Greg Isenberg

This is still the best business advice I've ever received:

Think like a farmer.

We think we're internet entrepreneurs but we're really farmers.

Fun fact:

The 1920 USA census tells us that 30% of Americans were farmers in 1920.

Today, under 1% of Americans are farmers with 72% using the internet to perform their jobs.

We've moved from real farmers to internet farmers.


More ways we can learn from farmers:

-Rotate Crops: Adapt and change strategies to prevent stagnation.

-Observe Neighbors: Learn from competitors' successes and failures.

-Prioritize Soil Health: Foundation first; prioritize team well-being.

-Store Surplus: Save profits for unforeseen challenges or downturns.

-Embrace Natural Rhythms: Respect individual work rhythms; avoid burnout.

-Prevent Pests Early: Address small issues before they amplify.

-Forecast and Plan: Analyze trends; anticipate future industry shifts.

-Wear a hat: Protect yourself from the sun

-Wake Up Early: Consistency pays off

-Invest in the Right Tools: The right equipment will 10x your yield

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I’ll tell you a story I haven’t told many people…I'm 18, bank account dwindling, and desperate for a job.

I applied to 100 jobs and got zero offers.

They said I didn’t have enough experience or my French wasn’t good enough. The hopelessness was real.

So, I reached out to internet companies in SF/NYC.

“Hey, would you pay me $2/lead? No risk to you.“

It was 2008, during the great financial crisis. Companies were looking to cut costs, and this was attractive. Mobile/social was just becoming a thing. New apps needed users.

The first few hundred emails were ignored. Finally, one company said yes. I made $100 that month. Not exactly balling out, but it was a start. I bought a pair of cool shoes with it.

Sweetest shoes I ever bought.

Every app needed users, and I knew how to get them. I could scale this. I hired two friends, trained them on the pitch, and paid them $1/lead. The margins were thin, but we started pulling in volume.

One day, I found a goldmine—a venture-backed startup scaling fast. They needed users and had the budget.

I pitched them: “$2/lead? Let's scale to 1,000 leads a week.“ This was Zynga. They had just put out Farmville and were looking to grow users.

They bit. Suddenly, I was making $2,000 a week. I dropped out of college.

We experimented with Facebook ads, forum postings, and influencer marketing. The results were wild. Facebook ads were literally $0.05 per click!

In '08, we built an iPhone app (before the App Store) to ping us every lead we generated. On my 18th birthday, it dinged every few secs.

In 6 months, we were generating over 20,000 leads a month and running a mini lead-gen empire.

I was still living at my parents' house.

But the $$ wasn’t the most interesting part. We were learning skills that would be invaluable—growth hacking, community mgmt, copywriting etc

Fast forward to today, and I've built and sold multiple companies. But it all started with that $2/lead hustle during the worst economic downturn of our generation.

Moral of the story:

When the world goes to hell, look for opportunities. Innovate. Be relentless. Your big break might be just an email away.

I felt pretty hopeless back then. But the cool part about the internet is the lack of gatekeepers.

Not too long ago...

- You had to get press to get customers.
- You needed VCs to build a product.
- You needed a degree to get that job.

There was always a gatekeeper

Not anymore. Tons of people sit on the sidelines. They aren't shipping.

But it's not because they can't. They totally could. Especially with the cost of launching anything being so cheap. They just don't realize the gates have recently become wide open.

It fires me up.

So, stop waiting for permission. The gates are open.

Just walk through.
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Here are 30 realizations that changed my life as an entrepreneur:

1. Startup valuation is literally a made up number.

2. It's impossible to work with people who don’t answer texts within 24h.

3. The internet can be your lottery ticket or your prison sentence.

4. If Abercrombie & Fitch can rebrand (up 285% in 2023), then you can rebrand too.

5. Having an internet audience is still wildly underpriced.

6. Build products that no one asks for but everyone wants.

7. It's actually a good idea to be poor in your 20s and reinvest everything in yourself (learnings, travel, network, figuring out who you are).

8. Google is probably not going to “copy your startup”.

9. Content is your salesperson that works for you 24/7.

10. Look for opportunities that are low status now, but probably high status in a few years.

11. Lifestyle businesses are still massively underrated. You can often turn them into non lifestyle business if you want.

12. Avoid dependency on anything. Social apps, VCs etc. Freedom is two words: self-sustaining.

13. Taking a break doesn’t mean you’re lazy, burn out is real.

14. Whatever you do, don't be mid-curve.

15. The only things that should change your mood are things that will change your life.

16. Copycats are a nuisance, not killers. They are usually mosquitoes, not sharks.

17. Good design can’t fix a poor product. But good design can multiply a product that’s working.

18. People follow a journey, not a social account.

19. If you’re doing stuff you hate, you aren’t rich.

20. Don't create a startup without a “why now“.

21. Strangers don’t want to hear about you. They want to talk about themselves or better themselves.

22. The best negotiators talk 10% of the time, and listen 90%.

23. Good things happen when you add value to people’s lives through content & community.

24. You could learn a lot about someone by their likes on X/Twitter.

25. First find the niche, then learn from the community, then the startup idea will come to you.

26. On hiring: if it isn’t a hell yeah, it’s a hell no. Never compromise for fit.

27. Startups never go according to plan. There is no real plan for startups, only a direction.

28. The best businesses are the ones that look like a movement. It needs to be an identity, not a product.

29. Your identity is never your company ever. Your company is your business.

30. Change scenery 2-3x per day to be extra creative.

What are some realizations you've had as an entrepreneur, creator, maker, etc?

Btw, recently, i went to Japan (for the first time) and I had some MORE realizations as a founder. You can check them out here for free. Enjoy. https://lnkd.in/eJZ4rQKZ

A big mistake I made in my 20s was not starting a product design agency.

I was living in Silicon Valley. And over there, it's all about big VC raises, big exits. So basically, starting a service business was the anti-cool.

After I sold my last company when I was 24. I had an idea to start a product design agency and studio called “Islands“.

Why the name Islands? Because we'd help different clients, kinda like their own islands.

But, after asking for feedback from 2 billionaires/Silicon Valley legends, they persuaded me to turn Islands into a social networking product.

“You're good a community and social products, build a product. You can always start an agency later“

I nodded.

But, deep down, I always loved the product design agency business. I love working on multiple projects, I love seeing others succeed and helping them get there.

When COVID hit in 2020, I knew that I couldn't wait any longer to start that concept of Islands.

I called it Late Checkout, a product design agency and studio for companies who want to supercharge their communities.

Lesson learned #1: Better late than never

Lesson learned #2: trust your intuition, it's right more than you think