Greg Isenberg is a multi-exit Silicon Valley entrepreneur and owner of Late Checkout product studio. He has:
- Headed Product Strategy at WeWork
- Been an advisor to Reddit
- Founded a startup, Islands, which was sold to WeWork
- Founded 5by, which was sold to StumbleUpon
Guest Author: Greg Isenberg
I’ve built an 8 figure holding company with $0 of outside capital called Late Checkout. Today, I’ll share our playbook:
Step 1: Find audience
We focus on influential, high value customer audiences.
We’re like the anti-Mr.Beast. Less glory but I’m okay with it.
We get ideas for those on what’s trending on places like Reddit and X.
We use automation and AI to get those insights quickly and clearly.
We observe what’s beginning to take off.
Write it down.
And most importantly, we ask “why now”.
Our most successful businesses had a strong why now.
We write these ideas in our idea pages within Notion.
Review it weekly.
Step 2: social account
Instead of building a product that we sell first, we begin with a social account.
Counter-intuitive, I know.
But our thesis is that distribution is harder than building a product.
We look at what other accounts in the space are doing.
And try to do the opposite.
The opposite is an important point because you’re trying to create “scroll stopping” content. If it looks like everything else, they’ll keep scrolling.
Tactically, that might mean going more visual. Or telling stories that aren’t told.
We get good at finding that format.
And only focus on 1 platform.
Multiple platforms at this stage is a distraction.
Step 3: grow account
We wait until we get to 10,000 followers before we usually build anything.
In B2B, if you have 10,000 followers, you’re the Mr. Beast of your category.
10,000 potential customers is massive.
Each platform has unique ways to grow.
We’re particularly excited about You Tube right now.
The “hack” right now is longer form, more raw videos and posting daily.
Step 4: Free community
People don’t want another community.
But they do want value.
We overload them with value in exchange for their email/number.
What’s worked really well is creating communities around “challenges”.
Example: Join the 90 day keto challenge.
Best part of this step is having this group of customers tell you what to build.
And if you don’t want to build a community, that’s okay.
Build a bunch of lead magnets.
Step 5: Build a product
We don’t spend more than 30 days to build a product.
Start small.
Sometimes we’ll partner with existing business here. Or incubate something very small with a leading founder who’s been in this space before.
This has worked well.
Step 6: Product/market fit.
Now, product/market fit starts hitting and high fives all around.
Copycats come in. But it’s okay.
We keep going. The community keeps telling us what to build.
And we’ve got systems in places to build quickly, test, learn and make it beautiful.
It compounds all of it. The audience, the community, the product.
Step 7: the future
Once the product is really at product/market fit.
We start thinking about adjacent products. We either buy/incubate those.
That’s the basic playbook. Hope it was helpful.
Tomorrow, I’m co-hosting a live workshop on finding your audience
https://lu.ma/05esbrvx
