How I Built A 9 Figure Network At 17 Years Old

**SPEAKER_1** (0:01)
You're listening to Leveling Up, where we'll show you how to win at the game of life and business. It's time to power up your skills through life gamification with your host, Eric Siu.

**Eric Siu** (0:12)
All right, Greg, how's it going, man?

**Greg Isenberg** (0:16)
It's going well, man.

**Eric Siu** (0:19)
My T-shirt?

**Greg Isenberg** (0:19)
I like your T-shirt.

**Eric Siu** (0:21)
You know where this is from? This T-shirt is from H-Refs, because it's the same, yeah.

**Greg Isenberg** (0:26)
That makes sense. Now it all makes sense.

**Eric Siu** (0:28)
Yeah, that's how it works. But yeah, Greg, for those that don't know you, I mean, how would you describe yourself and what are you known for?

**Greg Isenberg** (0:38)
I would describe myself as someone who has been building internet communities for the last 20 years.
And I started and sold three companies before the age of 30, all using the same community-based approach. And I have a podcast, so people might know me for my podcasts or I read on the internet.

**Eric Siu** (1:01)
The sizes of the communities that you've helped build, can you give people some context there?

**Greg Isenberg** (1:05)
Totally. Well, I used to be an advisor to TikTok, Reddit.
So those are super big platforms.
And yeah, I've created small communities in the dozens. People think of communities, you can't monetize them, but you actually can. You can have a community of a dozen people and make $12 million a year. Or you can have a community of 120,000 and make $120,000 a year. So I've built communities with millions of people in it. I've built communities that are a few people in it and everything in between.

**Eric Siu** (1:42)
Yeah, and you're kind of ahead of the curve. I mean, you're in LA, you're the event that you threw or that you're throwing. I don't know if you did it already, but it was capped out pretty quickly. You're going up to SF. We're just talking about this pre-show. You're already capped out there too. So you have a knack for doing it. And you moved to Miami around the same time that I did.
So that was where a new community was forming, right? So if people wanna get started with building a community, I mean, how can they think about it like you do? Cause you have a knack, you have a nose for it.

**Greg Isenberg** (2:15)
Be a good host. I think you don't have to...
In life, you don't actually have to overthink a lot of things. This is good. Maybe this is good advice for business. It's good advice for anything. It's just, what is being a good host? It's like having the right food, having the right music, having the right amount of people, inviting the right amount of people.
You don't wanna go to an event where there's no one there. You want the right amount of people there. So how do you do that? Oh, maybe you throw a dinner right before. So it's just thinking, putting yourself in someone else's shoes is what you gotta do.

**Eric Siu** (2:50)
Do you have a budget for that? Cause one thing I love doing is throwing dinners with people that I really respect. So, and I try to cap it at like eight to 10 people or so, but for me, usually I like to just pay for the dinner. And just cause I found it like, trying to get it split in everything, it's kind of a pain in the butt. So like, how do you think about it?
Are you paying for everything? If so, like how are you budgeting and all that?

**Greg Isenberg** (3:13)
I feel like buying these dinners is, it's the best money you could probably spend. So when I was like a teenager in early 20s, trying to like build my network, I would throw dinners all over the world. You know, I was living in Montreal, Canada at the time, but I wanted to bootstrap my network and I wanted to meet the most successful people I can possibly meet.
So what I would do is I'd say, oh, I'm coming to New York or I'm gonna be in LA or I'm in Paris. And I would throw these little dinners. And yeah, you wanna make it easy on people. So you pay for it.
But if you're paying $100 a head and there's 12 people there, that's $1,200. Do you think that, of course, you'll be able to monetize that if they're the right people. So I think it's, and by the way, I didn't have the money when I was a teenager to do those things. And I remember one time, I won't say who it was, but I was in Paris. I don't know, I must've been 17 years old.