Chapter 05The best thing you can give is a spotlight

A spotlight is the one gift a busy person can't refuse, because talking about their company is their job. People decline cash, ignore advice and skip dinners. An invitation to tell your story to people who care about your market lands differently, and the busier and more successful the person, the harder it lands.

When I tell founders to stop asking and start giving, the next question is always the same. Give what? I have a short list, and I go through it out loud so they can see I'm not selling them one trick:

it could be, hey, I have a WhatsApp group with a hundred carpenters in [Toronto] that you might want to join because you're a carpenter, or it might be a, hey, I'm doing a report on carpentry and [Toronto]. Right. Whatever. It might be something. But the best thing to give is a spotlight. A spotlight.

A group is a good gift. So is a report. But on the calls where I explain why the spotlight wins, I always land on the same sentence:

our suggestion is instead of doing that which kind of doesn't work go give something and the best thing you can give is a spotlight

This chapter is about why.

The story nobody heard

The show started because I wanted a spotlight of my own and couldn't get one.

In March 2020 we won the court case against India's central bank. It was the fight of my career. A week later the world shut down, and nobody had room in their head for a bitcoin exchange in Bangalore:

I remember when that RBI thing I mentioned happened, the central bank thing, we had, I think [COVID] hit like a week after our Victory. And, you know, like, nobody cared about that story. And so I, I kind of wish that I could have told that story to more people.

I sat with that for a while. Then I did the thing my mother and every book I trust say to do with something you want badly:

And, you know, they say, like, if you want something, the best thing is just to give it. So I was like, okay, I'll just, instead of wanting to tell people about my own story, what if I just asked people about theirs? And that's how kind of the show started.

That's the origin of the gift. I knew exactly how it felt to have a story and no stage. Every founder, every fund manager, every operator I invite has some version of that feeling. Most of them have never had anyone ask.

Why they say yes

Here's what a busy CEO hears when the invitation arrives. I act it out on calls in their voice, because the logic is clearest from their side of the inbox:

I have a show where I put a spotlight on people like you have 100 1000 10,000 hundred thousand whatever followers would love to have you on there and it's literally my like fiduciary duty to talk about my company so I'm obviously going to say yes

Fiduciary duty. That's the phrase that does the work. Telling the world about the company is part of what a chief executive is paid for. Turning down a chance to do it, for free, in front of people who care about the market, is close to turning down part of the job. I said the same thing to a teammate:

it's your fiduciary duty as a CEO or as a key decision maker to be on blast about your company

There's a second reason under the first, and it's more human. People like themselves. I don't mean that cynically. A good host builds on it instead of fighting it:

I mean, surprising, but everybody loves themselves. Go figure. More than they love me or my brilliant offer.

And almost nobody gives them this. Their inbox is full of people who want their time, their money, their signature. Very few want their story:

nobody asks them that nobody tells them you're amazing

Strip the format away and what you're offering is the rarest thing in a founder's week. I put it this way on a call in September:

what if you just genuinely gave people the one thing that they want most, which is attention, which is like someone to just listen to you?

The bigger they are

You'd expect the opposite. You'd think the more successful someone is, the less they need your little show. It runs the other way:

the richer they are and the wealthier they are and the more successful they are, the more stories they have to tell and the more they want to come on your podcast.

Think about who has the most stories. The person on their fourth company, with a sale and a failure behind them. The investor who has seen two cycles. They've lived through things nobody has asked them about in public, and they know it. The spotlight finds the people with the most to say, and those are often the exact people a founder can't reach any other way.

The size of your audience doesn't matter

This is where founders push back. I don't have a show. I don't have an audience. Who'd come on with me?

Two answers. First, you have a show the moment you call it one:

I'm just I'm sitting at my computer, clicking a button, talking to a human being. But because there's like 30 viewers or 20 viewers or whatever, it's a show. I literally have a ticket to go talk to anybody, anybody.

A video link with a name on it. That's the whole studio. I've said on more than one call that the only thing that changed for me was a word:

I can get meetings with now only because I put the word show on the end of my name.

Second, the audience was never the point:

Even if you have 200 followers, who cares? Like, it doesn't matter. Like the fact that you're putting a spotlight on them.

Founders hear "podcast" and picture downloads, sponsors, a studio, a following. That's a media business. This is a relationship business wearing a microphone:

We don't care if 10 people watch it or 100 people watch it. All we care about is that relationship.

I do a lot of live streams. People see the volume and assume I'm chasing viewers. I'm chasing something else:

I don't care that much about the people that are watching the live stream I'm actually closing the people that I'm interviewing.

The person on the other side of the screen is the audience that matters. And the guest brings their own audience on the way out, because the clip is about them:

Not to mention the guest shares it because it's about them.

How to give it well

A spotlight is a gift only if it's given properly. A sloppy interview, where the host talks over the guest and pitches in minute nine, is worse than no invitation at all. Here's what giving it properly looks like, in my own words from a call back in February:

By showing up, putting the spotlight on them, by not interrupting them, by asking them well thought out questions.

Three things. Show up. Don't interrupt. Ask questions that prove you did the work. On a team call I described what that work looks like before a guest arrives:

Like, I'm gonna send you 21 questions. I'm gonna prepare them for the meeting. Like, it's all about them.

And the order of operations, which I come back to whenever someone wants to skip ahead:

you're listening before you're speaking, you're researching before you're doing.

It has to be real. You can't fake curiosity for an hour, and you can't fake it across forty calls a day. People can tell:

if you approach it, like, from a transactional perspective, like, oh, I can make a sale. They can smell it from a mile away.

Or, shorter, from a call in August:

Like, people are too smart. You have to be genuine.

If you're not curious about the people in your market, this method will expose you. If you are, it will feel like the best part of your week. Mine does.

What the gift buys you

The interview ends. The clip goes out. What did you get?

A relationship that didn't exist an hour ago, with someone you chose. The choosing matters. In a normal sales motion you take whoever answers. With a show you pick your guests, which means you pick who you spend your best hours with. I said this to a founder in June:

once you have the relationship, whether they become a customer or they refer somebody or whether they give you a job or whether they become a, you know, whether it be something small or big, like you've won because you've built a new connection with a new CEO and you're selecting who you're actually doing outreach to.

The relationship also keeps growing after the taping. A pre-interview, an hour on the show, a debrief a few days later. Three conversations in, you aren't strangers anymore:

through the process of the podcast, the deep, the pre-interview the interview, the debrief, the this, the that, we systematically become friends with the people we're podcasting.

And the gift compounds when you give it to people who know each other. Investors talk to investors. Buyers in a category know the other buyers. Interview enough of one circle and the circle starts introducing you, even to people whose thesis doesn't fit yours:

I know you're this I'm not in your thesis but can you connect me to some of your buddies and now they're all like warm referrals that you're getting

None of that shows up in a download count, and all of it shows up in your calendar.

What happens to the pitch

So where does your business come in? Later, and sometimes never. On some days the conversations are so full that my own offer doesn't come up at all:

a lot of people, there's probably three or four calls today, or I didn't even have time to tell them. About my offer, that's okay because maybe after the interview or maybe after the debrief or maybe over an email at one point I will.

That's fine. The relationship is the asset, and it keeps. The guest who heard nothing about my business today has an hour of their story on my site and a reason to take my call next month. Chapters 9 and 10 cover the debrief and the moment I do ask. Here, the point is that the gift comes first and comes clean.

The same call ended on a line I keep coming back to:

the spotlight is kind of our sword.

A sword that works by pointing at the other person. It took me a long time, and one buried story, to understand that.

Try this week

Write the invitation for your show. One paragraph. If you don't have a show yet, name one now. Your name plus "Show" is fine. So is the problem you solve plus "Show."

Rules for the paragraph:

1. Open with something specific about them. A company they built, a bet they made, a post they wrote, a decision you admired. One sentence, and it has to be true and checkable. 2. Say what the show is about in one line, using their words, not yours. 3. Ask if they'd come on. Nothing else.

Now go through it with a pen and strike every sentence about you, from your company and your round to your background and your audience size. If the paragraph still makes sense, you're done. If it falls apart, you were leaning on yourself, and the rewrite starts there.

Read the final version out loud as if you were the busiest person on your list. Would you say yes? Would it feel like your job to say yes?

Then pick the five people in your market you've wanted to meet for the longest time and never had a reason to contact. Send them the paragraph this week. When the first one says yes, notice who is grateful to whom.

Whose story in your market has nobody asked to hear yet?