An Average Guy Built This in One Weekend. Here's How Transcript, AI Summary & Key Points

00:00 I built a business in a weekend with AI. By six  weeks in, I had done 180 grand. And so that first one, you said it brought you two to $300,000.  Yeah. And I'm not trying to underplay or underell what you built in a weekend, but you vibe coded  something. And that's something that a lot of people watching this have also done. You didn't  start an apparel manufacturing company over the weekend.

00:19 You vibe coded something. And we're in  this very brief unique moment in time where the vast majority of people have never heard that  phrase. and they have no idea that you're just using natural language to ask a software tool  to make your own software tool. Bingo. Anyone can do this. I'm an average guy. I don't know  how to code. And I just got up.

00:33 I was like, I'm going to try to build a business today and see  if I can get a customer by tomorrow. And it was like kind of a dare. It was totally on accident.  I was not that day anticipating where I would be today. I genuinely don't believe that anyone is  actually afraid of failure. You're stranded on an island all by yourself. You know, you've got  to build a raft that can get you like 5 miles.

00:55 Are you going to not build that raft because  you're afraid you'll fail? No. Like you have to build the raft, right? Yeah. But let's say you  were, this was like Truman Show and you're being live streamed on that island. You might not  build that raft because you are afraid of the perception of failure from other people watching.  Totally. No one's afraid of failure.

01:08 We're just afraid of what people will think if we fail.  Flip that switch in your brain. Just go do it. I had a guest on a couple months ago, John Cheney.  You may remember him as the guy that made two and a half million bucks in a year vibe coding  websites for business owners. Well, he happened to make 180 grand in his first six weeks by employing  one little trick.

01:29 And you're going to hear exactly how this works. How do you sell yourself? How do  you get anything you want? Well, today let's get very specific about that because my last episode  with John didn't quite go deep enough on how he found customers. So, this one will please enjoy.  Look, getting customers is where most people kind of struggle, right? They come up with this awesome  idea and Chris, you're so good.

01:51 My kids I' I put my kids onto your channel. Like they're Thank  you. They love those ideas. They're trying to figure out like, "How am I going to make money for  the summer?" And they're all ages like 9 to 14. They're young, but there's some ideas in there.  They're like, "I could do this, right?" But then they're like, "But how do I get customers, Dad?"

02:07 Right? How do I do this? And obviously, yeah, you can go door to door and you can go, you know,  to Main Street door to door and find businesses or just pick up the phone or jump on LinkedIn and  all those things work. And you should do that. You should hustle for sure. But I like to find ways to  make noise and there's a lot of ways to make noise and we can talk about a bunch of these things  on this call from you know ranging from you know social media posting which is a huge thing right  and we we need to cover

02:29 that because it's a huge way that I make money and or that I get customers  that I get eyeballs on me right but traditional news like traditional news and you know whether  that's like print like a newspaper or you know digital print or just like the traditional  news like when I first launched this company I reached out to just the news desk, you know,  you could just get on a website on, you know, on on channel 2 news or channel 5 or Fox, just like  fill out, whatever it is, just fill out a form.

02:59 Yeah. There's just like they're always looking  these guys are all they're they're creative people and they're looking for cool angles, cool  stories. So, be a good storyteller, right? I mean, that's that's something that everybody knows  is a is an awesome way to make money if you're good storyteller. So, be a good storyteller and  reach out to these these local news stations.

03:17 So I reached out to KUTV and here in Utah and just  said, "Hey, I built a business in a weekend with AI." Like, that's a cool kind of hook, right?  Like I like that this guy built a business in a weekend. That's a cool story. Let's do it. And so  they came out. I mean, literally, I'm not kidding you, that day. Later that afternoon, they said,  "Hey, we want to put this on the news tonight."

03:36 And I was like, "Yeah, come on out." So I cleaned  my office up, right? And they literally had their camera sitting right here on me. You know, if you  look up KUTV Channel News, Channel 2 News, John Cheney, you'll find the you'll find the broadcast,  a little three-minute segment they did on me. And then over the next few days, I had people adding  me on LinkedIn and reaching out and saying, "Hey, I saw you on the news and hey, I've got a company.

03:54 I need some help with AI." And sweet. And and I got I I know I got one deal that was a 20k deal  a month, 20K a month. I got another one was 10K a month. And then I got several trainings that  were like a 10K or a 15K like one time. Hey, come in and train our company, you know? Yeah, it  was probably about 2 to 300,000 somewhere in there in terms of like total value of deals that came to  me from one little, you know, hey, cover my story.

04:22 This is what I'm doing. Here's the angle. Here's  why other people would like to hear that. And of course, you know, you don't want to, this is an  important thing when you're pitching media is they don't want to just do a free commercial for you.  That's that's the critical thing. It's not like, hey, I sell, you know, I I can come and, you  know, power wash your your sidewalks.

04:34 They don't want they don't want to hear that. They don't  want to hear that. It needs to be interesting. There needs to be human interest. Or you need to  help people be inspired a little bit like you do, Chris, with here's someone who's doing something  cool and he's going to share with you a little bit about how you might be able to do that, too.  What was your pitch to them?

04:52 Do you still have a record of that anywhere that you could read  to us? Like I'm especially hoping it's there's nothing super special about it. Like that would  be actually amazing cuz it's like it's not. No, there's nothing special about it. I literally  and look, I don't I can't find it. I actually found the guy that I I was I was texting to, and  this is actually a later text for a a follow-up story pitch that I did.

05:13 And by the way, that's,  you know, we'll skip ahead to that and I'll come back to answer this. Six months later, I was  like, "Hey, I did a million dollars in the last six months." He's like, "Amazing follow-up. I'll  be back at your place this, you know, can you do can you do tonight?" And I was like, "Yeah." He  brought the camera crew back and he's like, "Hey, how's it going?"

05:27 Right. Anyway, it's the same  day again. Same day. Yeah. A lot of time. And that's crazy because that means he's looking for  something. Yeah. There's no backlog. Totally. This isn't like breaking news. Like if they publish  that a week later, it makes no difference. So that tells me like if we were to publish this  tomorrow, that would be a signal to you that I have no backlog.

05:46 Yeah. It's not necessarily that  I'm desperate. It just means I have no backlog. And sometimes I don't. Right now I do. Yeah. But  so to me that's like, wow, if if this random local news station, which are a dime a dozen, has no  backlog, it's pretty common that no one else does either. They're just sitting around for something  like waiting for something to talk about.

06:00 Yeah. Yeah. And as long as there isn't, you know, a  fire or a murder or something that, you know, everyone wants to talk about, then yeah, you're  the story. And like you said, a lot of times they will they'll they'll film it and it doesn't  matter if it's if today's May 30th or May 31st, like it doesn't matter when they do it. They can  do it. They can air it a week later.

06:18 So anyway, that works. And yeah, honestly, the message was  just, hey, you know, here's what I did. Here's the angle I have on the story. Here's why I think  your listeners will like it. That's important. Why will your listeners get value from this? So,  you told them that like what's in it for you ahead of it. You don't want them to have to try to  be creative and wonder what's in it for me.

06:38 You need to tell them hand them a packaged deal. Yeah.  Do their job for them. They're going to be like, I get it. I can I can show up and I don't  need any prep. I can put the camera on him, interview them for five minutes, and I'm done.  And that's all it takes. By the way, you know, a total news interview, I'm sure you've done them  before as well.

06:54 They're fast. Like, they're in, they're out in 25, 30 minutes from your house.  like it's yeah, you know, get most of the time is like getting the microphone situated. Real  quick, please subscribe to my channel. I know it's kind of lame to ask, but it means a lot.  Thanks. So, that first one you said it brought you $2 to $300,000 in value, in revenue, and most  of that is profit because I I know your business, we've spoken before.

07:18 Yeah. I'm not trying to  underplay or underell what you built in a weekend, but you vibe coded something. And that's something  that a lot of people watching this have also done, right? You didn't start a restaurant. You know  what I'm saying? like you didn't start an apparel manufacturing company over the weekend. You vibe  coded something. And we're in this very brief unique moment in time where the vast majority of  people have never heard that phrase and they have no idea that you're just using natural language  to

07:42 ask a software tool to make your own software tool. Right? So that the guy that read your cold  email probably thought there was more to it than that. But even even after he heard your story,  like it still performed well. And like they I'm sure they didn't regret doing it because he's  representative of most people. They don't know that you can just vibe code stuff over a weekend.

08:04 Yeah. Over an afternoon. Exactly. And that was the idea, right? And that was that was the value  that I was pitching. I was like, look, people don't understand how powerful AI is today. Anyone  can do this. I'm an average guy. And that's what I said on the on the on the news thing. I was like,  I don't know how to code, but I used AI and these neat tools that let me do this to go and bring  an idea to life.

08:23 And and now I have customers, right? And the customer getting the customer part  is, you know, you got to get out there and make it happen. And, you know, my first customers didn't  come from a news agency. This was about you. You can't really like launch it and then be on the  news the next day. You kind of got to come up with something, get your first customers, like  figure that out.

08:40 And then, you know, the first story I guess on the news was probably out 6  weeks in. And I had by six weeks in, I had done 180 grand. And so I had a story, right? It was  like, "Wow, this guy's taken off super fast. He's, you know, completely replaced his income in six  weeks because of AI." And and that was that was the story. That was the angle. So how much value  did that second interview bring you or was it kind of hard to attribute because you were further  along in your journey?

09:04 Yeah, you know, I actually combined it into a secondary story right at the  same time. And I wanted it to be a big like, hey, here's a lot of news, a lot of juicy stuff. I had  also just that week before signed a deal with BYU to become the official AI partner of BYU athletics  and I was going to be helping BYU athletes learn AI so that as they prepare to enter the workforce,  they have this techn because they're not they weren't learning it as much at school as they they  wanted to be.

09:32 And and they felt that there was a big gap there and teaching people how to build  businesses with AI. They they thought that was going to be super valuable. So, I signed a deal  with BYU. So, I had that to talk about. I had, "Hey, so how's the business?" You know, "Hey,  you know, we talked to you six months ago." Yeah, we've gone from 180,000 up to a million.

09:48 And, you  know, so there were some update elements to it, but I just brought this whole package of  a story. I was like, "Hey, there's a lot going on." A lot of local people of course in  Utah care about BYU athletics and and you know, they're interested to know if there's some cool  deal there that's helping athletes and that's just kind of a human interest story.

10:04 Yeah. The second  pitch was pretty easy. It was just like and and and this was this is a key thing. Now I've got a  buddy over at KUTV. I've got his cell phone. I can text him and be like, "Hey, I've got a story.  Is this interesting to you?" And by the way, I've texted him a couple times and been like,  "Hey, is this interesting to you?" It's like, "No, not that probably isn't."

10:22 But if you had something  like if you had a customer, someone that was doing this or whatever. So there there will be more and  and you can you can start to build out your own little um PR network. Yeah. I mean, no different  than my podcast. If I have a good guest on, I want them to come back on. Totally. Here I am.  It's a symbiotic relationship 100%.

10:36 So anyway, finding those opportunities to to land somebody  that lends you that credibility is an amazing way to get free marketing. It doesn't cost you  anything. It is hard. You got to work and you got to push, but but if once you get that deal,  you want to leverage it. Here's another thing I did when I landed BYU. I did the KUTV kind of  follow-up thing.

10:55 And then I also I got Replet. I I texted Amjad Msad. I was like, "Hey man, I'm doing  this deal with with BYU. I plan on teaching all of these students replet. Would you mind donating six  free months per athlete of Replet?" And he's like, "I've never really done anything like that, but  yeah, let's do it." And so he jumped in and I was like, "Sweet.

11:20 Can we do a press release about  this?" So it's me and BYU, a top tier university, and Replet, a multi-billion dollar startup,  right? I'm this little I'm the little guy, but I'm bringing us all together and then  I'm putting out the press release saying, "Hey, we're working with BYU doing this and  Replet has jumped in. Amjod does this. Hey, Replet, can you give me a quote from the  CEO from Amjad that's approved?

11:40 And BYU, can you give me a quote that's approved?" And you  have to go through a process. You can't just talk about these things in a press release unless you  have their permission. And it might take you a few weeks to put it all together. But a press release  does not cost very much. And then it lands you in, you know, Yahoo News and MSNBC and other people  pick it up and Techrunch and all these different things.

12:00 Now you have tons of backlinks to your  website and you have big credible names talking about you in public. It's cool. Press release is  another big marketing tactic. What service do you use for press releases? It's PR Newswire and it's  a little bit more expensive. It cost about $1,000 for one, but there's other ones out there. Yeah.  And you think that's worth it?

12:17 I mean, it depends on the niche, right? But for this, it depends. It  depends on the high ticket thing. Yeah, it because it was a big deal and I wanted good like a tier  quality people picking it up. I was like, "Okay, I'm going to I'm going to invest in this a little  bit." So, yeah, it cost a little bit, but but it's worth it. Yeah. I don't know if I've ever done a  press release.

12:35 I'm just I'm too shortsighted. I'm too cheap. Just a thousand bucks. But I'm sure in  a lot of cases it would I'd get my money back in the for sure if there's some sort of strategic  partnership. you're, you know, let's let, you know, Gen AIPI and corner office, you know,  team up to do what, you know, and just put a press release out there. And now someone might pick  that up and be like, hey, I need some AI services.

13:00 Some, you know, you know, Chris Corner is super  legit and Jennipi looks cool like I'm going to call these guys up. There's there's something  here. It that kind of thing absolutely works. Yeah. Absolutely. Early on you said you've got  to be a good storyteller. Yeah. Yeah. How do you do that? How do people become good storytellers?  It's back to the same thing I was talking about earlier.

13:20 What's in it for them, right? You got  to relate to them. A lot of people tell a story about themselves and they talk about how awesome  they are. And we do that out of insecurity. Like we think that we're helping ourselves like we're  giving our, you know, more credibility to others about ourselves when we're shooting ourselves in  the foot. 100%. When it's actually a way better strategy to just kind of debase yourself a little  bit.

13:39 You might be really smart at that thing, but it's way better to connect with somebody and say,  "Look, I'm no different than you. You're probably smarter than me, but look, this is the pattern.  Here's the here's the framework that I did, and if you follow this framework, you're going  to do so much more with it than I did." Right? And that's that's really how you tell a good story  is you help them feel like they're there, they're part of it.

14:03 I'm always selling the vision of what  will it be like when you're you like after you've adopted AI, right? Like imagine your life is like  this. You wake up in the morning and duh and AI has already taken care of all this stuff, right?  Telling that story of the future desired state is way better than saying here's our benefits  and features, you know?

14:21 Well, in my opinion, like everything in business comes down to removing  or adding friction where necessary. And so to me, what I'm hearing is you're removing the friction  of them not being able to see themselves in that thing, in the car that you're trying to sell them  with the AI tool that you're trying to build them. You're painting the picture for them.

14:41 It's kind  of like uh a test drive of a car, right? You don't really, if you're a car salesman, you don't take  them on test drives so they can like see how it rides and see how the suspension is. Like they  don't even know what that means or feels like. You want them to like picture themselves in this  case literally in the car because the chance that they'll buy it is significantly higher if they do.

14:59 So it's not about the speed and because it's it's all confirmation bias. They sit in the car and  they already kind of like it but they're like, "Oh yeah, I kind of like how it does this."  Of course you do. Like you want to buy it. It's a self-fulfilling prophecy. They're closing  themselves. Yeah. On the deal at this point. So, it's I don't know if I've told this story  before, but my junior year of high school, I joined the yearbook class just cuz I had a  free elective and I didn't care about it.

15:20 It didn't mean anything to me. I like whatever. But,  we had like a nationally ranked yearbook. It was it was serious. We our yearbook adviser was legit.  She was like, she went to Colombia and she took it very seriously. I didn't know any of that. So we  join this class and our first assignment day one she has us you know reach into a bowl with some  sheets of paper and she says you know pull out the sheet of paper and wherever it says in the  school go.

15:46 So like you know cafeteria hallway north hallway you know and mine was the orchestra  room. She says I want you to bring your notepad go to that room it's totally randomized and just  write down what you observe. And I was like okay whatever. And I'm not a writer never have been.  Whatever. So, I go into the orchestra room. I sit in the back for an hour and I was like the  class clown.

16:07 I was not a good student. And so, I write the most sarcastic thing ever. Like just  trying to be like eloquent in a very sarcastic way. I'm like the the the reverberations of the  viola bounce against the the darkest chambers of my heart. Like the cellos are are bouncing  between the rafters and it makes me contemplate my own mortal existence. Like I was totally just  trolling.

16:32 Like I was just like, "How can I ham this up?" And so I turned it in. It was it was  just a joke. I didn't take it seriously. Yeah. And the next day she she comes like, "Hey, I read your  assignments." You know, honestly not pleased with most of them. You guys can do better than this.  But one of them one of them touched me deeply. And she put her hand on her heart.

16:52 I was like,  "Geez." Like we're all looking around. We're like, "Oh, it was probably Sarah. Oh, it was Jenna." And  she's like, "I have to read this to you. This was one of the most touching things I've ever read."  And if I were to actually go back and read it, maybe it was halfway decent. I don't know. I I  would pay a lot of money to have that sheet of paper for sure.

17:09 And she proceeds to read my story.  And I'm just like beat red sweat. Like this was not at all what I had planned cuz I didn't expect  her to read it. A B I didn't expect her to read it in that context of legitimately loving it. Yeah.  And so she reads it and everyone's like, "Wow, that's really good." And I'm like, "Oh my gosh."  She's like, "Guess who it was."

17:27 was like, "Oh, you know, this girl or that girl or she's like, "Chris  Kerner." And they were like, "What? Chris?" Like, they were They're like, "Huh?" And I'm like, "I  don't know, guys." Like, there was no chat GPT. I actually wrote this. And uh that led this down  this path where she picked me to be the assistant executive editor. Amazing. And then the editor  was a senior and so when she graduated, I was a junior.

17:53 I became the executive editor. And it  reminds me of that. Do you ever see the other guys with Mark Wahberg and Will Farah? Yeah, for sure.  Like Mark Wahlberg, he confronts his girlfriend in the dance studio and he like starts doing perfect  ballet. She's like, "What?" He's like, "Yeah, I learned to dance so I can make fun of everyone."  She's like, "You learned to dance sarcastically."

18:12 So I learned to write. That's how you did that.  Well, you know what's funny, too, is I That's how I started Jennipi is it was literally just like, I  wonder what I should do this day. I don't know if you remember my story a few weeks ago or whenever  it was that we talked a couple months ago, but like I just woke up Thursday morning and I post  on social media and this is a good segue into the next section here about let's talk about social  media because I think it's important and I just got up and I was like I'm

18:34 going to try to build  a business today and see if I can get a customer by tomorrow. And then and it was like kind of a  dare. It was totally on accident. I was not that day anticipating where I would be today with 27  employees. like a year and a half later, huge AI, you know, helping companies do this. You put like  a false constraint on yourself and that made all the difference.

18:55 I did. I did. Yeah. The false  constraints are are cool. I think they're I think they're awesome. So, building in public, that's  another great thing, right? This is not exactly social media, but it kind of is. Building in  public is awesome. When you're building something, tell everyone about it. Yeah. Like so many people  are like, "Ah, someone's going to steal my idea."

19:11 But you know what, Chris? You make a living from  giving everybody every idea, right? like all these cool ideas and no one's saying like, "Oh, I tried  that but it was too saturated in my market." Like I bet you never hear that, right? The reality  is execution is where is where you know the money lives. The ideas are a dime a dozen. So  go out there, tell people exactly what you're doing.

19:33 If you're doing a stump grinding business,  tell everyone and they're going to be like, "Oh, I've got this tree in my backyard." Like just tell  everyone. Okay. So how do you do it? So there's a there's a book that I treat I love. I read it all  the time and look at little things lately and and I just I kind of followed the principles of it as  I as I founded this company and I've talked about it a bunch and you've probably read it.

19:52 It's by  Gary Vee Day Trading Attention and I don't think I've read that one. Oh, it's so good. It's 20  bucks. Guys, everybody listening, go get this. Gary Vee will pay me no money. I do not know Gary  Vee. I follow him. I'm a fan of his. But go buy his book. I want you to do something right now.  Open your bank statement and add up every single software subscription that you're paying for.

20:13 Your CRM, your email marketing tool, text message platform, calendar booking app, funnel builder,  review management, even a separate form builder or automation tool. I've talked to business owners  paying $500 to $3,000 a month across eight or 10 different tools and half of them don't even talk  to each other. So then they go pay for Zapier on top of that just to make things connect.

20:33 Highle  replaces all of it. CRM, email, SMS, funnels, websites, calendars, automations, reputation  management, invoicing, one login, one dashboard, one bill starting at 97 bucks a month. A guy in my  community was paying 3.47 just for ClickFunnels, 99 for Mailchimp, 25 for Kell, 79 for a review  tool, and 49 bucks for Zapier just to glue it all together.

20:56 That's 600 a month if you're not  counting. He moved everything to high level and cut his software cost by over 80%. But the best  part isn't even the savings. It's that everything just works together natively. A lead fills out  a form on your funnel that creates a contact in your CRM, which triggers a text and email  sequence, books an appointment on your calendar, and then ask for a review when the job's done.

21:15 One  workflow, zero duct tape, and then you can white label the whole platform to resell it to other  businesses as your own software. Charge them 2 to 500 bucks a month. Check out gohighle.com/tkopod.  They'll give you a 30-day free trial to see what I mean. Day trading at 10. Have you ever day traded?  You ever day traded, Chris? Haven't we all lost money?

21:36 Okay, we all We all have lost money doing  this. 1% a day. We just 1% a day. If it compounds, stop. Just stop, Chris. Oh, I've been there. I  remember when I made my first million. I I threw it all into like a Charles Schwab account and I  was high enough and I enabled day trading. I was like, "This is fun." And I'm not kidding you. I  traded like a hundred million in and out, right?

21:55 $100 million over like three months, right? In  total, in total trades, right? It's just a million dollars. By the end of three months, I had had so  much stress. I'd been up and down. I finished at $990,000. Wasted three months, lost 10 grand. Like  anyway, but it's kind of all consuming, right? And so I love I love the, you know, the the the idea,  the mental thing of day trading attention.

22:12 You just got to be there. Gary Vee posts to social  media 60 times a day. Do you know how many times you post, by the way, Chris? I'm curious. Do you  do you know that? I would add up all my platforms. Yeah. All platforms. It doesn't matter if it's the  same post. Yeah, at least 25 to 40 probably. Yeah, big time. And you're probably and I'm probably  like 12 to 15 depending on the day and sometimes a little bit more.

22:37 But but yeah, so you're ahead  of me. Gary's ahead of us. But there's no question that just being in the the best way for people  not to buy from you is for people to not know about you. The end. If you want an atbat, you got  to step up to the plate, right? That's all it is. You just got to get out there and post. And  the thing that Gary Vee just like pounds into your head in this book, he's like, "Guys, this  literally costs nothing.

22:58 It's free. It is free to post to YouTube. It is free to post to Instagram,  to Facebook, to LinkedIn, to Snap, to Reddit, to sub uh to Substack, you know, whatever." Now,  it does take some effort for sure, and you can create some systems. Heck, I could show you how  to use AI to create some systems to do that, right? There's absolutely ways you can do that to  to do that.

23:17 And all of these platforms have great scheduling features, right? So, you don't have to  just get on every day. can schedule it out and, you know, make plans and and you could do a whole  other episode on, you know, how to cut up long form content like this and do whatever. Lots lots  of ways of strategies. But I got myself into the habit of posting every single day a few years ago.

23:37 I gave myself a challenge and I'm going to issue it to everyone right now because I think it's  just cool and good for you. And you can do it for a year, but do it for a month. Just do it for  30 days. Every single day, post something you're grateful for. That's it. I did it for a year.  I did I did it was on me. I did it 366 days. Remember our church had a challenge to do that  for a week.

23:59 Do you remember that? I do remember. 10 years ago. Yeah. It was like an official church  thing. And I remember one day was my wife one day and I would write these stories. So yeah. Anyway,  keep going. Do you know how hard it is to do it for a year? Yeah. Especially on days that you  don't feel very grateful, you know, like today sucked. I got sued today or I broke my leg or you  know one of my you know my backyard caught on fire or whatever it is like there's so many things  that happen to us in life and so but first

24:28 of all besides the fact that it's a good social media  practice it's good for here right it's good to say all right can I look at my life every day commit  to something and say okay I'm I'm grateful for something I don't care if you write this grateful  for the same thing every day right all right if you can't come up with something new but I I  made it my goal kind of to make it something new for 366 days.

24:50 I used my wife a couple times as  something probably used piano as a couple things and adventure and kaying and mountain biking. You  know, there's but there's so many things you just pick something out and be like, man, I'm just  grateful for this and you know and and you know, your followers will like it. Your your follow you  will grow your follower account for sure because it's good positive content in their feed and  you'll you'll have people you know comment what they're grateful for, things like that.

25:12 So, I'm  issuing that to everybody. One month, try it for a month and and and it's not just like don't miss a  day. be disciplined about it. It's the discipline of posting every day that really gets you to  take off on social media, whatever platform, all platforms on the on the gratitude one. Yeah,  just a public gratitude journal for 30 days. Yeah, just do it.

25:33 I mean, you could certainly add at the  end of it, hey, tell me what you're grateful for today. You could certainly do that. Try to get  a few people engaged. There's no question that a call to action is a good, you know, good thing  to do. Another thing that Gary Vee talks about in another book of his is this um jab jab hook  right strategy which is all about I'm going to give value.

25:55 I'm going to give value. Free value.  Free value. Free value. I'm going to post like for example I post about AI every day and I'll say  hey I checked out this new platform. It's really cool. Here's what I like about it. Here's what I  don't like about it. Have you guys tried it yet? I'm not asking for I'm not selling anything there.  I'm giving some value.

26:07 I'm kind of a reporter. I'm just saying what's going on. What you just said  is what most people watching or listening to this are already doing. We're all playing with tools.  They're just not posting about it. Totally. So, you're saying like you've already done the  hard part, but it's also very fun. Now, just like put yourself out there a little bit  and post about it.

26:25 Yeah. The reality is see what happens. I post I'm sure you do this too. You'll  post on Facebook or something and it'll be some like big deal of something that you're like really  proud of and then you'll you'll meet somebody that you know and you're like, "Yeah, I posted about it  the other day. did you see that? And you know, you got like 10,000 likes on it and they're like, "No,  I didn't see it."

26:42 You're like, "What the heck, man?" There's so much we're all seeing. Yeah.  Everyone's scrolling. If they don't like what you have to say, so many people are worried about, "Am  I going to say exactly right thing?" Who cares? Well, that's my next question is, yeah, I think  most people watching this are are able to do that every day, but they're they're not as able to get  over that that insecurity that I have.

26:59 You like, we all have it. How do you get over it to care  about to not care about what other people think? just start doing it. You got to just push through  it, right? Like it's hard to run, you just have to five miles. It's hard to run 10 miles and but  when you're at mile six, you just have to say, "All right, I got to just push through this." It's  a little uncomfortable, but just do it and you'll accomplish your goal, right?

27:22 If you if you want  to be out there and you want to really have people see your message, figure out what that message  is and then just say it. And if you don't feel like you have something to say on that message  every day, don't beat yourself up about it. Don't don't try to be fake. Don't go to AI and do some  slop, right? One thing I do, I do not use AI on my post.

27:38 I don't do it. It is all out of my head. I'm  just like, hey, I just that's just what I chose. I'm not saying that people use AI is bad. It's I  personally am like I want people to hear what I'm thinking. And sometimes it's like, hey, I'm going  to post about family or I'm going to post about, you know, kayaking or I'm going to post  about piano or I'm going to post about AI, whatever it is, or I'm going to post about a book  I read or, you know, hey, I was in LA this week doing something and here's a cool thing that I

28:00 did  or saw or discussion I had. There's so many things to just talk about and there's people out there.  Another thing that's talked about in this book that a lot of people don't realize is, and this is  why this situation, I just said, "Hey, didn't you see that thing I posted about the other day?"  And it's like a close friend and you're like, "No, I didn't see it."

28:15 I ask my wife all the time,  "Did you see my post?" "No, I didn't." Well, why? Because she's looking at gardening videos. And  here's why. These social platforms are switching from a social graph to an interest graph. They  care more about they want to present content that that people care about. And so, if I'm talking  about AI, Yeah. People that like AI are going to follow me because they're going to find my  content, right?

28:35 That's the good part of it is people that don't know you personally will find.  It brings new people in. If I talk about AI, good chances are that my neighbor is not going to see  that post even though I know I'm friends with the with them right here, right? I know I know that  they're, you know, we're friends on Facebook. Now, if I post about my farm or my family, my neighbors  will see it.

28:55 Like Facebook knows what to deliver to who. I think that's super important is knowing  that if you just get out there, if you just post, the right people hopefully are going to see it  eventually. Especially if you do it consistently. A platform starts to know this guy talks about  this and they'll start to push you to those audiences. Yeah. Any other hacks, tips, tricks  to generating eyeballs, getting attention that come to mind?

29:18 Yeah. Here's one thing on social  media that I really want to talk about. It's a simple concept, but how often do you, Chris, I'm  curious for you. How often do you post about your personal life on LinkedIn? Once a week maybe.  Yeah, that's by the way. No, but it's but it's more than most people do. A lot of people are like  never. And then and then before you know we talked about this, what about on like you know something  more Facebook or Instagram?

29:39 How often do you talk about hey you know I'm this is what I do for work.  I think you do a lot. Yeah. And so a lot of people try to have live these two lives, right? Mhm. And  and I have personally found that like I've had people I'll post a kayaking video. I've been going  off, you know, one of those waterfalls I was just talking about. I've got videos of it all GoPros  and all that stuff.

29:58 And I'll post it and I'll say, "Man, this was such a fun weekend to get away.  Man, I this is where I'd rather be instead of doing AI or whatever." You know, and so then  people will reach out and they'll say, "Hey, I saw your kayaking video and by the way, I own  a business and you know, we need some help with AI. Can you help us out?" Right? People want to do  business with people and people are more than just one thing, right?

30:19 And so don't be afraid. I've  also had on, you know, the converse on Facebook, I'll post about AI and I'll have somebody from  like I haven't seen since high school say, "Hey, I saw you post about AI. I've got, you know, I own  a business now, right? And all of my, you know, I'm I'm 40 in nine days here and so all tons of  my friends own businesses, right?

30:32 And, you know, they've got 50 employees and whatever. They're  doing great or, you know, or they're just getting started. They're like, man, I need to learn about  AI. It seems like you're the guy on this. Um, I saw your post looks awesome and I looked at your  website and can you help me out? Right? Don't be afraid to be a full person on every platform.

30:50 Post about your life. Post about your family. Post about your beliefs. You know, you do do  tread lightly. Do it in the right way. Don't do it offensively. Do it in a way like, hey, right, this  is what I think and this is how it helps me. Now, I will say if I'm talking about kayaking or if  I'm talking about God or family or something like that on LinkedIn, I do try to relate it.

31:10 Like why  does believing in this help me in my professional life? I do I do tilt it a little bit towards that  platform. Yeah, this posting and then tying it all in and being a complete person is an incredible  incredible way to get people coming to you looking for what you have to offer. Well, another thing  it does is, you know, there's this thing called social proof, which is like, oh, this guy doesn't  have a lot of followers, so I'm not going to watch his video or click his thing or DM him.

31:36 And  there's some truth to that, right? Yes. But you can largely offset that by posting personal stuff  about your life. I had a I I had lunch with my friend and a guy on my team, Kevin, and he posts  content. Doesn't have a ton of followers, but he posts like day in the life videos of a dad with a  couple kids, former cop. This is me working out at 5 in the morning.

31:57 They don't get a ton of views,  but they're real and they're raw and they're him. And he noticed anecdotally that when he DMs  strangers with an ask, right, that ask might be, "Hey, come on Chris Kerner's podcast." It might  be a sales pitch. His response rate is extremely high. Even though he doesn't have tons and tons  of followers because they'll inevitably go to his page, they'll watch five seconds of a video and in  that 5 seconds they're going to see, "Dad, former cop, seemingly good guy."

32:23 Therefore, they respond,  they reference that stuff. So, you can overcome not having a lot of followers by just being a  human and connecting with people on a onetoone level. Absolutely. There's so many people. No, I  I love that. And Kevin's Kevin's awesome. I really like him. You've got a good team member there. But  I there's so many people I want to go back to, you know, and maybe we can kind of start to to move  towards the close here on this.

32:45 Don't be afraid to put yourself out there. Like look, what's going to  happen? I haven't gotten 100% of the TV stations that I've reached out to. Some of them just I  just don't hear back, right? Or they're like, "Oh yeah, this probably isn't for us." Okay, cool.  Doesn't mean it's not it's not going to stop me from submitting again. And look, maybe they do  have a lot of news that week and that's cool.

33:07 They're good, right? Right. But you might catch  somebody. You send out six or seven news stations, you know, every so and so and and and make a story  each time and don't bother them. Don't spam them a bunch. Right. But come up with real reasons, real  news, real things to talk about, ways that you can help the world and get it get it out there. Put  it on the news.

33:22 You know, same thing, by the way, for for digital print. Like there's, you know,  the Provo Daily Herald, right? They've got a bunch of writers over there looking for stuff to write  on every day. Same thing. Hey, I've got an idea, right? And and I've done this with my my last  company, Seek. If you just type Seek John Cheney and just Google it, you'll find 50 to 60 articles  and news things and clips.

33:41 I've been doing this for a decade. This is not new. I've been doing  this for a long time. And again, we wouldn't pay for marketing over there. And I worked with many  of the biggest companies in the world. Nestle, Lego. I remember we got Nestle from I did an  article in in a publication called Rakenour that's out of London and they actually print it and then  it's digital and whatever.

34:01 And Nestle is like, "Yeah, I read about what you were doing with  augmented reality and all this stuff and I want to work with you." And it's like, "Sweet." We landed  a huge client in Nestle that ended up we probably made a million dollars from that client over the  years, right? It was probably a threeyear, 300,000 a year. So, you know, roughly tight contract.

34:18 And  it's free. It's free, guys, right? But but you have to not be afraid to put yourself out there.  News written, press release, social, every day consistently. find that thing and your audience  will find you because of these interest graphs. But you got to be willing to put yourself out  there. And if you do, you're going to find people. People come to me all the time, their companies,  because they need help with AI because I just talk about AI a lot.

34:42 And I get awesome customers.  I work with I work with public companies to solarreneurs, everything in between, and helping  them integrate AI into their business because I just talk about it a lot. And I've become a  trusted source because I've done it consistently over time. I've done now thousands and thousands  of posts about AI and there there's just so much content.

35:02 Guys, I want to tell you about something  I've been building behind the scenes. You've been watching my videos about AI tools and asking  the same question. Okay, cool. How do I turn this into a business? Not just playing around  with AI, but actually getting clients and getting paid. That's my community. It's called Playmakers.  playmakersai.com. It's an AI agency program where we show you how to start an AI consulting business  where you can charge local businesses $500 to $5,000 a month to set up and manage AI

35:26 tools  for them. It's not a course you watch and forget about. We do three to seven live training calls  every week taught by me and 23 other expert AI agency owners. You get plug-and-play templates,  Claude Code tutorials, AI voice agent frameworks, automation templates, and a 30-day road map so  you don't fall off track. This is stuff you can just copy, paste, and deploy for clients on  day one, and of course, how to find clients as well.

35:52 We also have a five-day first client  challenge where we can walk you through landing your first paying client in 5 days. You also get  my frameworks for cold email, Facebook ads, SMS, cold calls, and then I hand you my leads galore  spreadsheets with actual leads in your niche, in your area. We've already got over 200 people  in there building real agencies.

36:06 If you miss a live call, it's all recorded. So, if you've ever  thought about starting an AI consulting business or AI implementation business, go check out  playmakersai.com. Also, when you post something online, you know this Chris, too, when you post a  YouTube video, it's there forever. It's evergreen, right? It keeps feeding you for years. And you  don't need a lot of views, you just need the right views.

36:30 Totally. I'll wrap with this. I'm not  going to tell this whole story because I've told it a zillion times. And anytime I go on a podcast,  it's like one of the first things they ask me is my my Bucky story. But I went to Bies. I bought  one of everything. But I none of that happens if I don't cold email like five reporters. I emailed  more than that, but only a couple responded.

36:44 And this one article right here by Dan Solomon,  the Texas Monthly. They've got like 5 million monthly subscribers. It's the biggest news outlet  in the state of Texas, published on November 12th, 2020. This one article was responsible for 180,000  in sales. Our first I love it. And this year, this year we're still in business. Six years later,  we'll do over a million dollars in net profit.

37:13 And none of that happens without this article  because this article led to the Southern Living, which led to the Eater article, which led to  the CNET article, which led to everything like, and it was all one email to a guy, and I just went  to his by line. His email's right there. I didn't use expensive or fancy software. I just opened  my Gmail account and was like, I bought one of everything at Bies and I'm going to sell them on  a website.

37:33 Do you want to write about that? And we were on the phone within an hour. That's it. The  asymmetric bet of a lifetime, right? One email, millions of dollars, six years later. So, I have  to share I have to share something that that has always inspired me and maybe I learned it  from him indirectly because he told me it a long time ago. But, you know, have you ever met  Garrett Gee?

37:51 Like the bucket list family guy. The bucket list family guy. He travels the world with  his, you know, with his uh family and, you know, he has millions of dollars because he sold a  company to Snapchat. the way that he did it, he he built this app that was a QR code scanning  app. And this is this is back in like, I think, I want to say 2012 or so before, you know, it was,  you know, QR code scanners were part of your just everyday camera on your phone.

38:16 You had to download  an app. And and he was learning how to code. And he said, "Hey, I'm I'm going to I'm going to just  make QR code scanning a little bit better. So, it's going to load faster. It's going to scan  faster. The graphics are going to be a little bit better. It's just going to be a better experience  overall. and I think if I get the best QR code scanning app, then I'll get I'll get a ton of  users.

38:34 And he built it and it was awesome. And he's getting some users. He started get hundreds,  a couple thousand, whatever. And so he's like, "Okay, people like it. It's getting good reviews."  And so he identified somebody in TechCrunch. He's like, "People that are reading TechCrunch are  my buyer. They're the they're the ones that are going to download this and use it."

38:49 And so he  identified the writer, wrote them, and she said, "Ah, it's a QR code scanning app. This is kind  of boring. Like, I don't think I want to do it." She's like, "No, you got to do it." She's like,  "Sorry, I can't." and he's like, "I'm not taking her for an answer." He gets on a plane, flies to  TechCrunch's headquarters, finds her office, and knocks on her door and says, "Hey, it's Garrett.

39:07 I'm taking you to lunch. I am taking you to lunch, and by the time we're done with lunch, you're  going to want to write about this app, and here's why." And she's like, "Well, you're crazy, but  yeah, let's go to lunch. Let's do this." And so, they just go down and find some cafe and sit and  whatever, but then she's like, "I just love the story, and the fact that you showed up here gives  me an angle, and I'm going to write about it."

39:30 Yeah. The showing up is the angle that becomes  it might have been on an island a boring like an objectively boring app and story but he made it  a good story by flying there. Sorry, keep he got he got 50 million users on that app and sold to  Snapchat for $54 million because of his users and those that that QR code scanning technology that  he built was faster that was the basis for snap codes, right?

39:53 He built the technology that ended  up being inside of Snap Codes and he, you know, the real value was, you know, anyone could build  the QR code thing and so they could have redone it, but they're just like, hey, let's just buy  this and it has 50 million users. We'll pull them all into Snap, right? That was the value is  those users. But, but that's just another example just like your your Bucky story reminded me  of that.

40:08 And and again, I I've done it to, you know, not to the degree of of of your  Bucky story or of Garrett's thing, you know, but but it's awesome. It's so fun. That's how  I partnered with John McAfee. I just sent him a cold email and I was at his house and we started a  business together. I love it. You just got to go. You just gota if you you miss 100% of the shots  you don't take.

40:26 I wrote Mark Cuban when I founded Seek. Yeah. I wrote Mark Cub and just found his  email online. I was like, "Hey, what do you think about this? Are you interested in investing?" I  was raising some money and he's like, "Hey man, not interested in investing, but but thanks  for reaching out. Here's a couple things I'd do maybe to make your pitch stronger."

40:42 And I was  like, "Awesome." Never heard from again, right? I just shot my shot and you know I didn't  get anything out of it. But those types of experiences you're like look I didn't die when he  said no. I'm gonna keep shooting my shot. Dude, let me before I end I got to show you one thing.  Yeah. All right. I'm I'm embarrassed to show this, but whatever.

41:03 Let's just yolo it. So that's what  we're talking about right now. It doesn't matter. No shame. Putting yourself out there. I moved to  Dallas in the spring of 2014, 12 years ago from Alabama. Yeah. And I I had heard that Mark Cuban  responds to emails. So I Googled his email right here. I said, 'You coined entrepreneur. I coined  nontrepreneur. I don't know why that was the subject.

41:26 Hey, Mr. Cubin, I just wrote an article  on Med Medium. I thought you'd like I don't even remember what that is. See if it works. There.  There it is. Nice. Why non entrepreneurs disdain entrepreneurs. The empowerment of googling stuff.  I don't even remember this. I need to read that. Anyway, I've grown my B2B company, LCD cycle, from  30K to 600K a month in my first 17 months, and we're moving out to Dallas for a more centralized  distribution.

41:46 You and Musk are my entrepreneurial role models. Thanks for the example. I'd love to  work with you someday. And he said, he responded, "Congrats within 17 minutes, eight plus 15  minutes, and said, "Congrats." And then I said, "Remember my name. You'll be hearing about  me soon enough." He never responded. Yeah, that's so funny. What? Whatever. like shoot  your shot.

42:07 Who cares? Yeah. You You just never know what opening a dialogue somewhere could  do. Yeah. It's It's so fun. That's to to me, Chris, that is the joy of entrepreneurship. It's  like, yeah, you just try a bunch of things and you fail. Asymmetric bets until you figure it out and  then you're succeeding overnight, right? It's not that. It's you have to just know that the failures  are not actually failures.

42:30 You're just learning what doesn't work. Yeah. And eventually it all  lines up and and you figure it out. But you got to keep doing it. How many people fail at social  media because they're like, "Yeah, I was posting for two months and nobody followed me." You know,  you're like, "Okay, tell me you did that for two years straight and then you can start complaining  because that's what it takes.

42:49 You got to commit. If you want to build like tens of th hundreds  of thousands, like you got to be out there every day for years." Yeah. Look at look at Mr. Beast  numbers. We don't need to talk about those now, but go look him up how long it took him to hit  his stride. When you talk about failure, like I genuinely don't believe that anyone is actually  afraid of failure.

43:08 Here's my analogy. You're on a stranded island. You're stranded on an island all  by yourself. You know, you've got to build a raft that can get you like five miles. Are you going to  not build that raft because you're afraid you'll fail? No. Like, you have to build the raft, right?  But in a in a separate scenario, people there. I'm That's what I'm getting at.

43:28 Let's say you were  This was like Truman Show and you're being live streamed on that stranded island. Yeah. You might  not build that raft because you are afraid of the perception of failure from other people watching.  No one's afraid of failure. We're just afraid of what people will think if we fail. So once you  flip that switch in your brain and it doesn't matter, just go do it.

43:47 All right. So I'm going to  amend my challenge then. Okay. In that 30 days of gratitude posting, at least one of those days  must be a failure, like a real failure. And you got to talk about why you're grateful for that  failure, right? something that like might even be embarrassing. Put yourself out there a little  bit and just be like, "Man, I tried this thing and I failed and but I'm grateful for it.

44:09 Here's what  I learned from it." And then do your post, right? Turn into something good. But but anyway, yeah,  don't be afraid of failing. Amen. This is amazing. Thank you. Where can we find you? Yeah. You  know, just look me up. John Cheney on LinkedIn, Instagram, Facebook X. I think all of those I'm  and even Tik Tok, which I don't post as much, but I'm on there.

44:27 Um Cheney Piano and I post all  kinds of stuff. If you follow me, you're going to find AI stuff and you're going to find piano  stuff and kayaking and adventure and my my ducks, my two ducks that are, you know, super fun  to play with and anyway, probably my kids, too. But anyway, would love to would love to help  you guys out. And uh if you're posting a bunch, connect with me.

44:47 Tell me you're starting and I'll  follow you. You'll get at least one. Okay. Thank you, John. Okay. Appreciate it, Chris. Listen,  I need more people like this to interview on my podcast. So, if you know of someone with  a side hustle or a business that's unique and cool and super profitable, email Molly  M o ly@cof-founders.com. That's one word, coofounders.com.

45:06 Mollyfounders.com. Tell her  your story and we'll give you a hundred bucks if we end up interviewing them. If you like  this content, please share with a friend, hit a like or a comment below, and  we'll see you next time on the Kerner