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I'm joined by Tiago Forte, Founder at Forte Labs and bestselling author of ‘Building a Second Brain’ and The ‘PARA Method’. We talk about the necessity of building credibility online, the role of gatekeepers in information sharing, and why the B2B market could be a goldmine for online course creators.
We cover the benefits (and drawbacks) of being an independent creator, how to leverage the media platforms of the world to your advantage, and why you need lead magnets.
00:00 Why Creators NEED to diversify.
08:09 Cool non-Internet business ideas.
11:41 Using a dumb phone - the ultimate productivity hack.
22:30 The future of tech in 2024.
25:15 Is Tiago Forte really creating a TV show?
34:37 Multi-million dollar opportunities in B2B markets.
38:00 Free B2B business ideas.
44:02 Why you should stop building businesses in competitive spaces.
51:15 Book recommendation: "Signs: Secret Language of the Universe" by Laura Lynn Jackson.
00:00 Why Creators NEED to diversify.
08:09 Cool non-Internet business ideas.
11:41 Using a dumb phone - the ultimate productivity hack.
22:30 The future of tech in 2024.
25:15 Is Tiago Forte really creating a TV show?
34:37 Multi-million dollar opportunities in B2B markets.
38:00 Free B2B business ideas.
44:02 Why you should stop building businesses in competitive spaces.
51:15 Book recommendation: "Signs: Secret Language of the Universe" by Laura Lynn Jackson.
Creators & Guests
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/
Tiago Forte [00:00:00]:
I think sometimes Internet creators worry too much about capturing every little bit of value that they're creating. I mean, I do this with books, too. I have two traditionally published books, but before that, I released seven self published ebooks on Amazon. And the amazing thing is, as an independent creator, you can do both. You're not signing exclusive contracts. You know, they're like, oh, let's leave Gumroad and go to some other platform because we can pay 3% instead of 5%. Or they're like, oh, we can self publish, wish this ebook. We don't have to pay the publisher all this percentage, and we can keep it for ourselves.
Tiago Forte [00:00:29]:
I love that sort of self reliance, but I think sometimes it really makes online creators be blind to huge opportunities to essentially leverage the media platforms of the world to spread their message.
Greg Isenberg [00:00:40]:
So before we begin, I must say you did one of the smartest things that I've seen an author do in your book, building a second brain, which was, you said in your book that if you want the bonus chapter, you'll email it to people. So essentially, you put a lead magnet in your book.
Tiago Forte [00:01:02]:
Totally. Oh, yeah, that was essential. That was essential. The whole project almost doesn't make sense, at least financially, unless you can use it to grow your audience and sell them courses and other things. So that was an important part.
Greg Isenberg [00:01:19]:
Yeah. And I think about that often because I think about lead magnets, and I call them community magnets, which are basically lead magnets, where you're bringing someone into a free community in exchange for their email address. And I was like, man, this Tiago guy, that's when I realized I was like, I need to get this guy on my podcast because this guy knows what's up. And so I'm excited to talk to you. We talk about business ideas here. So I'm excited to talk to you about business ideas. And I knew you were one of us when I saw you put that lead magnet in.
Tiago Forte [00:01:53]:
Yeah, I feel like we've been sort of orbiting in very much the same circles. I mean, I've come across here, especially on your content, on x so many times, so this just seems only natural.
Greg Isenberg [00:02:05]:
I appreciate it, man. I appreciate it. And I actually reached out to you, which I encourage other people to do. I saw your book in a bookstore here in Miami called books and books, and I think I just sent you a message, and I was just like, a picture of the book, and I was just like, great book, or something like that. And you responded. I was like, whoa, this guy responded. And it just goes to show you that people have their dms open a lot of the time and it's sort of worth reaching out to people. And you'd be surprised who responds.
Tiago Forte [00:02:39]:
Oh, absolutely. So many things have come into my life, both professional and just personal, from that. I mean, it's kind of crazy if you think about it. We all have mostly direct messaging access to each other and to almost anyone, and we really barely use it.
Greg Isenberg [00:02:55]:
I feel like that's right. And that's kind of a good segue into one of your startup ideas, which is acquiring a small business and growing it using what do you've got? A few hundred thousand followers at this point. So what do you mean by that? And what type of business would you consider acquiring?
Tiago Forte [00:03:13]:
Yeah, this is one of my little kind of side projects, at least for now. I guess I've been bitten by the bug. This is kind of like a trend I've come across a number of times, people like Cody Sanchez and Michael Girdley and others. And for the longest time, I couldn't even fathom that possibility because my one business takes up 100% of my bandwidth and more. And I was like, how are these people running multiple businesses? But now I'm starting to see it's a combination of having operators that you hire to run them, or using the same team for one business, or some of the same team as another, or having them be mostly sort of passive businesses. I kind of get it a little more now. And what's driving it is basically it's partly a desire to diversify. We worked recently with a financial advisor.
Tiago Forte [00:04:12]:
It was a funny story, like an independent financial advisor that charges you a flat fee for like three or four calls. And he did this comprehensive analysis of our entire financial life, like your total net worth and everything. And he had the software that he used that you input, like every single asset you had, every credit card, every debt, everything. And at the bottom of it, if you don't include the business, like just include everything else but the business. Our net worth today, my wife and I in our late thirty s, is a big fat nothing. It's like our debts, which is we have no personal debt or credit card debt. It's just like our house, but we live in Southern California, cancels out every other asset that we have, which essentially means that the business is everything. I have all of my financial life in this one business.
Tiago Forte [00:05:07]:
And the way the world is going with pandemics and wars and different things, it's dangerous. It's dangerous to live that way. So I'm just interested in moving into something that is complementary or even countercyclical to an Internet based business. Should the Internet go down or should online education go down? I can survive, basically, yeah.
Greg Isenberg [00:05:29]:
You want to hedge. Not that you really want to hedge, but obviously we hope. I think your business is only going to compound, but the hedging piece around, like you want to hedge and diversify, basically, is what you want to do. You want to buy something that has cash flow that is not related to your current business, but that could be supercharged by the asset that you've built, which is your audience.
Tiago Forte [00:05:55]:
Exactly. That's the thing, too, is with an audience, because an audience is just relationships. They're not single purpose, they're not single use. So you could conceivably diversify away from an Internet business, but using the asset of your relationship with that audience as the means of diversification. So it's not like you have to go and start over completely from. I'm also, I've seen all these know, like Kevin Aspeedi two and others who are basically getting this fire hose of attention you have as an online creator and just like plugging it into even an established business that already has operations that just needs more clients, that is a really powerful model.
Greg Isenberg [00:06:38]:
I think so. I think the way that I would think about it if I were you is you've got a few hundred thousand YouTube subscribers, 129,000 Twitter subscribers, followers. It's like you basically have this ecosystem of almost half a million, if not more of people interested in the same stuff that you're interested in productivity, unlocking your potential, that sort of thing. And the thing is, half a million people is a lot of people. That's a lifetime of people to sell them things. Now, the question is, what are you going to sell them? Is it books? Is it courses? Is it paid community? And then there's this whole other. What you're saying is there's this whole other area. And what Cody Sanchez and other people are saying, there's these boring businesses, these SMBs, that your audience might want that today.
Greg Isenberg [00:07:34]:
You're not selling them that. Totally. So my question to, you know, Cody Sanchez talks about laundromats and like, you're not going to buy a laundromat and just start posting about it on Twitter. And if you are, that'd be pretty funny. If you are, I think you need a first brain, not a second brain. You got to get that checked out. If you have an Internet audience like yourself. Let's just jam for a second.
Greg Isenberg [00:08:04]:
What is a more brick and mortar or boring business that you could buy.
Tiago Forte [00:08:09]:
That's what I'm trying to figure out now. I would love any ideas you have. I have trouble with the idea of a completely boring business just because even a laundromat, I'm sure, is a lot of work to manage. And I have a hard time imagining that I would even care enough about a business like that to even be willing to do that stuff. So I feel like it should have at least some aspect that I'm curious about or interested in, or that will teach me something. And it would be nice if it was sort of not Internet based. I really think in coming years we're going to see disruptions to the Internet. I don't know why I have this sense, but I feel like the Internet is in this open free era that may be ending or maybe getting less dependable.
Tiago Forte [00:08:57]:
We're having different. The great firewall in China and different countries, erecting different barriers and all sorts of things. So I would like something like know something that's land or that's physical and solid that could be valuable even if, God forbid, the Internet was turned off. But beyond that, and being profitable and having cash flow, I'm just doing kind of a wide sweep of the possibilities.
Greg Isenberg [00:09:25]:
So why I think you shouldn't buy land and why I think you shouldn't buy something like real estate is because anyone could do that. But you have this unfair advantage where you've now built this audience of these people who now trust you, which is rare. So I'm trying to think, okay, what could you do and which movement could you sort of latch onto? And have you heard of the brick? The brick device? So it's actually this. I have one right here. It looks like. So literally, it's a brick. So if you're listening to this on Apple podcasts or check it out on YouTube, and it's this really cool idea, and it's a device for people who have smartphone addictions. Okay? So basically, it removes distracting apps and their notifications from your phone.
Greg Isenberg [00:10:23]:
So it turns your phone into literally, like, focus mode. And you can set up different modes for it. You can set up these custom modes. So I have a couple of them. It's completely magnetic. My business partner uses it. Jordan mix uses it. He puts it on his fridge.
Greg Isenberg [00:10:44]:
He just leaves it. And the way it works is you tap the device to turn your phone into a literal brick. Way to unbrick your phone is to get up, walk to wherever the brick is, and then tap the brick to unlock it. So it creates this physical barrier, and it creates this friction. How do you do that?
Tiago Forte [00:11:08]:
Is it a software, like, the software is disabling the phone?
Greg Isenberg [00:11:12]:
Yeah, I think that's how it. It's. I'm sure you've seen people who carry, like, a smartphone and a dumb phone. Yeah. And I think it just makes it a lot easier to do this. So I look at this, and I'm like, if I'm Tiago forte, I'm reaching out to these guys who are like, it's really early for them. And I'm being like, how can I buy 50% of your business? Because wouldn't this product, the brick, be interesting for your audience?
Tiago Forte [00:11:41]:
Oh, yeah. I mean, I just got one of these a few months ago, the light phone, a dumb phone, and my wife got one too. We've been trying it, but it's too extreme. With two kids and needing to just do all the things that we use smartphones for, it was too much of a jump. So we've now reverted back to iPhones. But I'm still personally in search of a solution, and I like the physicality of that. I like that it's this artifact in your environment that is reminding you that you can create that bubble of focus.
Greg Isenberg [00:12:15]:
Exactly. And the thing I've noticed with the brick is, let's say it's on my fridge. If I ever go up to the fridge and I grab it and I unbrick my phone, I feel stupid doing it. I'm like, I check Twitter or I check instagram. What a waste of time. So it reinforces this really good habit. And I think why the brick would be so cool for your audience is a lot of this stuff is stuff that you're already telling to your audience. You can live this, right? You'd probably promote the brick.
Greg Isenberg [00:12:52]:
I mean, you'd probably promote the brick regardless. So that's a good framework for thinking about. It's like, number one, would my audience be into this? Number two, what's a non obvious thing that they would be into? So, of course you can build a course. Of course you can go build a paid community. Of course you could sell some digital asset, but this is, like, a pretty non correlated asset that's non obvious. And I think, just, like, brainstorming from.
Tiago Forte [00:13:24]:
There, I really like this line of thinking, because it's make. We make not big, but a fair amount of revenue as an affiliate. But it's all either Amazon stuff, which is mostly books. Every time we recommend a book, it is other people's courses, and it's SaaS tools, mostly productivity tools. But the problem is all those things are so similar and also similar to what we ourselves sell that it's kind of a lot of noise. There's just like this barrage of courses and tools and apps that they're just constantly being faced with the physicality of that. I think you're right. Would really stand out just for the fact that it's so different.
Greg Isenberg [00:14:09]:
I saw this in my slack today that one of our team members has like a young sister. She's, I think, like 17 or 18. She came home from college and she came with her friends just to hang out at their family house. And they're all like sitting in the living room reading magazines. So this guy who works for us walks into his living room, his family living room, childhood house, and see all these girls reading magazines. Magazines. It's 2024. So he goes like, well, why are you doing this? Why magazines? And apparently it's like the cool thing to physical.
Tiago Forte [00:14:51]:
Yeah, no kidding. Yeah. Along these lines. We took the tv out of our living room. We just took it off the wall and stored it because we'd noticed we have a three year old. Our oldest is a three year old, and he was just spending, I mean, maybe just like an hour a day all combined. But we started noticing behavioral issues. We noticed that it was almost like he's addicted to it.
Tiago Forte [00:15:15]:
He always wanted to watch it. We noticed that we were watching it a lot and therefore modeling it. And it was a rough week or so, but it's been awesome. We talked to each other more. My wife and I have, our reading of physical books has picked up. It's really an amazing one time decision that then has infinite future benefits. But. So let's explore this.
Tiago Forte [00:15:41]:
I'd love to get basically free consulting, but how would you think about this? In theory, that sounds interesting for me to reach out to them. I'm sure they'd be open to a conversation. But then do I straight up just ask for a certain percentage and then offer certain things in return, or. It's hard for me to even imagine what that conversation would look like.
Greg Isenberg [00:16:03]:
I think you go to them and you say, hey, I love the brick. I love this product. I think my audience would love it. Sure, I can be an affiliate, but there's something about being like, I'm a co owner in this product that is going to make it feel different when I promote something that has my stamp of approval. So I'm looking for a partnership, and I would know, I'm sure that you're looking for more customers. I can help you get more customers. But I can also bring friends of mine. You can bring Greg Eisenberg, you can bring Sean Pori, you can bring Justin Welsh.
Greg Isenberg [00:16:39]:
Like, people in your circle. So it's not just you, it's the multiplier effect of your crew. And I would say, how could I own 30% to 50% of your business?
Tiago Forte [00:16:50]:
Why that range? What is it about 30 to 50?
Greg Isenberg [00:16:54]:
I think that you want the team to have the majority of the business at the same time if you're going to be a partner in this business. And when I say partner, I don't mean just like someone who's going to be allowed, like, a co founder creator. My prediction is there's a lot of co founder creators that are just going to tweet about a business once and then forget about it. No, you're going to actually be there. You might have product feedback that you can give that might be really relevant. You might write another book and you might include it in that book, things like that that are super valuable to someone like that. And I think that, sure, could you own 2%? Yeah, but if you own 2%, I'd imagine it's not that interesting. And I'd imagine something like the brick is probably doing like, it probably has product market fit with a very small group of people like me and my partner Jordan, but probably has, if I had to guess, less than $2 million of revenue.
Greg Isenberg [00:17:56]:
And so it's early enough that you probably can own a big chunk of the business. And they might say, like, yeah, you can own 30% of the business, but I want a million dollars. In which case you say, no problem, no problem. You get their financials, you get their vision, and then you raise that money privately if you don't want to invest. So you're not putting any of your own money you're actually going and raising from. Because now you have the deal, right? So now you go to someone like me, let's say, and you say, hey, Greg, I found this amazing company. It's perfect for my audience. The business is, we're going to run it as a profitable business and there's going to be dividends every year, and you model it out.
Greg Isenberg [00:18:42]:
Would you be willing to give me half a million dollars? And could you find someone else to give me half a million dollars at this valuation? So now you have a deal. So you're connecting, and I'm sure people in your network would be willing to back you, because now all of a sudden, you're creating a lot of value because you're going to be promoting it. You have this great business that aligns with it. So you're also creating value.
Tiago Forte [00:19:07]:
Interesting. Yeah, I like that idea. These investors, they would have themselves now equity proportional to how much they invest. Right?
Greg Isenberg [00:19:20]:
Yeah. So the way you would structure it is, and we're getting into the details, but I think this might be interesting for people. Honestly, let's say they wanted a million dollars for 30% of the business. And all the advisory stuff that you're going to give, you have to come up with a deal with your investors. Let's say I'm the investor, where you say, like, okay, of my 30%, I'm going to give 5% to Greg because he's putting in the actual capital. So that's my deal with you.
Tiago Forte [00:19:54]:
So some minority share, and then I could also put in some money. Right. Just to have skin in the game. But then I think you should.
Greg Isenberg [00:20:03]:
Honestly, I think you should. I think the creators should put. That's another thing. I think creators should put money into the businesses that they're partnering with.
Tiago Forte [00:20:10]:
Fascinating. Fascinating. This is genuinely interesting, man. And very timely. In fact, last week I was exploring a deal, my first one that I ever even sort of investigated. And on the surface, it looks so good, so compelling. And then as soon as I talked to the broker, signed an NDA, got the actual financials, and it was just such a disaster. And I was like, oh, this is why people get paid, to find good.
Greg Isenberg [00:20:42]:
Exactly. Exactly. Yeah. So I think this is interesting for you, but it's also interesting for people who have, there's a lot of people listening this, who have products that have product market fit or a little bit of product market fit with a devout audience, and they're thinking to themselves, like, how do I grow this thing? I wish I can have a creator help promote this. So understanding how you think about it is interesting to them, too.
Tiago Forte [00:21:07]:
Yeah, I want to speak to those people for a minute to tell them what it looks like from my point of view and why I'm even exploring this is like, I spend all my time, and my team spends all our time creating content and building our audience. My job is to add email addresses to our email list. Right. But this has been a recent realization. We have, like, 140,000 people on our email list. We send a newsletter every Tuesday, and we have 50% open rates. So we have the weekly attention of 70,000 people, but we have hardly anything to offer them. Right.
Tiago Forte [00:21:50]:
Like, I have a couple of courses, I have a couple of books. That's about it. And that audience will buy some of those things or not or whatever. But then we're just continuing to send them incredible free value every week, week after week after week, all year, never asking or rarely asking for anything in return. I almost feel like I'm undervaluing. I'm underutilizing this audience who tells us they would like to buy things. Also, they're like, can you recommend this or that? And we're just like, no, sorry. We're just going to continue to send you massive amounts of free value just because it's fun.
Greg Isenberg [00:22:30]:
Yeah. I also think that people like you are looking for things to write about and things to film about. So using the brick as an example and talking about that lifestyle and talking about the pros and cons of taking 48 hours off or taking time where you're not looking at your phone, it doesn't even need to feel like you're subtracting. A great product should subtract from. It shouldn't feel like you're asking. Gary Vee famously talks about the jab, jab hook. Right? Like, you give value, give value, give value, and then you take. And I just don't think that in 2024 that that's relevant to me.
Greg Isenberg [00:23:16]:
I think that it's just jab, jab, jab, jab, jab, jab. It's another jab. Like, your product should be a jab. And I think that with something like the brick, some product that is just so relevant to your audience that it just gives you something to talk about that's interesting to them.
Tiago Forte [00:23:35]:
Yeah. And it makes so much sense. Like, distraction is, what's the expression? 500 pound elephant in the room. If you haven't figured that out and mastered that, no productivity tip or technique or framework is going to make any difference whatsoever. It's the stepping stone to even being able to have the space to even think about your productivity.
Greg Isenberg [00:24:02]:
That's right. Exactly. So I'm glad we talked about this. I want to shift gears to another space that you're interested in, which was interesting that you're talking about this, especially considering you recently removed a tv from your house, but you're interested in producing a tv show and sort of thinking to yourself, how can I get involved in the entertainment business? My question to you is, what do you know about the entertainment business, the tv business, and why is it interesting to you? Why do you think there's opportunity there?
Tiago Forte [00:24:37]:
Yeah, good question. It all started when someone from one of the big Hollywood agencies reached out to us. I think if it wasn't for that, I have no contacts or network there. I have no idea how to even get started. It was the possibility of someone sort of taking us by the hand there. They reached out through my literary agent, and they were interested in the material in my two books and potentially making that into a tv show. Basically, one of my favorite things to do in the whole world is enter new creative media. I just love that first, it's like a frontier.
Tiago Forte [00:25:15]:
It's like the wild west. You just enter this new creative domain and you're like, you have to question all your assumptions and learn so much and really come in as, like a novice with a beginner's mind. And so over the past maybe seven or eight months, I've done that, just talking to different people in the industry, reading articles, watching things. And I still wouldn't say I have a good understanding of the industry, but I have enough understanding to know that it would be so powerful from the perspective of spreading an idea. I think that's what I'm most interested in. When you look at what are the highest leverage ways of getting an idea into the hearts and minds of the most people in this world, tv is just it. Tv is the medium that runs the modern world. So it could also be cool financially, could also be cool for other things.
Tiago Forte [00:26:07]:
But I'm most interested in just distilling and simplifying and making entertaining these second brain ideas, which I really believe and know change people's lives if they only find out about them and learn them.
Greg Isenberg [00:26:21]:
So I have a saying, which is capture hearts first, then capture carts.
Tiago Forte [00:26:27]:
Yes.
Greg Isenberg [00:26:28]:
So I think that's what you're saying, too, which is if you could spread your ideas wide and far and people resonate with them and they are connected to these ideas, then you're gravy, right? Then you'll find products to sell. They'll take out their wallets. But what interests you about television is you think that it's not a hack, but a great way to spread your ideas faster. And it's interesting because you come from the Internet. To me, you're an Internet content creator first, even though you wrote a book or books, to me, you talk about your newsletter. Your core metric is emails. So to me, it's interesting that you think that, like, why would you spend that time doing tv when you could spend that equal time double downing on YouTube, which is like the new tv?
Tiago Forte [00:27:25]:
To me, it's both. And they will leverage each other, those two avenues. I mean, I do this with books, too. I have two traditionally published books. But before that, I released seven self published e books on Amazon, and they're not in any way in competition with each other. In fact, I just am constantly getting lessons from one of those routes and applying it to the other. I think this sometimes gets lost in the very contentious debates around, like, oh, self publishing versus traditional publishing. There's like this ideological battle going on.
Tiago Forte [00:27:57]:
And the amazing thing is, as an independent creator, you can do both. You're not signing exclusive contracts. So, so it's interesting you can look at this from Hollywood's perspective. Like, let's look at it from where they're sitting. We're in the midst not only of a tv golden era, it's widely agreed upon that this era right now is like the best tv that's ever been created, right? But we're also in the midst of streaming wars. We have all these megacorporations spending billions, like tens of billions every year, losing billions to try to gain market share. Right? And you read about some of these, it's kind of insider publications you have to go to, but they're competing. There's shows that are having multi way bidding wars.
Tiago Forte [00:28:46]:
It's like Amazon Studios and Netflix and Hulu bidding against each other, right? And it's a lot of big names that get that much attention. But once in a while you see people who are quite early and quite small really benefiting from that. So I'm just like, okay, I would love to be the ip that these huge studios are fighting over. I'll be the talent that is the one actually on camera presenting it. And I just see no downside. I mean, there is time and energy involved, but I'll continue to do all the other stuff I do and run my business. I think sometimes Internet creators worry too much about capturing every little bit of the value that they're creating. They're like, oh, let's leave gum road and go to some other platform because we can pay 3% instead of 5%.
Tiago Forte [00:29:36]:
Or they're like, oh, we can self publish this ebook so we don't have to pay the publisher all this percentage and we can keep it for ourselves, which is, I love that sort of self reliance. But I think sometimes it really makes online creators specifically just be blind to huge opportunities to essentially leverage the media platforms of the world to spread their message.
Greg Isenberg [00:29:59]:
At the very least, people should have an open mind, right? In general, I talk a lot about not raising venture capital because I had spent my 20s raising millions and millions of dollars and I'm turned off. That being said, last week I had a great meeting with a venture capitalist, he reached out, someone I respect. I'm not saying I'm taking his money, but I think it's important to not let yourself, as a founder, as a creator, get attached to an the not. I'm the not VC guy, therefore I can't have a meeting with a VC person. I'm an Internet creator, therefore I can't have a meeting with Hollywood producer. Totally.
Tiago Forte [00:30:46]:
Not totally. That's such a good perspective. Yeah, it depends on the situation. What's that quote? If the facts change, I change my mind. What do you do?
Greg Isenberg [00:30:57]:
Absolutely. I will say on the tv thing, I think that the number one reason to go on tv is to get the clips. So I noticed this with people like Bill Ackman and Chamath. I was like, asking, like, why are these guys going on CNBC? So know. Chamath lives in, you know, it's like he has to get on a plane, go land at LaGuardia or Newark or JFK, spend an hour to get into the city, stay at some midtown hotel. It's like he's got kids. He probably doesn't want to do it. It's freezing cold.
Greg Isenberg [00:31:38]:
I heard New York is like 20 degrees right now. He probably doesn't want to do it, but he does it because five minutes later, he takes that clip and he posts on Twitter and it gets millions of views. Or Bill Ackman does the same thing. I noticed that he'll go on tv and then all of a sudden, right after clip is live. And the clips, because you're on tv, because it looks like tv. Everyone knows what tv looks like. There's more credibility. It spreads quicker, and it's just more viral.
Tiago Forte [00:32:08]:
Totally. Yeah. There's another kind of bias of online creators. They seem to think sometimes that markers of credibility or status don't matter or are bad. That's crazy. Credibility and status are more important than they've ever been because of the flood of information. No one knows what to believe or who to trust. You got to have both.
Tiago Forte [00:32:31]:
You should sort of have your own platform that you control and also take advantage of the gatekeepers when and if they come calling.
Greg Isenberg [00:32:40]:
I agree, man. I agree. Okay. You have another idea on here, which I'm really interested in, which is certifying other people to teach, facilitate, consult on your ip. So you've spent years building this incredible ip. Multiple books, so much content, free content, YouTube, whatever, created a system. And I've noticed that more and more people are doing this where they're creating a system. And then, like, the EOS system.
Greg Isenberg [00:33:08]:
Are you familiar?
Tiago Forte [00:33:09]:
Totally, yeah.
Greg Isenberg [00:33:11]:
So maybe you can tell people what EOS is. If you're familiar with the facilitators that they have, maybe you can explain that and then explain what you would do to license your business and your ip. Sorry. And why that's interesting to you.
Tiago Forte [00:33:28]:
Yes. This is so timely. This is what I'm in the midst of right now. I just got back from b to b, which is sort of the category I would put all this in, b to b education, b to b training. I've just joined a mastermind and I was in Atlanta on Monday for that. Basically, how did I get on this track? At one point a year or two ago, I was like, how does an idea actually reach its full potential? This is a question that really interests me. A new idea comes into the world, let's just pick one. Like, I don't know, agile software.
Tiago Forte [00:34:07]:
Right? That's an idea. How does it fully capitalize and manifest like the full potential of that idea? Reach everyone who could possibly benefit? Give them the maximum benefit. Yes. Make the most money course that's part of it. And what's so fascinating is the world of online course creators, which is the one that I'm a part of. We are totally focused on b to c. That's our whole world. We're all about building our lists and our platforms and selling products and even selling a course.
Tiago Forte [00:34:37]:
But that's all b to c, all of it, right, is finding the customer, acquiring the customer, selling them something. But what I'm learning, and I'm going to be writing about this and creating content because I feel like this is like this big undiscovered secret, is the b to b market, from what I can see, has the potential to be far more lucrative. Far more lucrative. It's the world of corporate trainings. Whether you deliver them yourself or you have in house on staff, facilitators deliver them, or you certify external, independent facilitators, or you license it or you give them access to your self paced program, like whatever it is. There's a lot of models, but these businesses that I'm starting to study, they just assume thousands of dollars per person. Every person, say on a team that they're doing a training for, they're going to estimate like 3000 that they're going to make per person. Whereas as online course creators, we're like afraid to charge a couple of $100.
Greg Isenberg [00:35:42]:
That's right. And with Internet economics, it's not uncommon to acquire an email address for one dollars to $2.
Tiago Forte [00:35:50]:
Exactly. Yeah. So it's kind of what we were saying before. We have these huge audiences, but we're monetizing them so poorly in general. Right. And then I'm going over to the b two B world, which honestly feels like a different culture. It's like flying to a different country, and you don't understand anything like the acronyms being used. They're like, what is it? I can't remember the acronyms right now, but like the terminology they're using, the assumptions that they make.
Tiago Forte [00:36:17]:
Like, for example, in our world, bigger email list is better, right? The size of our email list is like our calling cart. In their world. It's all about the quality of the lead. They don't care how many people, they'd rather have one qualified lead than 1000 random people kicking the tires. So I'm really having to sort of compare and contrast these two different mindsets and learn how to operate in both of them. But the purpose of the whole thing is just basically, I mean, what I really want is my ideas. To become part of culture, to become part of organizations, become part of companies, be part of schools, be taught to kids. That's just my mission.
Tiago Forte [00:36:57]:
And there's no other way to do that besides entering the b two B.
Greg Isenberg [00:37:01]:
Markets and eos specifically. So I never heard of eos up until recently. It stands for entrepreneurial operating system. And it's basically, I met with a friend for dinner and I was like, how was your 2023? And he goes, well, it was completely transformed thanks to EOS. And I thought he was talking about like a drug or something. I was like, what is that? Is that like a sister drug to Ozempic or something like that? And no, he's like, no, I actually hired this facilitator who did this workshop, and he works with our company to implement EOS, which is basically these. It's like a framework for how to run a productive organization for companies, I think under 250 employees. And he was saying that there's sort of a licensing play there as well.
Greg Isenberg [00:38:00]:
So someone had created, I don't know the exact story, but basically someone created this way of doing things. They'd license it out to people who do consulting or run workshops and stuff like that. So I think you're onto something around people are going to create ip more, license it out, and then focus on b two B. I think that's a really astute point. I think that's really interesting. I have an idea that I want to run by you in the b to b space. So I had lunch with a friend of mine who works for one of the largest banks in the world. And he was telling me he just got this job, and he was telling me, I was like, how was your first week? He goes, well, I've been doing training all week.
Greg Isenberg [00:38:42]:
Oh, what's training like? I don't know if you've ever worked at a big corporate job, but what happens is on day one or something, they make you watch a lot of videos and slides about a bunch of different topics, like how do you be ethical? And, oh, you can't give a contract to your buddy or something. And it's like a video explaining it, and there's sexual harassment, things like that. The problem with it is people just skip through the trainings. They're actually not going through it. So my idea is Apple vision Pro training trainings. So you put on the Apple vision Pro and we're not there yet. It's not ubiquitous. Apple vision Pro isn't ubiquitous, but at some point it will be.
Greg Isenberg [00:39:34]:
And maybe what you can do is actually rent it to employees or something like that. But you basically say you join Wells Fargo on your first day. It's like, okay, hey, put on these glasses. And all of a sudden you're in this world where there's a real ethical case and you actually have to play it out. And it's almost like a game. And it says real world immersion, and you do it with other people, too. It's like the social thing. So let's say it's your first day too.
Greg Isenberg [00:40:04]:
You're there. What do you think of this? Reimagining training? And I'll end that with training is low key. A multibillion dollar industry, especially safety training and stuff like that.
Tiago Forte [00:40:18]:
Oh, my gosh. The money these corporations spend on training, on certification, on upskilling, on professional development, it's staggering. It's staggering. I think it's interesting. I mean, definitely everything I've learned about existing training is that it is God awful. It's like a punishment. It's like torture because it's just done to comply with some regulation or policy or something. It's not at all learner centric.
Tiago Forte [00:40:50]:
Right? And people are used to learner centric education now because that's the world of online content. YouTube is education. It's edutainment. X is largely depending on who you follow, of course, edutainment. And so people have gotten used to such a high standard of even educational content that you put them in front of an hour long boring slide presentation, and they, I think, honestly struggle to even pay attention even if they want to. The one thing I'll say that will present an obstacle is from what I'm finding, the b two b world is years behind the b to c world. It's like at least five years. What is peaking and trending now in the b to c world? Like today, when you go on x, let's say, will begin to enter the corporate training market in 2030.
Greg Isenberg [00:41:43]:
That's interesting. Yeah, I think that's really interesting because all you have to do is look at what was trending five years ago to be like, how do I productize something for that market?
Tiago Forte [00:41:57]:
Exactly.
Greg Isenberg [00:41:58]:
Yeah. So that's really interesting.
Tiago Forte [00:42:01]:
Yeah. You have to consciously retreat from the frontier of innovation. You go on X. I know we're both active there. Go look up what was trending on X. I mean, really, like five years ago, like 2019, to us, that will feel ancient. It'll feel so obsolete and irrelevant and not cool and not interesting. And if we started talking about it, our Internet friends would be like, oh, that's so passe.
Tiago Forte [00:42:34]:
But then go talk to your friend in the corporation. I am willing to bet they've never even heard of it yet.
Greg Isenberg [00:42:42]:
Yeah, I feel that. Does that soul suck you a little bit? Are you okay with that?
Tiago Forte [00:42:53]:
I am. That actually suits me with even digital notetaking stuff. That's a technology thing. I really advocate people not adopt any technology that is newer than five years anyway. Like, I'm on Evernote. There's nothing about evernote that wasn't present in 2010. And the reason for that is, I don't think so. There's a price to pay for being on the frontier of innovation, especially when it comes to technology you got to deal with.
Tiago Forte [00:43:20]:
You're basically a beta tester. You're a guinea pig. So things are buggy. They're janky. They don't work right. They're really complicated and hard to learn. That's fine if you want to experiment with an interesting new tool. But for your core productivity tools, the stuff that you rely on day in and day out, those should be mature tools, I think, is my opinion.
Greg Isenberg [00:43:44]:
Is there any opportunity to be building new productivity software? So many people have ideas for to do lists or Google calendar competitors or roam competitors. Is this too busy of a space now, or is there still opportunity?
Tiago Forte [00:44:02]:
I think I'm the wrong person to ask, because from my point of view, there's nothing I'd less rather do than build software in that space. Maybe because I'm just so hyper aware of their limitations. And from everything I hear when I talk to people who are doing that, it's brutally competitive. There's almost a maxim that productivity tools have no moat. There's no moat, there's nothing preventing every, every year, every few months, there's a new hot productivity app. In fact, my theory is that not only is there no moat, there's whatever you would call, like the opposite of a moat, there's actually an incentive for people to leave your product. Why? Because the favorite moment, the favorite experience of people who use such apps is starting over with a brand new blank slate. It feels good.
Tiago Forte [00:44:56]:
Usually the longer someone has been using a notetaking app or to do list app, the worse it is and the more they hate it because it's just cruft and so they love. This is why there's so many productivity app switchers everywhere is moving to the new tool. You get to be like, oh, I'm leaving my old life behind and I'm a brand new person.
Greg Isenberg [00:45:13]:
I heard through the grapevine that Ali Abdal, productivity youtuber, is working on a productivity app.
Tiago Forte [00:45:21]:
I've heard that too.
Greg Isenberg [00:45:23]:
What advice would you give mean?
Tiago Forte [00:45:26]:
Ali's different because.
Greg Isenberg [00:45:34]:
My pushback is when you're building a startup, when you're building a product, you have to ask yourself, am I building something that's New York, or am I building something that's Fiji? And Fiji is. There's not a lot of competition. This is something, you know, this Fiji concept from Andrew Wilkinson from know, there's not a lot of competition. It's sort of an island in its own know. You can have your own little kingdom in York City. You know, if you can make it here, you can make it anywhere. Those are very competitive spaces, like consumer social apps, productivity apps. These are very difficult.
Greg Isenberg [00:46:15]:
So Ali is about to enter that.
Tiago Forte [00:46:19]:
Would say, hmm, I would say he's definitely more I. From what I know of Ali, we've become friends over the past year or two. He's not trying to raise vc funding, have software used by 100 million people and build it to a billion dollar company or exit or anything. He's probably doing it like most of his other projects, which is basically it's a combination of because he's interested and following his curiosity and learning what he wants to learn, which, by the way, he'll create all sorts of content on that will make it worth it, even if it goes nowhere. And he'll do it because he has such a huge audience that is so bought into what he does, even if only they start using the app and paying for it. It's probably worth doing, right? Yeah, but it's difficult for me to imagine him really putting the resources into it that would be needed to be, like, a massive SaaS platform.
Greg Isenberg [00:47:16]:
One thing I ask myself when I start a new project is, how do I win? Even if I lose?
Tiago Forte [00:47:22]:
Yes, totally.
Greg Isenberg [00:47:23]:
So I think ali could definitely win even if he loses. Like, losing could be like, a thousand people are obsessed with this product, and he creates some cool content around it.
Tiago Forte [00:47:34]:
Exactly. Online creators are the best example of that. Because even if we utterly fail, well, that'll be a great piece of content about how we failed.
Greg Isenberg [00:47:45]:
Before we wrap, there's two things I want to cover. One is you recently went on a desert retreat with your wife and you did a year end review, and I want to hear about that. And the last thing is, I want you to leave people with a book recommendation. What's something they should be reading?
Tiago Forte [00:48:04]:
Yeah. Let's see. So, year end reviews are something I am extremely passionate about. I've been doing them in some form since 2008. So about 15 years, starting in 2019, I started publishing them and sharing them on my blog. And that same year, I started teaching a virtual workshop called the annual review, where we take people through the process that I've kind of halfway developed and halfway just borrowed from. I mean, there's so many people now online doing it in various forms. I just think it's so easy to let life pass you by, and for the years to just pass by in a blur.
Tiago Forte [00:48:46]:
I feel like it's this sacred space that I can only do. I can do it anytime, but it's best to do at the turn of the year because there's something in the air around that time where you can really kind of, like, step back. You're not working as much. You're spending a lot of time with family. You can really gain some perspective on what matters in life. And then I just have a series of prompts that I answer. Journaling, introspective prompts. I like to collect my favorite things, like my favorite books.
Tiago Forte [00:49:14]:
I read, my favorite photos, my favorite trips that I've taken. And this year, just a month ago, was, or less than a month ago, was the first time that we did a dedicated trip, which I really recommend. It's honestly hard to find the time to do something like this, especially if you have a family and stuff. And so we just did. It was like two days in the desert, a couple hours from here out by Joshua Tree. And in two days, when you have that dedicated time, that focus, like we were saying, you can do quite a lot. And we both came away with such both appreciation and gratitude for everything that's happened over the past year and lessons learned and wisdom gained from things that didn't go so well. And then our goals and intentions, which we could align.
Tiago Forte [00:49:59]:
That was cool, too. It doesn't really make much sense for my wife and I to have completely different goals and intentions that have nothing to do with each other since everything is done as a family. And so it just let us start the year off with such a level of intentionality like I don't think I've felt before.
Greg Isenberg [00:50:16]:
A little birdie told me that you've had some psychedelics in the last little bit. Were psychedelics involved in this trip?
Tiago Forte [00:50:30]:
Yeah. No, I'm an open book. So, not that trip, but about a month and a half earlier in October, I did my first ayahuasca ceremony, and I wrote a blog post on it, as one does. It's very detailed and extensive. I think it's like 8000 words. And that comes out in my newsletter on Tuesday.
Greg Isenberg [00:50:49]:
Cool. I like that.
Tiago Forte [00:50:52]:
It's way too much to get into here. And I did sort of recap some of those lessons. They kind of fed into my year end review, but I sort of am publishing them in separate pieces.
Greg Isenberg [00:51:03]:
I like it. All right, man. And how about, yeah, give us your book recommendation. And I'm curious what you're recommending. These know, there's a book that I picked up.
Tiago Forte [00:51:15]:
It's this one right here. It's called. But it's called signs, the Secret Language of the Universe by Laura Lynn Jackson. It says, it's a New York Times bestseller, but I've never heard of it anywhere online or off. I think my wife had picked it up and it was just sitting on our bookshelf when I found it. But it's basically about how to notice signs that the universe is trying to tell you. And I love books that are highly left brained and have a lot of evidence and logic and all those things. But increasingly, I find over time, it's like that left side of my brain is quite well developed.
Tiago Forte [00:51:57]:
Like, one more book about reason and logic is not really going to change my life. What really does change my life, or at least my thinking, is more right brain things, things about intuition, about the emotions, about relationships, about faith and spirituality. And so the content of this book violates every single cognitive bias. But as long as you kind of, like, I have found, as long as I hold it lightly, that these are sort of. This is not the literal truth, but it's just one lens through which to look at your life. It's quite interesting and powerful.
Greg Isenberg [00:52:36]:
I'll check it out. I love it. New thing I'm doing is whenever someone recommends a book, I just basically go to Amazon, automatically buy it if it's someone I trust you can't have. I just love being surrounded by books. It's such a fun feeling, especially going back to the physical thing. Like having a physical book and letting it being a reminder for you is just so good.
Tiago Forte [00:53:00]:
Yes, absolutely.
Greg Isenberg [00:53:02]:
Thank you for that. And where could folks learn more about Tiago and get more involved in your ecosystem?
Tiago Forte [00:53:11]:
Yeah, buildingasecondbrain.com is our website for everything related to second brain stuff elsewhere. Our main website is fortelabs.com fortelabs. And that has the blog, the podcast, and various other things. I'd say those two are kind of the portals.
Greg Isenberg [00:53:33]:
I love it. And I will say, I will admit you have probably the best name of anyone who's come on to this podcast. And we've done 100 plus episodes, so diago forte, everyone. I love it. Thanks for coming on, man.
Tiago Forte [00:53:48]:
Yeah, it's been a pleasure. Thank you, Greg.