both pull our phones out, this phone right here, we pull it out and we throw that bad boy at airplane mode. And there's something about that intentional moment of like, I'm going in airplane mode to say that I'm fully here for you. I'm fully here for us. And that's what happens in our man morning meetups. Right? It is so pivotal because it is so rare. That happens and those conversations that we have, whether it's 30 minutes we have together for a walk in in Venice, or if it's a dinner that we're having like in Hollywood somewhere, those airplane mode moments are so powerful.

Greg: Yeah, I think, uh, I think we're really starting to see just this trend towards. Towards in-person intimate gatherings. Like I feel like we went too deep into the internet for so long that now you're starting to see this trend. I mean, you mentioned Hampton from Sam Par, like he's crushing it. It's like a seven figure business, I assume, uh, just by a lot of friends.

There's so many of my friends are in it. He charges $7,000 a year and people I know he's doing retreats now. Like people want this. And I think the cool opportunity for you is like you've defined this, uh, mission defined your niche and you ha your product, which is an I R L product and a digital product.

both by the way, have retention built in cuz you're, you're man mourning weekly Thursday ritual like. People are gonna wanna show up and your, your daily email content or your content that's coming in on, on a ritual basis. So I love the, and I love the brand too. so my question to you is, what questions you have for me if you're trying to grow this thing, like what can I, a, what can I answer for you? And let's just like live jam on how we could take man mourning to the next level.

Antonio: The question I have for you, man, is what, what am I probably not thinking about? Because already, you know, the feedback from the newsletter is great. It's a weekly newsletter. It started off actually three times a week.

That only went to weekly, and it's gotten even better. And the next step is, is building what that community's gonna look like, uh, a, a cohort, if you will. So I'm trying to debate right now for the first step, if I wanna do like a, a six week cohort or something like that, or even just go all in on a, on an annual. Kind of model where you can sign up for that membership each month and you have X, Y, Z deliverables that are happening every single month. Very similar to I'm sure what happens in Hampton and other, you know, groups that I've had the opportunity to lead over the years and retreats I've held internationally.

So when you look at a community like that, what would be your next move as it specifically relates to monetization?

Greg: I'll do you one better. I'll give you an idea that will help with monetization and it will help increase your newsletter subscriber count,

Antonio: Got

Greg: win win. I think one of the most underrated channels right now is email-based courses. Email-based courses is when you want to teach someone something, over a period of days via email.

So I'll give you an example. We have a community called you probably need a robot.com. It's a AI community, uh, where people learn about productivity. We're launching a free email based course. It's called Five Tools, five Days. And so now you can use your social channels, Twitter, Instagram, whatever post about, um, post about the course, and it's free.

Also spend money on like Twitter ads, et cetera to drive to that be. And why that's important is it's so hard to grow a newsletter organically right now, uh, because there's so many people with newsletters. So basically what's happening is when people are like, if you like this tweet, you'll like this newsletter.

It's like people have become blind to it. And the way to actually go around that is you do something like an email-based course where it's like, I'm gonna give you a carrot, I'm gonna give you this free course. It's normally worth $300. All you have to do is put in your email once they are in the funnel, the five day, let's say you do a five day course, 10 day course around, um, rediscovering who you are as a man.

At the end of that course, you put them when into something that's called a FOMO sequence. And the FOMO sequence is a one to five email sequence after the free content that upsells them to the premium offering. So for example, you probably need a robot that fi five tools, five days thing. At the end of that, we actually created essentially a deeper version of that course.

five tools, five days where we're taking the exact same tools, but we're going way deeper on each of those tools. ? And then we're selling that course. Now, why that works is because, You've given value, you've proven to these people that you can create value, and they're also kind of hooked on the format.

They're like, wow, I'm making this a part of my everyday routine and I don't wanna lose it. So why This? Why I am a big believer in things like email-based courses is gives you the carrot that you can use on social content and also use paid ads against it. And then it also gives you the ability to earn trust with this new audience.

And then it also gives you the ability to upsell them really quickly right after.

Antonio: I love that and I love that I already have like something like this that already exists on my, my hard drive. So that's great and I'm gonna employ that immediately. I have a second question. I think this is a very unique question for you based on what you're doing. I come from a really analog world, uh, where, you know, my brand for the past 20 years, but even past 10 years as a speaker, an author has been me.

I, like a lot of people, show up to get paid for the group coaching I do with organizations, the keynote speaking I do to big organizations across the globe, et cetera. As I think about this newsletter specifically, man mourning, is it possible to do this? Without my name attached my, it seems like what I'm seeing right now in the marketplace from a brand perspective, and as I think about late checkout, I think about if you need a robot, uh, it's still Greg, but it still is a strong brand, and I feel like your stuff could still exist even if Greg wasn't in the signature.

So how critical is it have me attached to it?

Greg: So it's a great question. I think initially it's helpful to have you. Be attached to it. Cuz like you're on a podcast right now, if we get a hundred thousand downloads plus a month on our podcast, a bunch of these people are gonna listen to it and they're gonna be like, oh Tony, like I resonated with that guy man.

Morning. I resonate with that concept. Boom, I'm gonna give my email address in. So it's helpful to that you're out there screaming about what you're doing. And the truth of the matter is people resonate with people more than they resonate with brands. That being said, I don't think that you necessarily need to be that person, um, long term.

So I think that you can like, shift out of it at one point. So one option is you shift out of it once you are starting to see, I don't know, 50, a hundred thousand subs, multiple major cities, um, that are really working in different chapters. And then you just kind of like shift out of it and then you just employ like a Toastmasters model, which is like, there's no person behind Toastmasters yet.

Toastmasters is an incredibly big bi, you know, business, I think it's a nonprofit, probably does tens of millions a year in revenue, if not hundreds of millions of dollars a year in revenue. And there's no person behind it. People just show up to these events, pay, pay their dues to be a part of it. The other opportunity that you have is you've essentially built a prototype that works and a product that works.

And the question is, who would be the most interesting creator to be attached to this company or or product? So for example, you know, I used to work with these guys, Adam and Jordan Bernstein. They actually used to produce this podcast and they just launched a newsletter for Arnold Schwarzenegger.

Antonio: Wow.

Greg: you seen it?

Antonio: No, I haven't.

Greg: They launched it like recently, like within the last like 90 days and it has like half a million subs subscribers.

Antonio: Wow.

Greg: Now that's a big deal because when you look at products like, uh, morning Brew, that sold a majority of their business for 75 million or the Hustle, which I think sold for 20 or 30 million.

you know, when the hustle sold, I think they had like a million and a half subs. So, or when Morning Bruce sold, I think they had like a couple million subs. So Arnold Schwartzenegger has basically made like eight figures of, potential value via leveraging his name and creating this newsletter.

Now, my question to you is if you can have any creator celebrity to attach to this, who would it be and why?

Antonio: Yeah, that's a, that's a fantastic question and I do not have an answer for you right now on that, but that's gonna be a, a good thought experiment for me. Cause when I think about the ethos of the brand, what it's about, what it's not about, I, I know the demographics of this guy extremely well, who, who, who we're talking to.

So now it's for me to transfer that to who, who is that man out there that exists right now. So that's, that, that's a dope exercise I'm gonna do and I'm gonna give you, uh, an update on that

Greg: Tell me.

Antonio: Uh, I have a last question for you, and I don't always get to see what's going on behind the scene. We get to talk offline, obviously, quite a bit as well as I think about this next chapter and working with man Mourning and have a vision for other newsletters down the road, et cetera.

Targeting, targeting men. What's your perspective? On if one should pursue having a partner in something like this or Derating and hire pros. Of course, there's a lot of great newsletter agencies out there right now and people you can write checks to, to implement and do certain things. Uh, when you course, when you look at, say that the Morning Brew motto or the hustle looks like you always had strong tandems, you know, strong, uh, partners that were doing things together, uh, as you look at me, would you say, Tony, you're gonna go further if you're not doing this, this jam by yourself.

Greg: I mean, you always go further when you're not doing it yourself. I think you want to have bright minds at the table who've. Done this zero to one before, they don't necessarily need to have, you know, worked at Facebook or Google. I actually think that's like a red flag. You know, you, you i'd I much, I much prefer, like they've, you know, I was telling, I was telling this to Rob Sandy actually, who we talked about in the beginning of the call right before this, he, you know, he's trying to hire, uh, someone on his team and there's a difference between hiring someone zero to one and, and, and hiring someone who's, you know, just optimizing something that's working.

And I think if I'm you, all I'm thinking about is how do I get zero to one? Because if you get to one and you have real product market fit, that, that's really taking it off. Taking off both on, um, physical and digital. This is a thing that could scale to hundreds of millions of people. So,

I think if I'm you, I'm open to either, like my framework for thinking about do I need a partner? Is what am I really good at? What am I missing? And if you find someone who fills those gaps, who's the yang to your ying? You know, is it worth giving up a percentage of, of the business to accelerate it and have them thinking about it 24 7?

Like probably, um, your other option is go to agencies, like with a lot of our, uh, I haven't sent this publicly or anything, but with a lot of like our, like you probably need a robot and things like that. Like we've hired agencies to run, uh, a lot of it, for example, content and stuff like that. So, And I'm not afraid of hiring as a, as an agency guy now who owns a bunch of agencies, I'm also not afraid to hire a bunch of agencies.

Like no one hires more agencies than us. Cuz we like, we're kind of like, the most amount of equity you're gonna give away is going to be now pre-product market fit. So therefore I'd much rather spend a little bit, get further along, prove that, and then have to give up less equity after.

Antonio: No, that's, that's great advice. And I, and I love that the agency hires agencies. That's what's up.

Greg: Totally. I mean, we bought an agency in 2022 as a result of, we were hiring this agency. They were amazing. And we're like, Hey, like can we, can we work more closely together? And. That might happen to you, you might be like, wow, I found this incredible agency that does newsletter growth and I need them on my team to be thinking about this all the time.

And I think if I'm you, I'm trying to think of like, don't, don't look at big agencies. Look at like, these are three to five people, eight people, 12 people small, that have something to prove are gritty, wanna make this work and hold them accountable to a kpi. Be like, I, I'm making this up, but I, I want 50,000 high quality subscribers by this date.

And all of our efforts need to be focused on that. If you hit that, that is gonna be successful. And I want to like double down with you. If you don't, I don't, I don't know. We'll have to revisit it.

Antonio: Yeah, that's good. So the three key takeaways I'm getting from you is one, the email course that's gonna come out fast. Uh, for now it's gonna be media, boy, Tony as the brand, and I'm gonna identify who that other person or people could be down the road. And three, yeah, as even as you say that, I'm more excited about that prospect of working with agencies where I can write a check now versus, like you said, giving up equity, uh, long term.

This is very helpful, man. I'm fired up right now and your boy is gonna be grinding this weekend, so I appreciate it, man.

Greg: Thanks for coming on, man. Where could folks find you in man? Morning And, and get involved.

Antonio: Yeah, man. morning.com, like the beginning of the day, man. morning.com and everything. Uh, me is, at the Antonio nes. That's a handle on all socials at the Antonio nes.

Greg: I love it. And can you tell people to subscribe to this YouTube channel

Antonio: Hey everybody. If you're listening right now, like Greg said, you made it to the deep end. Odds are you've got value out of this or some other content that Greg has provided you with not only this month, but probably last month and over the years. It costs you absolutely nothing right now to smash that subscribe button, and it helps Greg and the work that he does so he can continue to publish free amazing content like this for you.

So not only are you gonna press that subscribe button, but share this episode with a friend as well.

Greg: I knew you'd crush it cuz you were on tv. So that was like, for me, that was like, I'm watching a Nickelodeon TV ad right now. Like, that was amazing.

Antonio: I got your back, man. I, I, I share your newsletter with so many people. I sing your praises far and wide.

Greg: Love you man. And uh, you'll have to come back on the show again.

Antonio: Love you, homie. Appreciate you.