Make $1M+ in 2026 with this Trend (IRL is back)

One of the most common questions I get is, "How would you make a million dollars if you were starting from scratch?" I'd either create a AI startup, a GPT rapper, build an audience, sell to that audience, or I do what Jonathan Courtney said in this episode. In this episode, he talks about the anti- trends. I think that there's a tremendous opportunity right now to go actually against AI and do just a lot of IRL stuff. Uh, he talks about how he rented a Italian village, how he got customers via DMs to fund it, how you don't need an audience to do this. He explains the entire playbook. I hope a lot of people listen to this episode. I hope a lot of people watch this episode. Um, it's not as hypy as the latest AI tool, but for the people who stick around to the end, I think that they're going to have an unfair advantage for building a million dollar business in 2026. Enjoy the episode. Baby >> Jonathan Courtney, by the end of this episode, what are we going to learn? >> What we are going to learn is how to use the anti- trend of all of this like AI explosion to make your business more successful. So, put it another way, you're going to teach us how to make money doing things that have the complete opposite to do with AI. The the anti- trend, meaning, you know, the complete opposite of all this AI stuff that I normally talk about. Yeah, I think that there's a massive opportunity or lots of massive opportunities to take a look at what's happening in the AI space, the social media space, the content space. Just go the opposite way and you're going to find that a lot of people want exactly that. And I mean, obviously I was triggered by your tweet from today, earlier today. Uh I guess you'll bring it up on screen, but just some of the highlights from it are you showed this chart. I don't know if you want to bring that chart up on screen, but it showed that in many countries, social media peaked in 2022. Um, and it's the young people who are cutting back on social media first, which kind of shows the trend that from social from a perspective of something as as powerful as social media, a lot of younger people are starting to get off social media. Um, and I think this trend, I mean, I'm a millennial. I'm in this 35 to 44 range. Um, and myself and a lot of friends have quit social media. I'm the only social media that I'm on is X and I'm even that I'm trying to get away from. And I think there's with these trends with the AI stuff just like accelerating everything especially around content especially now people can just write stuff without writing create videos without v uh needing to create being able to create videos being able to create all of this like slop or brain rot as you said in your post. Um, I'm seeing more and more opportunities for the opposite. And the opposite of that is, you mentioned a couple of things there, slow media, um, like, you know, reading long form articles again, maybe on print. Um, but what I'm literally doing myself is over the last year, I've been moving a lot of the digital elements of my company, which are very profitable and scalable because they're digital to a much less uh easy to do um in-person version of these products. And what I'm seeing is a lot more I'm finding a lot more easy to market these products. I'm able to use like less um I guess clever marketing techniques to get people to join these inerson events even though they're actually a lot more expensive. Um and an example of that is like you know one of our the we we sell like um certifications for learning facilitation in one of our companies facilitator.com and for the last 6 years the most popular versions of those certifications have been an online version of the certification which cost $6,000. Uh two years ago after co I had the feeling people would want to come back in person. I had the feeling that that would also help us stand out because no one else was doing it. Everyone was still doing remote. And so we released a version of the certification which was $15,000 well $14,300 in person. And three of those events sold out right after announcing them. And so those in-person events now are essentially replacing the digital version of these events or accompanying them. Not because they are like, you know, an easier thing to run or because that's like the best way to scale, but just it's so much more enjoyable to market these things because people are craving these inerson uh experiences versus you have to kind of like with with with online virtual stuff at the moment, you kind of have to you have to really do the marketing thing. you have to do the marketing sticktick to get people excited about it. And how do you like um different differentiate yourself from everybody else? Well, what we're saying now is we have the best in-person way to do this >> and it's just so simple. And so our entire Yeah. Our entire marketing behind our full stack facilitator program is this little like Apple like piece of copy which is inerson incredible. So 50% of the marketing is dedicated to you just get to hang out with people and it's working really well. >> So okay. So let's unpack that so we can make it extremely tactical for people. So >> you want those tactics. >> People need that sauce. They need that >> Oh, the sauce. Yeah, not the juice. Sorry, it's the sauce. >> Yeah, they And not the tactics either. I don't know what I was saying by saying the word tactics. >> They need the sauce. So, I'm going to I'm going to say that from 2020 to 2022, um, you know, there was a rush to build we have the best digital community. >> Yeah. >> To do XYZ. Correct. >> Absolutely. Absolutely. And we were in that rush as well. We were just a little bit earlier, but 2020 is where it exploded, >> right? So, let's let's talk about this. So, um you know, if you wanted to become, I don't know, a day trader, there's a community for that. What else? Like if you wanted to become >> a facilitator just because it's our thing. facilitator. There's a community for that. Basically, XYZ community for that. >> Yeah. >> Is the new app for that. There's an app for that, right? >> Yeah. There's a paid community, there's a free community, etc. Yeah. >> Yeah. So, what you're saying is this became more competitive and >> very competitive. >> Yeah. And you're not saying that there's not opportunity here, right? >> There's still I mean we still broadly make more money um with our online certification versus our in-person certification, but I think that that's going to change within the next two years and they're going to flip. >> So basically here's the framework for this. And by the way, I think that there's literally thousand a thousand plus $1 million ARR businesses. >> There's I haven't even mentioned the other one that I'm building, which I want other people to steal because >> I don't want to do more than 1 million AR for it and I want other people to create it. If you just remind me to talk about that one because I genu I genu genuinely want other people to build it. >> Okay. at the end. You can you can get that one. >> Yeah, exactly. Right. You have to wait till the end. >> You have to wait till the end. >> And then you stick right to the end. >> I thought I thought you were a YouTuber, man. >> Yeah, dude. Have you seen my YouTube channel? It's a disgrace. It's like actually Yeah, mine is also the anti- trend of just everything on YouTube, which is why it's not working. >> Well, the anti- trend doesn't work until it works, right? Like, >> exactly. I'm That's the thing. I'm waiting on the sidelines. I'm just I'm like I don't know Radio Head when they released Kid A and everyone was like, "What the hell is that piece of album?" And then now it's like it's a classic. That's going to be my that's going to be my stuff. >> Okay. So, let's give people the framework for for for this. So, >> yeah. >> Um, you know, how how do you how do you get ideas from this world um and sort of bring it to an IRL? >> Okay. So, I want to just say that the framework we're using is cuz we have a we have three different businesses and all three of those bit all three it sounds weird to say all three well all three of them have digital elements that um are used to be in person then became digital because it was just so much better and they're now moving to in person but like almost like freshly moving from digital to in person. So, I can tell you the things that are working for us. Number one, you're looking at what other people are doing in the digital only space. And for example, I ran this event in the summer called summer camp uh in August. I think I invited you to it and you didn't come. It's okay. No problem. Um and what I was doing is I was looking at the communities around funnel building and around kind of digital marketing. And for me, I had the feeling if I the feeling I had is if I do an in-person version of it, call it summer camp, give it that nostalgic vibe, make it really not broy, and it's a place not just to learn marketing, but also to just hang out with people and kind of get out of your dirty cave and interact with other humans. And if I sell that idea, the idea that you're getting out into the real world, it's away. It's it's a little bubble away from everything else that's happening. And it's also fun, which is why I called it summer camp and not revenue camp or something. Um, and so what we did is we took something pretty boring that everyone is doing, which is sort of like a mastermind, and we stripped out all of the virtual elements of it. There's no virtual element of this mastermind. There's also no recordings of it. There's also no virtual tickets even though people wanted virtual tickets to keep it really like aggressively in person. We just made it an in-person event. Charged 6,800 per ticket and sold 30 tickets. So, this was a and those were the easiest 30 tickets I've ever sold in my life for anything, even though there it's a lot more expensive than maybe what the others were charging for the digital version of it. And so I I ran that now two years in a row and this is me just taking something that's out there. I know maybe I'm not helping you create this framework, but I'm just looking at what's there, what's digital and popular and how can I turn it this into something that will give people a sense of community, something that will give people uh like f like give people uh the ability to have some fun. And I also strongly believe and this is part of the marketing as well is that people learn better through osmosis meaning just sitting in a room with people and just the conversations that happen during coffee breaks and all that kind of stuff learning through osmosis. We sell that idea that it's not just you sitting at your computer for four four hours and then going back to what you're doing. It's complete immersion. And so this is this was just like a big part of the selling point for summer camp. So, we take something that exists out there, something that's maybe cold and boring, but it's working, turn that into like a themed event, summer camp for me. I'm also doing a winter camp. Um, and just like highlight why virtual is so much more inferior to everything else. Uh, and then also make it exclusively virtual. >> And what do you mean by that? Make it exclusive. >> Okay. Make it exclusively virtual, meaning there's no there's no way to like dial in. Sorry. Make it exclusive. Exclusively in person. I didn't >> I figured you meant Yeah. >> Um, so the the the last thing, what was I about to say? It was really important. Um, >> you were about to say I love you. I'm pretty sure. >> I love you. >> Oh, no. There was one really important element of >> I'm in love with you. >> I want to kiss you. I know. There was something um Oh yeah. Oh Here it is. You know, scarcity is really hard to do with a digital product. Like there's tricks to make a digital product scarce so that there's some sense of urgency. In-person events actually have a limited amount of tickets. And so it's way easier to create a true sense of urgency and scarcity because it just is inherent to in person. And so these things are just so much easier to build campaigns around. And so the campaigns don't need to run all year. They can just happen once. I'm I'm closing a campaign tomorrow for our full stack facilitator event. It was a oneweek campaign. We're going to sell 50% of the tickets in that one week and we don't have to think about it for another 11 months and then all the rest of the tickets sell in the last few months. Um yeah, for me in person is like in my opinion in my opinion if you can do really good inerson events and I'm not talking about conferences. I think conferences are generally like a a money sync. Like I please do not think I'm talking about conferences. I'm really not. Um conferences are like a completely separate thing. if you're good at doing events. Um, and there's a guy, you know, school, the S ko l thing. There's a guy in in one of these communities, uh, his name is Goose Gus. I don't know, Gustvani and his thing is just just doing in person, even though he's like the biggest proponent of school and so he uses like in person as a hard to compete with element of being part of his community that no one else can compete with because he's like, I'm just going to keep doing these really fun Inerson events the whole time. And so there's no way that people will want to be part of another similar group that doesn't provide the in-person element. Uh we also launched a new product a couple of days ago which also has this thing called campfire where once per year we all meet up in person for 5 days and that was never naturally part of our our product. So it's a virtual product which has a one a 12 month um subscription for $6,000 and once per year we meet in person. So I'm all over the place here. I have so much more even to say about this but yeah >> right so once you've built this event series of IRL community it's funding like now go vibe code your SAS and now sell the SAS to the people or sell it doesn't have to be a SAS right it could be just software it could be a mobile app or whatever but >> the funny thing is That's this this is what ClickFunnels do. They run these events and the goal of the these events is to fund their software that they then sell to more people at the events and it's like this very circular thing. Um, but they are just so godamn good at these events. I've been to a couple of them and they're like they were they were like the first people. So, I went to Funnel Hacking Live in February 2020 and then CO happened and Funnel Hacking Live was like back immediately the next year still during CO they they moved it to Florida so they could do it again cuz they knew it was just not like a good idea to do it virtually. Um it was it I think a lot people who understand in person Tony Robbins I mean Tony Robbins is still doing in person right he's back to in person already and it's not because that is more convenient cuz it is not more convenient to do in person. It's way less convenient for me to be traveling all over the world to deliver these events. I'm traveling next week and then I'm traveling like it's that that is annoying but it is a very hard to compete with element um of a business when you have these in-person events where people are coming together and they these people also become like a very core element of the brand and there they spread the word better than any marketing can do. >> Number one look at what other people are doing in the digital only space and what's popular and then bring it to IRL. How how do you actually do that? You know what I mean? >> How we do it is like we're pretty chaotic with it. So, uh we did a Okay, so I'll show you an example of this. The most chaotic version you can ever imagine. And this is this is real. I mean, it's real. I'll show you the actual video of it or I'll I'll link you to it. If you search AJ and Smart Retreat, there's a video says we rented an entire village. And I'll tell you the story behind how that happened. So, it says, "We rented an entire village for this is the thumbnail." This Okay, let me tell you how this one came together because this one was a an absolute nightmare to put together. Okay, so first of all, CO was just over. I knew if we did an Inerson event that people would just want to do it. >> Wait, hold on. >> I didn't know you had that. That actually looks like, sorry to interrupt here, but that I thought that was Jim Halpert from the office on flute. >> Of course, we paid for Jim Halpert from the office to come to this event. Yeah, you can see this is back in 2022. So, we had done like three like we we had, you know, co um and then before CO, we also had stopped doing Inerson events because I was so sick of it. I I still had braces here. I was so sick of doing inerson events that I decided, ah, I don't want to do this anymore. Online stuff is so much easier. And so this was our first in-person event in six years. So th this retreat, you asked me, how do we literally do it? Okay, here's how we literally did it. Number one, I myself and Laura went to Italy because we heard there's this cool location. We went to this cool location and we did a small team retreat at this location. It's called a workation village in Italy. if anyone wants to ever rent this place. It's an actual entire village you can rent. Um, it's normally rented for like weddings, I think. Um, so I don't know the actual Italian name, but Workatian Village rent this place out. It's actually very cool if you ever want to go there. So, it's an entire village in Pedmont, Italy. And if you are willing to spend the money, you can rent the entire place. Meaning like tons of buildings, all the rooms, swimming pool, like an entire forest. It's ludicrous. It's kind of It sounds like a Mr. Beast type thing to do. Um, but so I found the location and then I was like, I think people in our audience want to do a retreat because I'd seen yoga retreats and I was like, I think I want to take yoga retreats and like do it for our topic. Um, and like a wellness retreat but do it for our topic. And so we decided to sell this facilitation retreat to our audience and and we didn't know if anyone would buy it. And so what we did is we we got footage from that place. We got permission like if we would actually sell the tickets that we could book the place. So we didn't book it yet because we didn't know if it would sell, but we like, you know, blocked the location preliminarily. Um, and then we did a campaign around how beautiful this location is. It's a video of me walking around the location showing people what it's going to be like. I didn't have any speakers. I didn't have anything to show besides the location and that it would be fun. Um, and so literally, uh, I announced this and people I it sold out in like two days. Uh, the tickets were like $7,800 because it was so expensive to rent out this space. >> Wait, how did you spell out? Because a lot of people are going to be like, how is that even possible? Well, we we did a I mean my system for that is always we did a webinar to our like we had a um a week of inviting people to a webinar to talk about like uh well like I I think the idea was like take a look at our our first in-person retreat in six years or something. Um but for people who didn't know us, I think we had a separate name for the webinar which was like where we see facilitation going in 2022. Um and at that presentation I just basically told people about how much reminded people about how much they miss in person like for about an hour and then at the very end I announced and we have this retreat. Um obviously people are going to say yeah but you need an audience to do that. Actually yes. Um, for this particular event, we needed an audience because this was a big expensive event. We had 75 people coming to it, but summer camp only has 35 people coming to it. I only have like 1,000 people or 1,000 to 2,000 people listening to my podcast. And my podcast is the only audience for the people coming to my other inerson events. And still I can fill, you know, one to two 35 people events per year. And at a high ticket price, that's still a nice little business. So, okay, the facilitator.com retreat, that's a big expensive thing. It cost us like 100k to rent the village. But the thing that I did in August, I like last summer, I just asked Sam Ovens if I can use his office for my uh summer camp, and he was like, "Yeah, all right, mate." And by the way, like um uh Sam Ovens then asked me or the one of the guys from Sam Ovenans company's school asked me, "Can we use your office?" And I was like, "Yeah, no problem. You can just use places for free." Like people are often very happy for you to use their places. Like we've used like for for events, we've used the Teachable offices in New York. We used like I mean I maybe I should maybe I shouldn't say this because they're like they don't want people to know we used all these places for free but we work always gives us space for free to do events. Um we're we are very rarely even paying for event spaces because we just pitch the idea of how cool the event will be to to companies and places and they're often especially if you're using their product they're often like yeah that sounds cool. For example, if you have a school community and if you want to do an inerson event and your school community is kind of fun and interesting. Let's say Sam really likes the artistic one. So like if you're doing like a painting school community or a guitar learning school community, by the way, don't let him I I don't know if he will say yes to this. This is just a thought. But there's no harm in asking him, hey, like we're doing an IRL event for our our school community. Is there any chance we could use your office? um he'll say no 80% of the time probably uh but 20% of the time he might be interested in it. Or you could ask like you there's so many places to to get spaces. So you asked me ages ago when I went on a very big ramble. How would I actually do it? Number one for me actually honestly is just choosing the dates. Number two for me is finding a location. Number three for me is kind of figuring out how do I how do I how do I pitch this? Like what do I even say about this? I'll give you an example. I'll give you an exact example. I have an event that doesn't have a name yet, that doesn't have a price yet, and it's only a vibe, but I know it's happening in February. So, February 2026, I'm hosting an event. It's going to be an art retreat. So, like a art retreat, writing retreat, painting retreat, whatever. And it's happening in February. I kind of have the location. I have to drive there and have a look at it in the next few weeks. I've already looked at one and I wasn't happy with it. And now I'm going to look at another. As soon as I like the location, it's done. First thing I'll start doing is is messaging people directly who I think might want to come to it. So that's the very first thing I'll do. So I'll try to get like four or five people with direct messaging to like soft commit to coming to it. So that like let's say the place is going to cost me like $12,000 to rent and then the tickets are $5,000. If like two or three people say yes to me, then I'm like, "Fuck it. I'm doing it now. At least I know I won't lose money. Um because this location I have to buy ours um rent. So that's the first thing for me is that I'll just uh choose a date so that I I lock it in my mind. Choose a location. Then I start messaging people. And by the way, sometimes these are people I know. Like just to give you an example, um the a guy who I was doing a project with two weeks ago, a guy who runs this company called Pipex. I asked him if he'll come, would you come to this? And he was like, "Yeah, I would love I want to come to that." Um, so I'm asking people I know as well, uh, if they want to come to these things if it's somewhat related. Um, and then once that's done, it's just one foot in front of the other. The cool thing is with Inerson events is you have a clear target. It's fill that event. Like what do I do? Fill that event. There's no like ambiguity around oh maybe we need to do our branding today or maybe we need to do no it's fill that event and then when you fill that event especially for us for example summer camp we we filled summer camp we got 35 people to come to it out of those 35 people three people booked us for other consulting uh gigs that we we offer. So, at the inperson event is like the best place to tell people about all the other stuff you offer. And uh it's it's if they like you, it's essentially a three-day advertisement and teaser for the way you are. And that's one of the best ways to uh get like bigger ticket things if you have something else to sell. So, I don't know. I'm just a huge fan of in person. Um, even though I kind of find it very inconvenient to do it, I love that almost no one else is doing it in my in the niches that I'm doing it in. Um, and everyone's like, "No, I do it virtual. Everything's virtual. It's all way more convenient." I'm like, "You're right." But also, I can then compete with you. I can compete in the same space in a very different way. >> Um, >> I'll say one last thing about in person. it feels more legit. So, okay, if somebody, and I don't mean, I don't mean generally, like, let's say you get an ad uh for joining one of our paid communities, AJ Smarts paid communities, and you're like, I want to see if these people are real, and you go on our YouTube channel, and you see this video of like, you know, this crazy location that we booked with all of these people having a great time, you're going to be like, I want to be part of whatever that is. like these people are obviously up to some real real life This is not some cave dweller who's going to steal all my money. It's actually a real person who goes out into the real world and and meets the customers. And so it's also like an aspirational thing for customers when they see what they could be part of. Um and then you know the maybe the digital products are like the path towards that. So we have our on facilitator.com our first product that we show on the website is full stack facilitator our in-person event in California that costs you know almost $15,000. We know that's aspirational and we know that most of our customers will won't be able to buy that at first. And so we they they take usually take a cheap uh cheaper product first which would be workshop or master which is in uh virtual only but they get exposed over and over and over to the inperson option and eventually people want to come to that and they're like fine I'm ready to come to that thing now. So yeah but the inperson thing gives sort of like a legit anchor. I know you asked me how would I do it and I'm just went on a big ramble but I think I answered how would I do it date location kind of know what I want to do then start talking to people about it and then eventually I'm like I'm ready to I'm ready to like either announce it on my podcast which almost no one listens to again for your audience like if people are looking at Greg's audience and you're like easy for Greg to say because when he does a tweet like a thousand 17,000 people like it guys look at my ex account. I am >> actually don't there's there's >> there's nothing on there. Like if you look at me and if you're wondering like do you have to have a large audience? I am the perfect example. I post something on X and I maybe get two likes or three likes and I I can still get one of these events filled up. So it it really Let's see. What did I get for five likes for my last post, two likes for the second last post? I don't have any I don't have an audience, but I still like you know the there's this concept of the uh 1,000 true fans. Well, I have like the 100 true fans or the 10 true fans. Um and that's all you need if especially for in person. In person is so tangible. You know, the other thing, um, Greg, so events is one thing, that's one element. The other thing that's so powerful, and I'm going to hold this up to the camera, you know this, right? >> Mhm. Yes, I do. >> So, this what I'm holding up to the camera for anybody who who's just hearing the audio version, I'm holding up a folder, which is Alex Hermosy's 100 million playbooks. And so this folder, why would he print out and create a physical folder? Um, and why would he charge $5,800 essentially for it? And why would someone be stupid enough to buy it? Well, let me tell you the the unbelievable power of having a physical thing to show off, especially if you're doing any sort of info product. So, we just launched a new kind of info product like a coaching program uh on the 1st of October and one of the key elements of it was a physical because I saw Alex Hermosi doing it. I'll just tell you straight out. I just loved the physical element and one of the key elements for our one was all of the materials are printed and they're in a nice box and inside the box you get like some other cool stuff. People want the physical thing. People are people crave the physical thing and people know as well inherently and I know that if you have the thing in front of you, you're much more likely to read it than if you have like a big bunch of PDFs. And also, especially now that you can essentially generate all of that stuff on chat GBT and knowledge is becoming less and less valuable, the ability to have something curated for you physically in my opinion is becoming more and more valuable, but the other thing is it's just so much easier to pitch something to people if you can physically hold it and show them what you're talking about. It sounds really stupid, but another element of this whole anti- trend is that extreme convenient access to content, I think, is the wrong way to go. And literally printing out these playbooks and telling you the only way to get them is in this physical format is a way to make someone like me salivate. It's a way to get someone like me to spend $5,000. I spent $5,000 only for this folder. >> And to bring it all back, it's the anti-AI anti-digital product, right? >> Yes. What are we talking about again? >> You know, just to bring it all back. Just to bring it just to bring it all back. And you are more likely to buy this today than you might have been. >> Yeah. >> A few years ago. >> Because now now he can say um at Okay, this is a perfect example. So, on on the day that this arrived, uh I was doing an event at my office and I told the audience, "Hey, uh this $100 million blah blah playbook thing is arriving and one of the guys in the audience said, I already have it as a PDF. Uh somebody posted it on Reddit or something." And I said, "Are you going to read that?" He was like, "Probably not." And I was like, "I am going to read this because it's it's going to be sitting on my desk. I'm going to be using it as a reference thing, right? and it just feels more valuable. I feel like it's a more worthwhile thing because it's a big heavy thing of playbooks that feels like a feels substantial. And so even the like I also think inerson events come back to that if if the goal isn't to make money if the goal just just stick with me for one second. If we think about what is actually better for the customer, for humans, when I'm thinking about it, I know that the in-person version of what we do is the absolute best to way to do what we're teaching. We're teaching facilitation, which involves like a lot of improvisation, a lot of kind of scenarios that you can predict. And sure we can teach this in an online setting and we do but the best way to learn it is in person even if it's inconvenient for us and inconvenient for the customers and the best way to for example we launched a book in May. The best way to read that book is actually to get the physical version because it's like a little workbook even though that's a pain in the ass for us to create and a pain in the ass for the client because they have to wait for it to arrive. And so for us, I think in a lot of ways, we're just thinking practically not what do people want because people will just say, "I want digital stuff and I want it to be easy." It's what do people need? So what people want is ultimate comfort and convenience, but I often feel like that's not very effective. And so now when a client for example is also contacting us and saying by the way if you're listening to this clients I don't want you to stop doing this because this is awesome for our business but you know I tell you this on the calls. When a client comes to us and says I want to have 2,000 licenses of one of your courses I say obviously I want to sell you this and obviously I will sell you this happily but I would just like to tell you that the best way to spend that money would be to have an in-person training. >> Right? Um, I just want you to know that I'm telling you that the best way would be that >> it's not the most it's not the most convenient way, but it's the best way. And so, I think the anti- trend is also just related to the fact that um, >> also, dude, you know, with the chatbt stuff, right, that client at a certain point might just say to us, ah, we can find all of we we basically generated our own course using chatbt and all of your content. What they cannot do is say, "Yeah, we've generated a new version of you and your team coming to our office and running this, right?" >> That will always be hard to do. >> So, this I'm I'm pretty sold on IRL. I'm actually pretty sold on on this as like being if I was trying to make my first million dollars right now, I'd either build some GPT rapper or I'd build this. >> That's funny. They're so opposite. >> Yeah, I know. like the complete opposite. Um, I think you're completely right. By the way, you got you've got me thinking that I should do an event in 2026. >> Dude, I've been trying to convince you to do this for a while. I know a lot of people have >> it would kill. >> Well, it's not about killing, right? It's about killing it for like you know to your point it's about like there's there's people on the other side of this podcast or there's people in my you know our our digital community startup empire that you know if they actually had a day with me like in Miami or whatever and we actually worked on growing their business or ideulating I think it would be pretty impactful. >> It's huge. >> It's huge. the the the problem I think is and I think you'll the problem is short term you'll be a little bit annoyed that it's like oh I could have stayed behind my computer and all my businesses would have probably made more money while not doing that event >> but the cumulative effect of that doing things like that I think has a huge positive net outcome on the business and as I what I believe to be true is that people would get massive value from that. It would get like crazy. Especially, I mean, you probably don't want to do this because >> I I know it's not your thing, but if you were to do like um if you were to charge like $15,000 for a ticket for three days with you, but then only only 20 people can come to it. Um I think that would be extremely appealing to I mean that that would be very appealing to people in your audience. I know from people coming to my events who pay, you know, up to 15K, nobody has a clue who I am and and they're really appreciative of the opportunity to do that. Um, I think it's I think it would be pretty cool for you to do something like that. I I don't know if you want to, but I think you you should. >> I don't know. I don't know about 15K, but I do know about like >> 15 million. >> If if I did an event, whatever price tag it would be, people, you know, people would have to look at it and be like, I got 5x 10x the value. >> Oh, yeah. You know what I do? I do something really stupid at my event. If you look at the full stack facilitator page, >> I and I stole this from Tony Robbins. If you scroll down to the end, uh, see if you find it. Yeah, that's it. Scroll down to the very bottom. The bottom. The very bottom. And look at the guarantee. Look at this guarant. No. Scroll up. Scroll up to this. All right. Satisfaction guarantee. We're so confident you'll love Full Stack Facilitator that we offer a full refund if you are unsatisfied by the end of your training. >> You can do the entire training and we'll give you $15,000 back if you didn't think it was worth it. >> How many people actually do that though? Never once. >> Exactly. >> Yeah. But it's that that's the level of like >> Yeah. >> for me how important it is that it actually is worth the money. >> Totally. No, I love that. Um I want to just wrap a bow on this. Um okay, I got to know in the comment section, uh if I were to do an event like JC is talking about, would you be interested in? Comment below. The two locations I would probably do it in would be Miami, Florida during the winter or uh you know the Montreal, Canada area during the winter. >> I would definitely come to it. I would love to be a I would I would be like a participant in the audience. >> Cool. I mean I would love to have you to be to be honest. That would be really cool. >> Oh so I had so many more things to talk about at this anti trend. like every every part of your tweet is like I I kind of want you to delete it because I think that it's better that for me I feel like I've had a really nice advantage the last year and a half while everyone else is like doing like zigging and moving in this like hardcore virtual direction and automation and everything and I'm like let's let's build these inerson things quietly in the background. Um, but I also I think people are going to catch on to it at some point. >> Well, they they are definitely now as soon as we publish this. >> So, uh, appreciate you coming on. I appreciate you spilling the sauce. Um, and uh, hopefully your business can continue to grow with now thousands of new competitors. But >> I I kid I kid like there's there's so >> it's also annoying to do in person events. So, that's the beauty. You have to compete on people actually doing it. So there's that element. >> Totally. Totally. It's not easy and it's a moat where >> where it's hard to, you know, come up with a moat now. I think uh IRL certainly is a moat. So thanks for coming on. Uh Jonathan Courtney JC J Ice Cream J Ice Cream the Unscheduled Podcast is his podcast. Check it out. >> Unscheduled CEO. >> There it is. Unscheduled CEO. I'll include links where to find it and where to find him in the show notes like always. And uh give give JC some love because uh last few episodes >> three likes >> three likes on X. >> Yeah, give him give him some. He needs some he needs some love on on social platforms and >> desperate for it, >> you know. Let us know. Let me know if you want uh him to come back again for a part two uh of this uh topic. All right, man. Thank you so much. >> Seeing you, you're a legend. Thanks, bro. No, you are a legend. >> Oh, >> you are certainly a legend. >> Ah, sure. Fine. I'll take it. >> I'll take it. All right. >> I'll catch you later. >> Bye.