how to sell to people authentically.

all right what's up everyone how's it going my heart rate is for some reason 20 beats above average right now normally 47 but right now

66 nobody what's going on might be getting sick let's see um cool so today I want to talk to you all about selling your work

authentically um and I kind of want to start like I normally do with uh we just a story to help kind of contextualize a lot of this um um I don't really like just jumping into the skill I don't I

don't know I feel like we all learn better from stories uh so let's let's let's essentially cover a story that helped me figure this out for myself

right this is anybody want to guess who this is yeah it's my dad yes this is my dad um and he's uh he was he was rocking the bill space hoodie like a couple

months ago and he dropped by for the first time to San Francisco and uh a couple things about my dad uh he was born in Pakistan right so this is

him he came to America in the in the early 90s looking like look at looking like this my mom sent me this picture today by the way I said give me a picture of papa when he was uh when he

first came to America so I never seen this picture before but this is he came to America in the early 90s and you know he was your classic immigrant story drove taxis flipp pizzas at S Pizza um

and yeah mostly mostly drove taxes in New York City Miami and then did a bunch of restaurant work right uh in the late 90s he got a job at Nissan so that's him right there on the right and uh he got a

job selling cars at Nissan in Miami and uh over 25 years later what's really interesting is he now works at what is the most highest performance dealership in the country like in the top they

don't actually they don't have like a number one rank or anything like that it's just like by percentage so he's one of the top percentages and he's ranked either number one in his region every year or which they actually do rankings

for these people it's pretty wild um or they do like uh or or he's top in his region in terms of performance by percentage right so pretty much my dad is like a sales machine like he's just

so good at it it's crazy um and this is in the car business he has not left the car business for over 25 years uh this is actually his dealership when I was growing up worked at Toyota so during middle school high school he worked here

at Toyota and that's me uh so 14-year-old me would be sitting at his office looking like this and you know I would usually go to his office because uh I would do homework there he picked

up from school and we'd go there we'd go back to his office sometimes and I loved his office because you have coffee popcorn things like that right um and so I'd literally sit in his office right

like I'm like on the his office is not that big it's maybe the size of that room actually and I and I have like and I have like a desk on the side and I end up learning a lot from uh from just

listening to him talk to customers for like years right um uh just by me sitting on the side and hearing him have these conversations uh and then what I learned is my dad literally never tried

to sell anything he was never trying to push a product on his customer he was never trying to be the sales guy like ever like you would rarely hear him talk about trying to like sell an upgrade to the customer um and again these are

people coming into Honda or in this case Toyota buying a car right so that's their intention and uh his goal is to one get them to lock down the car but then to also do a bunch of other stuff

which the dealership does to make more money on the customer right um and um I think was reallying about my dad having to this day I observe him I go to his dealership sometimes and uh he just

really tries to understand the person in front of him you know what I mean he never really does anything else he just tries to understand them and at the end of some time period maybe 10 20 minutes

he'll make them an offer right something that he feels would be good for them and uh also work for him that's kind of how he always operated and uh you know growing up in this dealership uh you

start to compare with other people as well cuz generally into car dealership you can kind of just EES drop at any office like you can walk around hear how different salese do their thing and I would do that actually I would be like

okay like what's my dad doing and what are the other people doing and the other people gave me this sort of vibe half the time it was actually kind of crazy they just gave me this sort of vibe and

I think a lot of you guys know this sort of vibe it's like you're kind of like a kind of sale like used car sales salesperson right um where they're just trying to like cut you a deal they're trying to like rope you into something

something you know like lock you into something and um they would say things like this hey you know we have a package that gives you leather seats for just $1,000 more are you interested right so I hear these phrases as a kid you know

the Honda Accord has a feature that Texs your blind spots for $2,000 more but hey because you're here today 25% off you know things like that um the new 2010

Camry is an amazing car it has these XYZ features that no one else offers this is the best car in its class and you should have this car and you know generally these statements all have the same reply does anyone have

a guess like what the kind of replies were yeah it's I think you all know what like a awkward type reply to because you all been pitched like this oh interesting I'll let you know you know

cool or awkward chucko you know I think not right now you know um that sort of vibe right and it almost felt like these sales people were delivering an IRL ad

like in person like they were literally an ad but as a human being it was a it was interesting and turns out a lot of you are being this guy uh you are not being uh my dad in this case you are

actually being this guy whether you believe it or not right now um you're kind of being this guy and there's some pros to being this guy but there's also like a lot of cons to being this guy at

this stage um and I know this because of last Friday's exam day um 15 projects I actually counted 15 projects were either flat or down right so that means you

either the graph didn't move or it went down right and 11 projects were slightly up but it didn't feel like there's like a push you know like you guys come in on the final Friday you get like one person to check your thing out and then you say

went up it's sort of like that sort of vibe you know like it's kind of like oh you kind of just like kind of just did something near the end and you counted as as an up but H I kind of know the backstory you know like you didn't

actually it wasn't actually a big push and I think two projects I from last week at least I saw um I saw like there was a big leap like a really intentional big push throughout the whole week right um and that was kind of interesting to

me and this is when you break it down this is what it looks like right like red being uh uh didn't move or down yellow being like a slight up in green being like it was like a legitimate push now at the end of the day the graph is

like your graphs are only like one signal to like me understanding what's going on in your life like that's it so I wouldn't read into this too much right now like I wouldn't again we'll talk about graphs later but again for me it's

one signal and it's a signal that helps me understand that some like selling is not happening right um and what this means is 50% of you made zero movement last week right and

to me that is insane like that is actually like that's crazy how like that can actually happen um and I don't think it's because of a lack of trying right like I don't think I don't think anyone

here is like being lazy I can't name a single person to be honest uh you all are putting in um ton of effort you're trying new things so then you know what gives um again I see putting in effort

so what gives right can anybody can maybe like give me like their thoughts um otherwise it's just kind of me roasting some of you but anyone to give me your thoughts like what's kind of going on in like your life or what do

you think is going on um if you were someone that maybe didn't make big moves last week what's what gives yeah um it was just a little

emotionally ping for me last week an emotionally toiling week I get the up so those come yes you spent a lot of our debugging and you got stuck in this like Focus out like let's fix this let's fix

this of like taking a step back and like okay that's where we made a mistake a lot of your weeks spent debugging let's do maybe one more anybody have their thought like honest thoughts what happened last week for them Ryan my

commute is making me burn out commute tough right I think at the end of the day what I'm kind of hearing is something along the lines of like maybe

personal management or time management right um to me what the graphs show me like what this shows me is that sf2 has like a selling problem they don't have they don't have a problem of like not putting in the work

they don't have a problem of all any it's like a selling thing at the end of the graph shows me your ability to like sell the thing right so um that's what I think I think you

have a selling problem and uh I think uh I I talked to some of you even last week and I was kind of as asked you like hey what gives you know end of Friday like what's going on it's been three weeks uh why are you still at that same state and

it's like oh far what I got right now it's kind of crappy and unfinished it's not there yet you know like like I'm still working on it right and I think the reality is truly is is that will always be the answer that is still my answer to this day for what I work on

today you know and I think it's really like it's always going to be crappy and unfinished um I think a lot of people think uh Facebook as a company is still crappy and unfinished uh you know what I

mean so everyone's always going to be feeling like something's not right um so that's the reality right this is like a very sad reality that I realized like many years ago now but it's always going

to be crappy UNF finished so what do you do right and I think I also thought about this um uh earlier today which is I feel like all of you actually do have something like every single one of you

has like something in the sense of like you have a thing and you can describe it and you can show it you can do all these things um so no matter how early you are how crappy you think your thing is in my

eyes all of you have something so now what do you do right you have to make it better by either one improving your own skills improving your craft right as an engineer designer whatever you are and

then two by selling um and I think one thing that people get tripped up on when it comes to selling um and I'll talk about what I mean by selling in a bit um is you don't have to pretend like you're selling like the

greatest thing ever like you're you have like you're selling like the top tier Mercedes-Benz right in reality what you have is equivalent to like a 1996 Civic um it's kind of old it's rusted you know

it barely moves it barely turns on and you know your goal is not to pretend like you sell a Mercedes it's to find the people that are down to rock the 96 Civic that you have that that's actually what you are trying to do right now um

and a lot of you it's actually exhausting to pretend like you're selling a Mercedes or you're selling something that's hyper legitimate when in reality you have like this rusty old car um and I also think this again based

on I reflected on this this morning 100% of you are very good at selling like every single one of you who is actually pretty good at selling let me tell you why um one you were able to talk about what you're working on one of the first

actually good things about selling is knowing what you are selling right so you're able to talk about what what you are doing um um you're able to show a demo actually all of you have like a visual that you can like that you have

that um that like corresponds to what you're working on right so it's not just like voices and then three I think all of you are able to have a conversation to learn from others like you all feel like uh kind of normal people that can

have normal conversations and not be weird about it right you can learn from other people and have these conversations so if someone does feel like they hate your thing or they do have feedback I think all of you are actually pretty good at like taking it

like and not taking it too personally hopefully these are all the important things and this is all this is actually everything you need to sell um and today I just want to cover three strategies to help you all improve your selling game

um even for like these next four days until Friday um and hopefully for the next you know end number of weeks we have left here uh so the first thing is and this is maybe the most important one where if you take away anything from

what I'm saying here today it is this um it is stop marketing start selling uh what is marketing this is what marketing is this is like my definition of marketing marketing and also chat's

definition of marketing based on when I asked it um it's building an audience for your work that's marketing it's creating a mass of people who you

encourage to buy or support or be a part of what you are doing that's marketing right I think we all kind of know what marketing is and I think when we think of marketing we often think of things

like apple or Nike right they make these cre campaigns they make us feel like we want their products that's marketing selling is this selling is getting them to actually take the action that you

want them to take at the end of The Funnel right at the end of at the end of the day maybe it's a follow maybe it's a listen maybe it's a purchase maybe it's for them to use your product um and be

an active whatever it is that's the end action right so that's a difference so whenever I say the word selling by the way I know that's usually means uh a good in exchange for money uh but please

just kind of think about selling as uh really uh the ability to get someone else to taken action that you want them to take that's what selling is um um and that's a very big difference between marketing and selling I think most of

you all today many of you not all of you are actually marketing uh most of the days um and I want to kind of prove I'm not saying it's a bad thing actually um

I'm not saying you should stop either but I kind of want to um put some data around what you are doing for a second um a lot of you are doing this you are

you start with something like an email or a Reddit post or a Tik Tok or a real or a Twitter post right right that's like one of your starting actions from there you expect people to then go to

your landing page or your link tree from there you expect them to then go and then take their first step to do something right so maybe it's like listening to your song Maybe it's buying

something or subscribing right so you're expecting them to take one two um three four actions right it's actually four actions sorry so from the landing page you know they see your landing page they

see your link tree you now expect them to click something on your link tree or your landing page you know it's one thing to look at your landing page right but you expect them to actually like click something like go to something and

then you expect them to do the more the most important thing which is now they follow you on Spotify they made an account on your website blah blah blah you see how crazy this is it's actually pretty hard to do right let's put some

number let's put some like industry average numbers on this right industry average I would say is this at least for build space this is like when my experience are like numbers for this sort of flow 100% of people will come

and see your uh Instagram reel right so they can't not watch your reel it's just going to pop up right so they watched it 10% of them go to your profile right or sorry 10% of them go to your profile and

click your link tree or your landing page right um or maybe they click the link if you posted a link right 1% of them will literally go to your landing page and maybe click create account or

maybe click uh uh or maybe click preorder your song or maybe click something else right and of those 0.5% or of the whole 100% 0.5% at the

end will actually take that action right and if the percents don't make sense to you let's let's add real people right that means if a 100 people see your Tweet 10 people will click the link one

people will click the actual CTA and then you have 0.5 people at the end who actually take an action which rounds out to zero people because there's no such thing as half a person right so this is

reality right a lot of you send a 100 people to your stuff and then nothing happens and you're like wow nothing happened why well it's because the math is against

you you simply are losing to this right um you thought you were selling um but in reality you're not you're just you're getting destroyed by this right now and then what do you have to do then right

in reality you have to send that if you if you do this strategy you have to send a lot more people in the door let's just say it's a thousand you put a thousand people in the door right 100 people

click a link 10 people click create account five people actually then go and literally finish making the account buy your shirt listen to your song Blah Blah Blah right it's [ __ ] it's

actually crazy it's actually insane but this is reality right this is actually how reality Works um not everyone you show your stuff to will magically be like this user of the thing that you

want to do and it's the depressing reality that only 99 or some small percent of people will stick around by the end right um and that's okay though because the world moves fast and um the

best you can do is get them through this right so this is a game think a lot of you guys here are playing right now you're playing this game um you're trying to play the game of getting people through like all these steps and

then can anyone tell me what maybe is like a different game we can play yes so we we haven't we haven't like posted on rdit or anything so we've been doing is basically just door knocking and then

being really nice to people and having real conversation with them and then if they have the problem that we want to Sol we say hey we can solve your problem okay great so I think kieren's on to on to something here which is that

what if you just went straight to the five people like if your goal is to get these five people why don't you just go straight to the five people um it's going to be hard to find those five people like in the real world in real

life but what if you actually just somehow went straight there um I want to give a small example here uh at Bill space when we were starting off I wasn't

marketing at all um we were selling what does that mean selling meant you came to Bill space made an account and you did a tutorial with us that's what I was optimizing for right so then yeah I'm

not going to sit there and make Tik toks right what am I going to do oh let's make landing pages for every College uh and then go to Every College's CS

Discord and then essentially um onboard people from Individual colleges into build space like by essentially creating like a college uh a college themed page

for every college right um now this ended up working for us why because very early on um our first users came from college CS Discord groups like we just learned that right so like oh cool like

they're just coming from these groups anyways what if we did more of that right um and then we that was a very direct way to the audience and of course these types of uh students they loved

this sort of thing because I can do a thing at build space put on my resume so yeah of course I'm going to do that um but this is an example of just going straight to the five people right I didn't but even here like some people

are going to see my Discord post and then they're going to turn right but for the most part this is a lot more targeted like 90% more targeted than like making like a YouTube video or making like an ad per se or like a real

um because I'm going straight to my people and where Are My People my people being college students CS college students oh they're in Discord groups okay so then all I have to do is get in

every single Discord group and make a relationship with every single moderator and then that's it so we had like 100 relationships with over 100 moderators that we had relationships with at that point within within the course of a

month and we had a very clear funnel right every CS disc group gave us on average 35 users so if we had a 100 Discord groups we have 3,500 users right

still a hard game to play actually but that's how we got 3500 people to first sign up for what we were doing it's actually really really difficult but again this was a lot more targeted and it was kind of us going straight to the

people um and I want to cover a couple of examples here with you all right um I remember Daniel was there for office hours like last week where's Daniel Daniel yeah he was there for office

hours last week and uh he was like all right farza like uh uh I'm going to start making content what type of content should I make right I'm like well Daniel why are you making content he's like oh well I need to sell the

more of the blocks well it's like is content the most efficient way to sell more blocks like is that is you making funny videos or you making these videos it's certainly one way but is it the

most efficient way to sell more of these of of these of these devices um and then immediately I think people in the group started having some more ideas which is like uh what if you sold blocks to um

co-working spaces can you call up 10 co-working spaces and then have them all buy five blocks for their for their offices what if you sold the block to schools teachers who want their students to be more focused when they get into

class so teachers spend $10 of their own money to buy the block right and I think it was these sorts of ideas that got us thinking like oh wow like I don't have to sit here and just expect people to go

through this flow like again even with Daniel's case it was how do I go straight to the five people right right and then who are your five people oh maybe it's teachers who want to make their kids more focused co-working

spaces who want to do X um you know even I was saying even go to companies like small companies um that uh want their workers to be more focused who knows right I don't know what's actually going to work uh anybody else have like

different ideas that's not just you know make videos about the block what other any any other ideas I how I can sell this yeah and then do what

and sure great we can try yeah let's go to a store where people buy stuff like this and say do can you stock this why not yeah sounds like an okay use of time

maybe takes an hour or two who knows yeser hacker houses sure um let's hit up every Hacker House and say do you want you know uh your people to be hacking more in a more focused way you know why

not um again these things I don't know if it's going to work but worth a shot because we're going straight to the person anybody else maybe one more yeah Ro schools yeah exactly yeah I think I mentioned schools like your average

teacher I think would uh Middle School teacher might love this you know um I'm not sure how much how an KN it is for kids to use their devices in class nowadays I don't know but I'm guessing it's pretty annoying for teachers but I

don't know so again that's another that's an example right of hey Daniel you don't actually have to make a bunch of videos that get that where you talk about your thing and then get a bunch of followers and blah blah blah BL you can actually just make a call and just sell

like 10 tomorrow like how how can we do that another example chesy right uh GR in here somewhere yes so bradden

um um again Braden could do the same thing again which is post on Reddit uh post on a bunch of places and then expect people to come in but again he's playing this game right so Brandon if

you push a 100 people from like a subreddit or 100 people from maybe say product hunt you end with not that many people right um what's like another idea that we can have for braen where we can

just get potential people playing chess to use this thing yeah Kieran go yeah exactly that that's my answer like literally go to a local chess club if

they still exist and then literally show up and like yo you guys want to use this anybody else how can we get yes go to aess tournament go to a chess tournament yeah is there one happening this weekend

I don't know I'm not let's see anything else yes start tourament start a chess tournament yeah and then maybe get beginner novice chess players to come in uh use the space and play chess and then

if they want to get better $10 a month for chesky you know like I don't know why not um you know one person gave me a really cool idea on Instagram because we posted Braden's a thing and um they said

you should uh pay chess streamers because chess is a huge thing on social media like every Big streamer plays chess it's like oh like you know I know you're not made of money Braden but like

huh $100 for like a chess a chess streamer that gets like a th000 viewers on average and then they use Chessy for like 20 minutes doesn't sound that crazy we're at the we're at the weth to see

how much they cost why not right um but again these are all great ideas all ideas that are much better than just marketing chesy which I don't think is going to work yeah what are your thoughts on this whole influencer model

for example like in our case like you're thinking of building relationships with de blogs or engineering blogs yeah so essentially influencer marketing yeah in a way yeah yeah no I think I think that's good it's worth it's worth a shot

um it still feels like what is a even more direct way um but influencer stuff is cool yeah um right um but I love the like ideas like um the one kind of Karen

mentioned or even the one um Kelly mentioned which is just can you just go to where people play chess and then just show them and then see what they say

yeah so something kind of the IDE out more the second strategy are kind of it seems much more related to how much

FaceTime sorry what's the question uh I'm wondering I guess is that always the case are you are you always just basically optimizing for Facetime with your target I think in the early days the

more FaceTime you can get the better and I'll talk some more about this as well about why about how you can optimize FaceTime but yeah I think in the early days for where you guys are at um yeah what's the best way to sell often it's

like someone showing up in front of your face and then having a conversation with you or show being shown the thing um again go to where your people are you know that's kind of like my best I could

say yeah so then would you say that it might be worthwhile on the front end to compromise cash flow um for utility just

to familiarize those five people with what a taste of what it is you might have to offer uh yeah I mean I think most of you are kind of strapped for cash so I think you should get these people to pay money um if you're if

you're selling something like honestly um yeah unless you have some money to kind of spare then sure but yeah you should probably make go find a way to get just give you some dollars um maybe

really interesting I think that the most classic way for an artist to kind of grow is kind of like making content right um and I would almost challenge that a little bit which is like damn can we just throw a concert here um can we

throw a concert somewhere for like 100 people 50 people like what does that kind of look like what does that sound like is that a more efficient way at the end day I don't know is that a more efficient way to get to get to those five people at the end who really love

your stuff right at the end of the day that's what we're trying to do trying to find the people who love your stuff and I think that I don't know that's one way to do it um any other ideas here on like

uh this sort of thing yes uh get like Club sometimes one more time what is it you go to a club sometimes you can ask song you like get your song sure sure like I

think that's like an idea where it's like you know can I have a themed night one night where I'm like part of the listing even right um I think there's like a lot of what you generally we should do with these ideas is like my

recommendation is you likely come with a lot of these ideas like even for uh for Braden like you know is it worth it for Braden to literally go to a chess tournament and spend all this Friday Saturday there we don't know actually

but what I recommend doing for all these things that we're talking about is pick activities that are like really really high value for you and not that much effort so again going to a chess

tournament is actually the highest value thing effort thing you can do we are spending two days now or a day at a chess tournament versus like damn could we have just gotten into like five chess

club discords would that have been faster could that have been done in an hour um and then again it's your responsibility as the Builder to not get sucked into stuff that's going to like the sounds really cool and could work

but then like doesn't so again the club thing there could be the best idea ever I don't know or it could be like the ma a massive time sync it's just like how do you optimize that task um and just

test it really fast um yeah and I think this is uh my kind of take on growth right like eventually these strategies will stop working right eventually the it won't work anymore

like I I remember where build space going to college to sto working like we just one ran out of interesting colleges um and two ran out of discords we could we could bug um we just ran out right so

it breaks but Until It Breaks keep doing it and then yeah you got to discover other stuff you know second thing have a one-on-one conversation

um yeah this one's actually kind of hard to understand because you all don't understand that you're kind of superpower or you're kind of like you have the superpower which is

that you're an individual and you're not that big and you can actually give people like your like one-on-one time um which is actually kind of interesting let me see what and I think what that

what I mean by that is right now at this stage like I said earlier you all of you have like this 1996 Honda Civic right it's like why are people going to like check out your

Honda Civic it's not cuz it's a good car you know that's like maybe maybe they get in because of that but no it's because they enjoy the conversation with you they think that you're interesting they think that what you're working on and how you're talking about it is

interesting because you're telling them this Honda Civic is going to be sick in like two months and they're like oh [ __ ] cool like can I check it out right now like give it a shot does that kind of make sense it's like your actual power

is that you're an individual and you're someone who cares about what you're working on you're not just like another like NPC that's trying to sell something on the Tik Tok shop which is I don't

it's it's not it's not as interesting um and never underestimate this uh ever uh I'll give you an example here just for myself uh my first customer ever for

this company for zip homeschool was this woman named Lucy Moore um she had a young daughter she was from I believe Texas or Georgia and um every single

week I'd have a conversation with Lucy oneon-one just to give you guys context at this point I was um um offering my customers a curriculum so it's like most

uh you know it's almost like most homeschooling companies offer their customers curriculum like math exercises reading exercises blah blah blah now of course I didn't have any curriculum that

takes years to build up it takes expertise to build up but what I did have was myself and this fake person named Griffin who I mentioned at the top here um but you know me and Griffin were're like we're we're a dream team

and essentially every week on every like I think Monday or something I talk to Lucy one-on-one one 30 minutes she'd tell me what her daughter was struggling with I would literally then go learn about how to make good exercises for her

daughter and I would at the end of every week Friday give her a Google doc with all the exercises that she could do with her daughter and reading in math now again this is stuff that a big company

can't do um but also like understand that I'm at a I'm at a fault right like I don't have a giant library of content for my people to enjoy how the [ __ ] am I going to compete with anyone else right

well here is how I can compete uh a mother looking for very you know targeted kind of exercises for her daughter reading and math exercises I can do that um and of course maybe the

first time I sucked at it but then by week eight we we were on a floow you know I got really good at it um and over time I eventually hired someone to then do this for me right but again that's the concept of having like a one-on-one

conversation like putting your personality and everything into what you got because again at this point I had nothing it was literally nothing it was just a prom Pro but then yeah had a chat

with her she trusted me it worked out right so I think this is kind of worth internalizing that uh yeah there's a lot of noise guys and you're special in the

sense that you will actually take a moment and give people some attention uh that will support you all right at the end of the day like um um I'm opening up

all sorts of social media all sorts of like places where there's like millions of people thousands of comments blah blah blah it can actually get kind of exhausting even as the viewer right so then if you think about that as a

compassion for the viewer even how can you potentially um make the viewers day or or make the day of somebody that could potentially find what you're finding what you're working on interesting all right um you know if

it's chesky for example I'm sure like uh someone who's up and coming in chess or just like is interested in the game on Reddit or interested in the game uh in like bren's DMS and Braden gives them 25

minutes of his time for an intro lesson free lesson that'd be sick you know I'm sure they'll remember that for a long time and then of course it's up to them if they didn't want to subscribe to chesky right that's kind of how I see it

um and I think as a Creator this is kind of hard your goal is not to sell them anything it's the hard part um and your goal also isn't to like become their best friend um it's somewhere in the

middle um and it's like a really hard line to kind of tread um because then if if I'm braid and I'm selling chesy and I get the call then all they're thinking about is [ __ ] this guy's just trying to

upsell me for a $10 monthly package to his chess software this is this is damn it um uh but then also you know not trying to become your friend because you can't become everyone's friend very hard

um somewhere in the middle so you have to tread that line as a Creator um and again so what do you do um on these calls on these emails on these whatever that on these in real left conversations that you have with people that understand what you're working on it's

just to learn you just want to learn about their life you want to learn about their existence and then at the end you want to present a solution if you got one again kind of like my dad selling a car you just learn a lot about their

life about their family about their existence and at the end hey if they want to like um if they seem really protective of their teenager and selling the blind spot detector thing makes

sense then he'll do it you know what I mean that's kind of like the difference uh versus just being like hey man buy these blind spot detectors for $2,000 it's like no man I just want to get in

my car and leave um so it's like you got to kind of think about that um kind of like one mental model or one mental picture I would like to paint for you is is um imagine going to a party and then

having you at the front waving like you see someone like hey you know like they're you're just waving at them you're like you're clapping when they come you give them a high five when they walk in the door you know like you know that feeling where're like you see we're

a person would do that for you versus you show up at the door of your party right and you're it's you look at the door and it says scan a QR code first of all okay you scan a QR code and then

it's like okay like now go to the back okay now go to the back okay now pay me now now authenticate with Google okay cool I'm going decate with Google and then I get into the party right like

that's instead of doing all that why not just greet them at the door like why are you making your life so hard um uh just let them into the party and and there'd

be a lot more fun if you greet them like that too and again use this mental picture to kind of like uh um to kind of like help you understand how to use a

strategy based on what you're working on right I think that's super important um and by the way I want to distinguish this from networking because this can easily start sounding like networking uh what is let me tell you what networking

is for a moment uh this is what networking is you are making fake friends and connections to move yourself forward uh PO for your own purely selfish reasons like that's kind of what

networking is to me um and conversation just means getting to know each other right there's actually a difference and um I kind of want to go through just a couple of examples here um and feel fre

to chime in if you have any other thoughts on each example um but this is what Anisha Amar are working on right they're making a product that helps you buy things as a

AI shopping assistant are they here right now yes um so I think last week they told me that you know it's kind of hard to get people to show up and buy something and do the whole flow right

like that's kind of like one of the problems like buying something is kind of like a longer term ordeal technically right um and I remember last week Ron bought a camera and I think my thought today while making this presentation was

Dan what if they made like a cly link which essentially said hey book a time with us and we will help you buy your camera like right on the call like we are your

shopping assistant and in the background you're using your your tool right sounds kind of weird right sounds kind of like Twisted but at the end of the day what does the person want they want to buy a camera they want to buy the book right

damn okay can I just hop in a 20-minute call with you literally figured out right there with you like with a human assistant that's actually using your tool in the background and then then they buy it right there from your

website boom done again I don't know if that'll work but I think there's a much higher chance that it can work you know so like you are um you're playing a different game you're playing the

one-on-one conversation game um which I think could possibly work right so again that's just kind of one idea for like because I think one-on-one kind of like um

um the one-on-one interactions can actually be built into anything you all do and this is just one example for for them um this is really interesting right

uh so in this case um they're working on a diabetes kind of a Tracker right a diabetes assistant so we'll call it a person how you guys describe it to like a personal diabetes assistant cool so

essentially like the best way describe it today is just that they um like what do you think is number one reason someone uses this today yeah essentially and then there's like an AI bot built into it right so I

never tried it I just I still I still have not connected my decom but I think um on this one in particular my first thought every time I see this tool is that damn they should

just book one-on-one calls with people with diabetes and then show them this and then if they just do 30 of those in a day how many of those at the end will want to buy this it's really up to them

right but again imagine you show up to a website and it says Hey like $20 a month personal diabetes assistant versus $20 a month or versus like book a call with us and let me let us show it to you right

now so for someone with diabetes you know which seems like a painful disease that seems kind of better right versus like another robotic flow that I go through I don't know if it's real I get

scammed all the time in the medical industry I'm going back to Facebook you know um versus like oh like I just book a call with them I'm gonna get a person okay cool like let's check that out one

other example kind of for niat you know this kind of makes even this is the hardest even one to understand but like damn I'm sure some of your viewers kind of kind kind of like feel what you are saying right damn what if 20 minutes

what would what would it take to have 20 minutes with one of them um to at least learn from them to at least for them to get a sense of what you're working on um for them to get a better understanding of you right there's nothing wrong with

that in fact that's like a superpower um I wish I could still have one-on-one conversations with everyone who comes through Bill space like that'd be amazing um but I can't it's hard so you should do this while you can't because

it's really fun um I want to give you one small example from just my own my own past this is convoke he's like my third favorite artist of all time he's a rapper and at one time I met convoke

randomly um at a video game tournament and uh this guy was just first of all he's just the nicest guy ever like he saw me I'm like I'm like are you convoke he's like yeah man it just we just we

just hugged me and he just said what's going on dude what's your favorite song and you know I said I [ __ ] up what's my favorite song he's like yeah yeah nice dude and um he spent an hour with me he spent an hour with me just hanging out with me just talking to me it was

one of the cool coolest things that's ever happened like to me because I like love the guy he was like my one of my favorites um so seeing him was like mindblowing um and then to to this to this day that was like four or five

years ago to this day every time he drops a video a tweet a Instagram story I don't care what he drops I'm like on it you know I'm like what is convoke saying because it almost feels like I'm

not definitely not friends with convoke but I really enjoy what he's putting out I enjoy who I thought he was a good person um and I want to keep supporting him that's it um and you know I don't

think kok when he talked to me was trying to make me offend I think he was just being himself so that's another way another kind of thing to think about but yeah it's crazy he every time he drops

anything I'm there in a moment's notice me and Alec both actually um and my last and third final thing I want to talk about is on how to like up your selling

game no matter what you're working on is please pick the easiest person to sell to um I want to give you an example again uh in 2018 we were we're working

on build space uh at the time buildspace we called it build space uh we actually reuse the name but at the time we were working on a cloud IDE for uh college

students so basically if you join a computer science uh major you have to like set up do a bunch of setup right around your terminal around your coding environment Etc essentially they would

spend the first week on just helping you set up your coding environment so you could code on your laptop it was kind of ridiculous so you know after college me and Alec were like we should make something that

makes it such that you don't have to [ __ ] do that right and then so we were off right we literally built the product and like it took us like two weeks to build it uh we built it and um we tried to sell it to schools and if

you know schools uh universities take six to 12 months to sign a contract um yeah the same thing and then we to Prof don't do

this that's so funny yeah this is like one of those ideas that a lot of people do kind of like a the other idea people do a lot is like an app that helps you split your bill like that's the other really popular app people make again

this is one of those popular apps we had no idea um and again yeah it takes us it takes us 12 months to lock down a contract like we didn't know that so we spent three months on just that and then

we gave up on that but then we were like okay okay maybe schools aren't it let's sell to students you know and that was a great idea can anybody tell me what happened if you try yes students have no

money students have no money that is the learning uh we failed horrendously why we picked the hardest people in the

world to sell to schools and students now in retrospect makes perfect sense um but in the moment we just we didn't think about that we didn't think we were so deep in it that we didn't even think

that that these people were difficult to sell to in retrospect I wish we sold to people that were easier to sell to for example like the tool is actually really good could this have been sold to like I

don't know uh people tutoring 12y olds in programming sounds a lot faster sounds like I just have to go to the parent yeah actually my I used yeah I

the exact [ __ ] dude you see what I mean dude we should start a company together yeah so sounds like a lot of people have the same thoughts and again like it's cool in retrospect you can look back right and like think about

these things but in the moment it was so hard we were just so locked in like student student student student school school school you know so it was like and you know we had so many people tell us that was going to be hard and we were

like ah you know nah you know um like many of you uh we also learned the hard way um over many years at the end of the day no one can tell us enough that it's not going to work give us all the advice

in the world isn't going to shift our minds you know we were we were kind of just stubborn um but yeah we pick the hardest people in the world to sell to and I think a lot of people a lot of you will end up picking really difficult people to sell to not saying you're

doing that right now actually I think most of you are kind of okay um but you can always make it easier for yourself you know what I mean like you can always change who your target is to make it

easier um because you choose right so I think you know Ryan you're selling clothing right so clothing is actually pretty hard to sell like to just your average person on the street right like

it's kind of hard for them to then first learn about it then like it then got it has to fit them properly blah blah blah right so even my first thought with clothing is that who can buy clothing in

a way that's maybe faster and lower lower uh what do you call it um um so there's not as much like push you have to do right um so again we can go through options all day but again I've

I've had a clothing company before I sold to companies right I would sell like 50 of the same hat to companies 50 of the same shirt to companies right um but again at the end of the day who knows if that would be better it's just

worth a shot but you can just know you can kind of like adjust who you sell to at the end of the funnel in like little small ways don't like do massive shifts like one week you know you're selling to developers the next week you're selling

to like I don't know like basketball players you know what I mean like these are Big shifts like just experiment around with who you actually are trying to get it to I think that's okay um but if you have questions there and you're

not sure you can always ask us um I think Bonnie yours is really interesting where like Bonnie could really complicate this actually right um in the sense of like I don't know let's who's

your customer today like as of today U for this thing um well my plan was to to go to gift shops this weekend and ask them if I could um maybe just like be

there for the weekend and wrap people's gifts at Cost great cool no yeah makes sense I think on that even just hearing that um always kind of stay flexible

right because for all you know no gift shop replies to you and that's okay right but then it's like okay who's someone else that's maybe like less push is required for me to get through the

door um um so even for you there's so many places for for like this to like be sold and like become a thing um just no need to get married to a specific like segment you know or a specific type of

like strategy again I've done it so many times so yeah if that happens to me it can definitely happen to you um yeah AEL you know selling to where's a boy here

somewhere oh yes uh you're selling to uh medical students um sounds hard you know doesn't sound impossible but sounds hard right is it hard H yeah

it's yeah yeah yeah it's it's hard so I think even when I see something like this my kind of thing is like hey like don't kind of like get caught up in the Rut of selling

to medical students like who's somebody else that's maybe slightly adjacent that we can try out this week you know um you can argue that this is like losing focus but honestly I don't know it sounds like you spent a lot of weeks on medical

students like maybe let's try something else you know maybe let's adjust a little bit um we could maybe you can change who you sell to um and maybe it'll be uh you have to like do you have

to force your way into the door a little bit less right cool so those are my kind of three my three this my three I guess tips or my three learnings from what I've what

I've kind of like uh just things that work for me basically at the end of the day I I don't like to call this advice um this is just what works for me and I think you guys can take away from this

uh what you please um but my main thing is don't be this guy you know I know you don't think you're being this guy but when I see some of you making reals and at the end you're like go to my link I'm

like ah you just look like this guy you know like and nobody wants to interact with this guy um or I see your TW tweet it's like a beautiful tweet and at the end you're like check out my thing and

I'm like well again I don't think that's G to happen um you can try uh all day keep trying of course you know um uh my my biggest thing I want you to take away from this is to not stop all those

Shenanigans like that's like playing the lottery should play the lottery like every day that sounds dope um especially because it's a free Lottery that's even more dope uh but that's what socials are that's what posting on these large

platforms are but don't don't let that be your strategy you know like that's not a strategy that's that's not a strategy to sell strategies to sell at this stage should be more like one one

they should be a lot more kind of like direct right and yeah just just be a little more like this guy you know look at him um and yeah I think if that happens I think you know like the group

will end up looking a little bit less like this and maybe a little bit more like this actually um you'll still have people in all sorts of stages right but I don't think it's that crazy for you all to have like a big Push by the end of this week like every single one of

you and I know I have a very good idea of the states of every single one of your projects um I see what you're doing I watch your exam days I see your updates in the chats I have a pretty solid sense of where most of you are at

well 95% of you um and yeah I feel like you got something you just got to like really start selling it um and I think that's that's that's all that's what's going to take at the the end of the day

remember I can sit here all day and say these things to you and I think for some of you it'll hit for some of you it won't uh but we're here for you uh email me if you need me I think a lot of people are kind of don't know how to get in touch with me yeah just email me I

don't check my phone much um but email me I'm always around far as I bill space uh and I actually look at that often uh one1 amth please continue uh bugging Amoth for 101s please continue barging

into our office who's barging into our office I'm curious damn a lot of you continue barging into our office it's totally okay if we don't want you there we will literally say no and I've done

that many times um I think it's okay uh get s's music to Hype you up you know do do whatever you got to do uh by Friday right um and again remember inputs over outputs at the end of the day like I

don't want you all to be like mentally down if your graph doesn't go up because it's one signal you know as long as you're happy every week with your inputs and what you're actually putting into the into the game cuz that's the only thing you control I can't like stress

that enough it's very easy to get caught up in the idea that uh you're Flatline or you're going down or you're flopping I don't know I don't it's just it's just one graph um there's many graphs that we

could look at um and that's it yeah any questions any questions damn nice yes