Afford Anything - How to Start a Business in One Weekend, with Noah Kagan

Episode Date: January 31, 2024

#485: If you’ve ever thought: "I’d love a business BUT …” I don’t have TIME I don’t have MONEY I don’t have IDEAS I have TOO MANY ideas and I don't know where to start I'm not technical I'm not creative or artistic I'm not good at sales You're not alone. Countless people don't start businesses or side hustles for these reasons. And they're losing thousands -- perhaps millions -- in opportunity cost. How much could you make if you started a side hustle that eventually scaled into a business? Possibly millions. Today's guest, Noah Kagan, is living proof. Noah was employee #30 at Facebook. His stock options, if fully vested, would be worth over $1 billion today. (If you want to do the math -- his stock options came to 0.1 percent of the company, which has a current market cap of $1 trillion.) But Noah was fired just a couple months before his stock options vested. So rather than getting a billion-dollar payout, he got nothing. He sank into a deep depression, eventually recovering with the help of a therapist who counseled him on how to reframe the experience. Then he rolled up his sleeves and got to work. He became a serial entrepreneur, building multiple businesses. His most successful venture now makes $80 million in gross revenue, and his personal take-home is $3.3 million per year (which comes from a $200,000 annual salary and $3.1 million profit distribution.) His net worth is $36 million. Not a billion, but still not too shabby. Noah recently wrote a book called "Million Dollar Weekend: The Surprisingly Simple Way to Launch a 7-Figure Business in 48 Hours." He sits down with us (in person!) to share: -- how to find business ideas -- how to overcome objections and rejections -- how to scale By the end of the episode, the common objections that you often hear -- like "I don't have time/money/ideas" -- will be quashed. Please enjoy! For more information, visit the show notes at https://affordanything.com/episode485 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Maybe you've always had a business idea, but you don't have time, you don't have money. Heck, maybe you don't have an idea or you have too many ideas, right? For some reason, for a variety of very common obstacles, you have not yet started that side hustle or that small business. If that's the case, and then if this is something that you want to do or that you've been thinking about possibly doing, you are potentially leaving thousands or even millions of dollars on the table in opportunity. And if that sounds like a wild exaggeration, today's guest is here to tell you that it is not out of the norm. It is, in fact, highly possible. Today's guest runs a company that he founded that does $80 million in gross revenue. The company takes home between $6 to $7 million in profit. He personally earns about $3.3 million of that per year. So he has a net worth of $36 million and it came from starting a business. And he's here to talk to you about, how you can take the lessons that he's learned growing this thing from scratch and apply that in your life to any business that you want to start. Welcome to the Afford Anything podcast, the show that understands you can afford anything but not everything. Every decision carries a

trade-off. Saying yes to something implicitly means you're saying no to something else. And that doesn't just apply to your money. It applies to all limited resources, your time, your effort, your attention, anything that you need to demand. What matters most and how do you make decisions accordingly? Answering those two questions is a lifetime practice. That's what this show is here to explore. My name is Paula Pan. I am the host of the Afford Anything podcast.

And joining us today is Noah Kagan. Noah was employee number 30 at Facebook. His stock options were worth 0.1% of the company. Now, Facebook is currently valued at $1 trillion. So 0.1% of Facebook today is worth $1 billion. Unfortunately, just a couple months before he was fully vested in those stock options, Noah got fired. So rather than getting a billion dollar payout, he ended up with zero. He fell into a deep depression.

Now, this was years ago. This was before those stock options were worth a billion. Back at that time, they were worth merely, merely. around 100 million. He became very, very depressed, and he went to see a therapist, and he learned how to reframe that loss. He picked himself back up, and he started building businesses from scratch. He was just some dude living in California and Texas and figured it out. And he built a bunch of different businesses. He tried a lot of different things, right? But fundamentally, he was just a guy with an idea. And over time, one of his companies, Absumo, over the span of many, many years,

went big. You know, so as I mentioned, Absumo now has gross revenue of 80 million a year. It does profits of between $6 to $7 million a year. His income, he pays himself a salary of $200,000 annually, plus he takes a profit distribution of about $3.1 million annually. His net worth is about $36 million. And he is here to share with us how a guy like him who is, you know, just your kind of ordinary everyday guy was able to build something like that and what that means for the rest of us, how we can also take those lessons and apply it to our own lives and use it to start our own businesses or our own side hustles. So to describe that here is Noah Kagan. Hey, Noah. Hi, Paula.

Hey, so Noah? Yes. Can I have a dollar? Yeah. Oh, thank you. Yeah. Do you have Venmo or PayPal? I'm going to send you a Venmo request. I'll just do it right now.

Oh, yeah? All right, here's my Venmo. What is it? You can put it publicly so other people send you money. Oh, yeah. Put the QR code in the thing. All right, so while we're doing this, Noah, why don't you explain? You tell me why I just asked you that question.

Before I explained why did it happen, how did that feel asking? Well, because we're friends and also because you are the person who encourages people to ask for a dollar, I felt normal. Behind the scenes here, there's a producer Dennis and Dan. If I went to any of them and was like, hey, can I have a dollar? That would be really awkward. Right? Or Steve, who's editing? Steve, if I were to email you and be like, hey, can I have a dollar?

Yeah. It'd be awkward as heck. So many people that want to be millionaires. want the million, but they're stuck with just one. Right. And if they can get the one, that's eventually how you can get to the million. And so this is why it's such a critical thing to do. And for most people, probably 100%, that's most.

Asking is a very uncomfortable thing, and that is the foundation of business. You're asking for something, exchange for something else. Right. And the more that you can practice it with the dollar challenge, you learn about yourself. And you're like, huh, I can keep getting better at this. I can do this. What are the things can I ask for that I really want? So I don't wish for him. I don't hope for him. You know how you receive, you ask. And that's how you get it. So when I want to start a business, asking someone for coaching, asking someone for consulting, asking someone to buy a product

from app sumo.com, I've practiced it. So today, while I was walking to your studio, outside of guys wearing a 49ers uniform, I don't want to say anything to him that I just want to come to your thing. I said, just keep practicing. And practice on the stuff that doesn't matter. So when you want to practice on things that matter to you, like your dreams, maybe your career, maybe in a relationship. Oh, I've already done it so many times to see you. So I go up to the guy, hey, man, I just want to tell you a great job on the 49ers. I hope they win. You see, it was just like, whatever, man. But for me, I felt good about myself. And when you get this dollar, you feel good about yourself. And you were shocked just like other people who have taken the challenge, got a dollar, realized

it's not as scary as they think. And like, okay, what's next? What else can do? How far can I go? Right. But so in this case, I didn't provide any value in exchange. for that dollar. I simply asked for something without providing anything in return. I would take a step back. So anyone who's listening or watching the show, ask someone right now for a dollar. Text them, Venmo, ask your husband, ask your wife, ask your friend, ask your neighbor, and see how he feels. And you start realizing it's empowering, especially if you have a dream of owning real estate, especially if you have a dream of having your own business like I do, and a lot of people want to have, and it's possible for everyone. A lot of ordinary people can

have it. You don't have to have some big thing. More people want to help you than you realize. More people want to help you than you realize. And when we're starting businesses, 99% of people do it wrong. And what they're doing is they're making it hard on themselves. I can't ask my friends. I got to ask random strangers who don't know me to help me. But the low-hanging fruit is to ask people who want to see you win.

It's asking me. Right. Who you want a dollar? Hey, and maybe I'll ask her. Maybe I won't, but I just gave it to you. Right. That is something that's so powerful is that what are the groups. that when you want to ask for help, they're excited to see you win.

They're excited to see you get help. The zone of influence, your orbit, what I'm specifically looking for is as you're getting a business going, generally I think it's easy to think about in three. What are three groups I could go to that I could help? Right. And so for me, it's like, all right, who do I know any people in podcasting? Okay. Is that a group I have access to?

And so we're obviously getting a little bit further ahead, but it's stepping back from that part of the process. Really, it's saying, hey, there's people out there. they're believing me. There's people that want to help me. I can actually do this. And it's building up that confidence by just one simple dollar that every single person in the world can do. All right. Let's take a step back. Let's start at the beginning. Because a lot of people who are listening to this are interested in starting a business. They work a nine to five. They've always dreamed of one day having the freedom of an entrepreneur. But let's go through the objections.

But I don't have any ideas or I have too many ideas. Yeah. How was it for you when you got started with your businesses. I was gung-ho about this one. I was gung-ho about afford anything. So, and what afford-anything is changed and iterated over time, but the brand afford anything, that was my one idea. The way I've observed it and to success for people like yourself and that I've helped, there's two things. And the two things are simple and powerful. So first, what was your dream? You said you were gung-ho. What were you gung-ho for? I had been a newspaper reporter and I knew that the future of journalism was going to be online and independent. And back in those days, I didn't understand that there was a distinction between being self-employed versus being an

entrepreneur. And so I was gung-ho about self-employment. And I knew that I needed to pick a niche, and I loved personal finance. So I knew I wanted to write about personal finance. So I was gung-ho about creating Ford anything as a brand so I could make a name for myself in the personal finance space thinking at the time I was going to be a personal finance freelance writer. And it was only later that I realized there's a distinction between being a freelance writer for other people's platforms versus building out a platform yourself. But it took me a couple years to figure that out. Yeah.

More people don't realize that the distance between them and success is much closer than they think, meaning that people have the abilities they don't realize. They think that Noah or Paula or someone else that you see on TV, oh man, they must know something. I don't know. And the answer is not true. They actually do have that ability. and the fact that you had a dream is amazing.

You're like, no, my dream is that. And I'm not really sure how it's going to get there, but I have a dream. And I think for everyone out there, the first step of entrepreneurship is thinking about what your dream is. And that doesn't mean you need to run a company. I think that's a misnomer. It could be, hey, I want money to have grocery bills paid. I want money so I can have some creativity. I want to make some soap.

Right? Like there's a woman, Jennifer Hudson. She sells cookies just to be able to help with her kids. So she's a teacher during the day and she just posts on Facebook. Hey, I have cookies for sale. And she's not saying, I want to be Mrs. fields. But she has a dream that like, hey, it'd be cool to have $1,000 more a month to run my business. The second thing is that everyone then has a freedom number. And these are the two steps that

are foundational in business and in entrepreneurship. So you have a dream of where you want to go. And then you have a number that you're like, if I can get that, then at least I can do what I really want to be doing. What was your number? When I was first starting out? Yeah. When I was starting out, it was like, all right, if I can just make two or three thousand dollars a month, right? Because that was like as little as I needed to be able to pay my bills. Exactly. I know yours was also $3,000 a month. We're old, though.

But I think that's the point. So for me, my dream was to never have a boss. And I just had that all along. I was like, I want to have no boss and I want to work on the beaches of Thailand. That's my dream. That was my dream. I was just like, okay, I got to figure this out. But you were employee number 30 at Facebook.

Sorry to bring up a bad memory. It's lucky. I was very lucky. You had 0.1% of Facebook equity. which today would be worth $1 billion. Yeah, that's pretty cool. Yeah. And at the time that you were fired, you were three months shy of being vested.

Yes, for the stock. Wow, is this like a to hate on Noah episode? I was just going to say, my freedom number at that time, which I always dreamed about, at Facebook, I dreamed about it. Every single entrepreneur I've talked about is had a freedom number. And it's figuring out the number you need so that you can do what you really want. Right. And it's generally smaller than you think, and it makes success in entrepreneurship attainable.

Right. And mine was 3,000. It was to live. It was food and it was to invest. And I was like, if I can do that, I don't have to work for someone. In those early days, was your dream to not work for someone, even when you were employee number four at Mint? Yeah. Yeah. And then we sold for 200 million, number 30 at Facebook Facebook. And then from there, it was like, all right, I've got to figure this freedom of out so I can do what I really want. And so at Mint, in mornings, in weekends, at nights, at lunchtime, it was building Facebook games. And that helped me get to my freedom. I remember quit my job and moved to Argentina. And this is in 2008. I was very lucky. I worked directly for Zuckerberg. I got to learn how to build a company from scratch, how to do marketing. And then my own journey of building so many companies that failed and worked for the past 15 years and still today running a $70 million business of Absumo.com. Right. But you... You want to talk about how much money I lost? Okay, let's do it. Let's do it. I don't know, lost. I mean, I'm sure there's a positive spin, right? Almost every single time we have a failure, let's do a debrief. So people now culturally like debrief it, debrief it, debrief it. And I think

the same thing with Facebook, I learned so much. I learned from Peter Thiel. I learned from Sean Parker. I learned from Mark Zuckerberg, Dustin Moskowitz. These are the best of the best. And I think that it was good for them to fire me. I would have fired me if I was them, but it also led me on my own path. And I generally think when something like that happens, debrief, learn, and generally will lead to something better. And I think my life is better for it. If I just would have gotten a hundred million dollars, it would have been nice, but I don't think I would have earned it. And I feel like for me, I've earned, like no one's given it. It's earned, not given. I think about that phrase a lot, like earn, not given. Right. And well, and that makes

sense because if you had gotten rich from that Facebook equity, you would have been in the right place at the right time. But what you did instead was you built a company, you built Absumo from scratch, like really from blood, sweat and tears. And it was yours and it was your baby. And like you said, now it makes $70 million a year. Yeah. Yeah, which is kind of crazy to hear out of love. In top line gross. Yeah. Yeah. And then. Bottom line, what is this year, maybe six and a half million dollars profit, which is, which is crazy. And I think there's a key lesson there. There's a lot of different things we're talking about. But the one thing there, that's also 13 years later.

The 13 years later, and that's after 20 years of trying things all over the place, conferences, Facebook games. I tried student discount cards. I tried a college website business. Like, I've tried the gamut of a lot of different things. But most people just see the dish that came out of the kitchen that they're eating today. I didn't have like some big liquidity event. I didn't get lucky. It was like I just literally work jobs. I lived a very low cost of living. And then doing that very aggressively for 30 years enabled me then to have money to be like,

what do I really want to be spending my time on? What is it over the years that I've done for free that I've really enjoyed? And it was like creating content, promoting things. It's like, all right, there's something there about how do I explore that and creating my own business so that I can do it the way I want to be doing it. But you also make the point that businesses are ultimately not about. the founder or the creator, they're about the customer. Right? So how do you, how do you merge the two? How do you balance those? I think about it because I create YouTube content.

The videos that I want to create, no one wants to watch. I want to help the underdogs. That's my customer. My customers, people who aspire to have success in entrepreneurship. And that doesn't mean millions of dollars. It could be $100. And they can do it literally in a weekend. And for me, it was like, okay, that's popular content. I don't want to do that. And I want to help this customer. What do I want to make? And so it was really understanding that Venn diagram of okay, what works that both of us are happy about. And I think too many times people, especially engineers because they're so smart, they're like, oh, I'm going to build something and let me go try to find customers.

And that is exactly the wrong way to do it. Right. Okay, so let's go back to for the person who's listening to this. You're listening to this episode. You work a nine to five. You really want to start a business. You either don't have any ideas or you have too many ideas. And also you're busy.

And also you feel like you don't have time. And also you don't have any money to start up. Yeah. Boom. Objection, objection, objection, objection. Yeah, I'm like my, it sounds like everyone. And everyone is busy. And what I would say on the opposite side, though, is everyone does have a dream. That's why when we started the conversation, just tell me your dream. Yeah.

And then we have something to work towards because then we have a blueprint of what we need to go. Everyone then, if they have a dream, which everyone does, secondly, everyone has a weekend. We were talking about YouTube. The reason my YouTube channel now is that almost a million subscribers is because none of my videos worked. and we had to do something different. And it was only because nothing was working, and I had a limitation that I was like, oh, let me try something different. So we did this video where I'd knocked on doors.

And I just asked millionaires, like, what did you do to buy this house? Huh. Yeah, that video went viral. It's like 3 million views, and it changed the trajectory of our channel. But it was because of that limitation. Now, for the people that out there,

like, I don't have any of these things. Now, the last piece of it, I would say, is just changing the mindset. Right? So there's this guy, Felipe Rubio. He is from Brazil, came to America, and he's an engineer. And he has that. He's like, oh, man, I've tried things. I've read these books. But then how do people not have their own businesses started if they're consuming less content? And so with Felipe was like, let's change your mindset of instead of putting so much pressure that you don't have ideas. You don't have time. You don't have money. Just think of yourself as an experimenter. Right. And what happens when you experiment? They fail. Yeah, constantly. And when it fails, you're not like, I'm a bad person. And that's why we talked about getting a dollar. It's like, oh, maybe I can do some of these things. Hey, there's a dream I have.

and there's a freedom number I have, how do I keep moving forward towards that? And maybe it's not so scary, and maybe not even that, maybe it's the other side of scary, it's fun. And so at Felipe, he's like, I wanna solve, I wanna help people, I wanna make money, I'd like to have my own business, he has a dream. And I was like, okay, let's experiment with that.

What are things that you're excited to solve problems for people of? And what he wanted to do was a newsletter that people would sponsor. And so we followed steps in the book and he made zero. And I congratulated him. I was like, awesome. And he's like, oh, man, yeah, I'm a little discouraged, but hold on, maybe I learned something here.

And what he found out, though, is that there's actually developers in Brazil who want American jobs. He tested it out, and he got three paying customers paying him to assist getting people jobs in America. And that is the start. When we talked to literally the beginning of it, people think, ah, how do I get to a million? It's like, no, let's just get to one. Right. And let's get this going. And I think the experimenter mindset that he's able to adopt is able to help lead him to eventually, for you, 10 years later, get to the,

a million dollar business if that's your dream or 70 million or 700 million. Yeah. Right. Your dad actually would set rejection goals, right? He was a copier salesman and he would shoot to be rejected a hundred times a week. He was very embarrassing. It was so uncomfortable as a kid and now that's me. It's actually, how do you make rejection like a game?

Right. You go to a coffee shop, right? We all have coffee. Everyone has it. Next time you buy anything. If it's coffee, if it's pizza, if it's anything, if it's anything, out there. Yep. And you just ask for 10% off when you buy it. And then you wait. And then you see if you get rejected or not. And you find out that a lot of times, like, they say yes. And you're like,

oh, cool. And a lot of times you don't. That's not the point. The point is if you can practice the rejection, just like practice asking. And the failure and the rejection is not such a personal mark that you're bad. It's just they didn't want what you're offering. There's an opportunity to learn an opportunity to grow and then just keep going. What else can I maybe not think of rejection as such a bad, scary thing that eventually leads to an upside. So eventually you can go ask for a raise. You can ask for a girlfriend. You can ask for different things. And the power of just doing a simple thing that anyone can do, literally anywhere in the world for free. And it really is empowering. I was in New York a year ago. I did a video going up to people that looked rich. And I said, what do you do for living?

very uncomfortable, rejected almost all day, but the cost of that is a moment of temporary pain. Very brief. Right. But the upside of it is really good connection, really interesting people, realizing that people want to help and a great story. And yesterday, I flew to Rhode Island to go on a sailboat of one of the people that I met, and he shared the story of how he owned and became a very rich person through oil tankers, just by an ask. And so that was part of the rejection goals where when I'm on the streets, I'm thinking, how do I get just 10 more rejections? And it's, okay, you rejected me, cool, nine more, let's go.

And guess what? You'll be surprised. You'll be surprised what you can do and what the opportunities are out there for you. Do you still have rejection goals? I still have them when I do videos like this, yeah. And I still push myself. It's not the distance between me and someone listening or watching is much smaller than I think. The only difference is you got to practice it.

And the important part is just to go do it right now today. When people think about business and making money, I don't have an idea. You know what's a basic idea? Cutting someone's grass. You guys don't know what grass is in New York. It's this thing. It's in lawns and like. I've seen pictures.

I've seen pictures on the internet. It's green. Green. So you see how this is fake? Like they have real grass in the world. But it could be even simple, like the simplest thing is even putting something online on eBay or Facebook marketplace or Craigslist or whatever used to sell something and be like, huh, I can do this. no one wants it or maybe someone does. I have a friend who put her paintings online. She's a nurse during the day. She's trying to buy beer money. And that's what she did. She put her paintings on

Facebook Marketplace and she's doing $300 a month selling her paintings. And it's like, oh. And so it's realizing that the rejection aren't as scary as they think as we think they are and then just getting more comfortable at doing it. Fifth Third Bank's commercial payments are fast and efficient, but they're not just fast and efficient. They're also power. by the latest in payments technology, built to evolve with your business. Fifth Third Bank has the big bank muscle to handle payments for businesses of any size. But they also have the FinTech Hustle that got them named one of America's most innovative companies by Fortune Magazine.

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You told the story earlier of the guy he was trying to test out some business idea. It failed, but in the process of testing that idea, he discovered that there were a lot of people in Brazil, developers in Brazil, who were looking for American jobs and that they would be willing to pay a fee for assistance with that. Exactly. Right. So the information that he got from failure number one informed idea number two. Exactly. How do you distinguish between something that is scalable versus something that's just, you know, has a handful of people, but it's never really going to take off?

Yeah. So I do cover that in the book in very detail. And there's videos and they can go to a million dollar weekend.com slash afford anything. And I have all the resource for free. And you can literally just follow the videos about how I do the one minute business model where you're basically just checking a few different places to see, okay, is this a flat market? Is it a growing market? But the story I would tell that I think is interesting is even in the simplest form, I met with this guy named Larry.

Larry runs basement supply cleanings and basement setups in Connecticut. Right. And so I think even if you can use some of your own intuition and there's more steps to it, Larry just was a contractor. He literally didn't go to college, started contracting. And one day someone said, hey, can you fix this thing in the basement? And this is after him just doing contract work. And then he was like, oh, there's a lot of basements out there. Maybe I can do more basements.

And his home repair, home maintenance business, revenue is $650 million. He's the largest employer in the city, the largest taxpayer in the city. And that is from 40 years, which is a whole separate discussion of sustainability and longevity, doing something which had a pretty big market. And so I would say for someone, you know, the models and things like that are very simple. And I've made it mom proof so that my mom can understand it, is that with, with, with Felipe, how many people are in Brazil? How many are developers? And how many people would potentially want to get paid U.S. salaries? You could argue very clearly there's 10,000,

maybe 50,000. But the point you want to make is you're going to work. And so the whole concept, to your point, are there more houses that have basements, these things underground? Yes. Are there more developers, probably at least a million dollars worth? That's why the book's called a million dollar weekend. You want to make sure there's at least a million dollars work because you don't want to work on something that if you put a lot of work in there's just not enough. demand or market size for it. For instance, like, I eat a lot of fah. Like home fah delivery, probably not that big of a business. Right. But home food delivery is a $10 million business, which is Instacart. And you could validate that that could be a business in a weekend.

Right. So we'll essentially look at the size of the market. Multiply that out by how much people are willing to pay. And that's the potential market that exists. What I've noticed from entrepreneurs that I'm trying to eradicate is that that's the fun part of business. which is like, oh, I'm going to go, I'm going to go model and I'm going to go talk to a lot of people to understand. And I can't tell you how many people are like, if I didn't have as much time and I had a little bit more structure and I've practiced asking, practice rejection, I could literally find out today if this is worth doing. But I think they're spending a lot of time playing business and not doing business. And the doing business is the hard part, but the doing is what

lead you to the dream. I try to kill all the playing. I want it to be fun, but I want to get out, I want them to step out of all the games they're trying to do, because that's really just a distraction from leading to the dream, which is where it all starts. Right. So when you say playing business, playing business is modeling things out, endlessly iterating spreadsheets, deciding that you need a fancy website or even an LLC structure, all the stuff that people really get caught up in. It's making me sick. Right? Yeah, exactly. Well, and I think a lot of of that is stuff that feels good. But for anyone out there that's watched YouTube videos, bought a lot of business fiction books, as I like to say, and you've spent money and you don't

have something to show for it, you can do something different. There is another way. And that is what I'm trying to encourage people to think about it, not even think about, do about, do about. To do about, right. And fundamentally, that is start, sell something, sell something before you've made it and see if people are willing to actually pay for this thing that you're offering. Exactly. No, it's complex and simple at the same time. In the psychology, it is just fascinating, the dynamics of different people that are out there. And the avoidances, the fears that we all have, they don't think of it as fears.

Because all of them are generally one of similar thing. They want some money of their dream to get to the freedom number. But it's just a lot of different things that it's like, all right, how do I keep guiding them in the way to the outcome that they want. So, oh, I have too many ideas. What's the first one? Let's do that right now. Really? Yeah. You remember you asked for a dollar and someone gave it to you? We're going to do that just again. And because you've practiced it, it makes it easier and easier. And when it fails, you're just going to start again because now you have the concepts and the abilities to do it. But what are some of the most common fears that you see?

I have too many ideas is a surprising one where they're like, I have so many ideas. And so I do like using the one-minute business model and what we talked about is like, okay, let's just double check which of these ideas has market size for a million dollars at least personally and what I 100% stand behind is find a problem that you're excited to solve. I love teaching people how to do marketing. I love promoting certain things like that is my love and I'm going to always do it. And so within your ideas, just, okay, what do you think you could work on for 10 years? Because I believe in the 10 year rule is that it takes about 10 years to become a millionaire.

If you actually want to become a millionaire, if you're willing to work hard, everyone can be a millionaire in 10 years. I think if you do this stuff, you stick with it, you will get the success. Right. A lot of people think they have two little ideas. And the reality is that you have so many more ideas than you think. Here's one thing you can do right now. For anyone who's listening, just text someone that you respect. What's one business you think I could start right now?

That's it. And there was a guy in one of our cohorts who did it. Someone's like, yeah, you seem to like YouTube. You do all this YouTube stuff. And he's like, oh, that's kind of interesting. And people want you to succeed. Remember we talked about the dollar. And he ended up now messaging people to do YouTube consulting because that's what someone said he was going to be good at.

I think he got a $2,400 agreement to do YouTube optimizations, thumbnails, titles, because he's just really passionate about that. There's answers for every one of these. I don't have enough money. That's your advantage. We're doing Black Friday planning at Absumo. It's a team of 10 people to plan Black Friday. Versus if it's you, no money, you don't have time because you're busy with work. That's an advantage.

And so it makes you be a lot more creative. So there's literally, I don't have a technical co-founder. I'm not skilled to build my app. Well, what is your app supposed to solve? Right. My app is supposed to solve that problem. Even let's take Instacart. What is Instacart?

It's taking food from one person to another person. Okay, how can we validate that right now? What do you really have to do? What you have to do is can you call friends? Can you ask people your colleagues, ask people your church, synagogue, whatever it is, like people in your groups where we started the conversation with, hey, I have a food delivery business. Do you want me to deliver your groceries this week for $25?

that's it. You can text someone, you can call someone, you can post it on social media, literally this second, see if anyone wants it. And if there's demand, guess what? If there's demand, you go deliver it. Pun, literally. And if there's not demand, guess what, you didn't waste all this time and money. I want people to like their jobs. I want people to get to that success and not waste a lot of time and money. So with the Instacart example, let's hang on to that for a while. Because there was a company that was started in the late 90s. So Webvan was the original Instacart. And it failed. So I could imagine a founder of any other type of business taking a look at that and saying, well, somebody else tested this. Somebody else validated this. And it was a failure. Yeah. There's reasons why they failed that I think you could have found out in a weekend. Right.

And because if they would have validated in a weekend, they would have understand different structures. So they bought their vans and they built their warehouses. Whereas Instacart, it's like, huh, maybe we don't. don't need that. And they didn't have warehouses. They used the grocery stores. Maybe we don't need cars because they can just hire just people like gig workers to deliver the food. And so there's ways of actually not having to spend a lot of money in time. And I think WebIn raised, I don't know if it was a billion, maybe $100 million. Yeah, they raised a lot. And they were also late 90s. That was pre-smart phones. They may have just been too early for

their time. Yeah. There's definitely timing with some of this stuff. But ultimately, what does timing really mean? It means that who's the customer? What's the customer first that you need. And can you solve the problem that they really want today? And a business fundamentally is solving a problem for somebody. Don't make it sound so simple. If it's so simple, then how is it that people haven't found that success? Well, I mean, as you said, people are often afraid, they're afraid of starting and afraid of asking. Exactly. And then after they overcome that, it's like, okay, well, what are problems that I'm excited to work on that people would be happy to give me money for? And I've tried a lot of things. It's not that every problem is going to work, just like Felipe.

His first idea didn't work. But because he had confidence, he had the experimenter mindset, he was like, maybe there's something else instead of getting companies to sponsor newsletters. I think there's more basic ideas, too. Like, I don't think coming back to what we're talking about, you don't have to have some genius idea. You've literally, like, I'm excited about lawn care. Larry is a billion dollar revenue business on the way from basements. So the amount of money that's being spent on cups, like these paper cups. Right.

Or jerky. Shut out. First form protein sticks. Yeah. Yes. You know, shut off. You know, there's a lot of different things to do. And it's just such a cool way to learn about yourself.

I don't know if there's a better way of learning about yourself than entrepreneurship. Yeah, no, you have to have a lot of self-awareness to be able to know what are you afraid of? What are you avoiding? That's the self-awareness that entrepreneurship forces of you. Oh, man. Yeah, it's a wild journey. Yeah. And it's been a great, it's a great way to learn about yourself.

It's a great way to connect with their people. It's a great way to serve. Like, you're theoretically, if you're doing a business and someone's giving you money, you're helping them with something that they want to have solved. In your content, you get to help people learn about how to afford anything. What a cool career that you created for yourself. And that's accessible. Anyone can do that in any areas.

One of my favorite stories is Kevin Espirutu. He is a YouTuber that teaches gardening. And he just loves to garden. I'm like, you can make millions of dollars gardening. I get to make millions of dollars promoting software products at great value, which I love a good deal. Yeah. And now I get to come on shows and have my own show, just teaching people how exactly I do it.

Like, what a cool life I get to live as well. And that's available for everyone out there. Right. Well, and you also have a skill set in which anything that you're trying to do, it's replicable. And so speaking of jerky, will you tell the story of how you, from scratch, ended up making your first $1,000 worth of jerky sales. Yeah. Bottom line, $1,000. Profit. A profit. Profit of $1,000.

Yeah. In, was it 24 hours? 24 hours? 24 hours, yeah. So a few years ago, I asked my audience, I said, you choose the idea. I don't even choose it. You'll choose it. And I'll give 24 hours to make $100.

And they're like, no, you got to make $1,000. Okay, and you can't use anything you have. You can't use any of your network and all that. And so they ended up with jerky, salsa, or lemonade. I know it's all food related. But I eat a lot of jerky, and I was, they're like, this is the business you have to start, and you have 24 hours to make $1,000. And I remember being up at night.

And I was like, I don't want to fail in public. I want to prove that what I know works. Let me show it to you. And I just tell you about it. What I realized, first off, is I do the one-minute business model. And the one-bus business model showed me, if I had to call Paula and other people, do they even want jerky? And like, that's a lot of people I have to sell jerky to make $1,000.

Right. Yeah. And so I was like, okay, use the one-minute business model to think, all right, I have to change the business model to be able to make a $1,000 profit. But the other thing, as we talked about earlier, is do they actually want jerky? And this is, you know, do people want to eat jerky? I eat it. I'm spending a lot of money at jerky. That's why I was excited about first form approaching.

Cheers. Right. Cheers. There's original and this one is seasoned barbecue. Okay, barbecue. So, you know, I want to validate. You know, I'll eat one with you, actually. Hell yeah.

Jerky cheers. Oh, it's pretty good. Yeah? All right. Double top. Yeah. Double cheers. No, so I was nervous.

The fear doesn't go away, but courage is being afraid and doing it anyways. And I was like, I'm going to do it. And because I had a limit, because I had people knowing I was doing it, I was like, oh man, I got to get this done. And that is why I limit it for people. I said, do it in a weekend because you have it available. Did the one minute business model. I knew I could be a customer.

And I think that, again, I'm going to repeat it because I think it's so critical. Be your own customer. Find problem. Be customer first, knowing that other people have. that problem, but so many entrepreneurs are like, I'm going to do a biotech company. Or I had a person call me. He's in the Air Force. He's like, I'm going to do real estate investing. Great. Have you read anything about it? No. Have you bought any real estate? No. That's going to be challenging. It's not impossible. But why are you making it hard on yourself? What do you know about?

What are you really good at? What have people paid you for in the past? And so I didn't think people make it too hard on themselves. So with jerky, I love it. I want to be a customer of it. I do think people want healthy food. I want to validate it quickly and then I want to expand my sales. Right. So very quickly, I did the business model. I said, I can't sell it individually. I have to sell a subscription and I have to do pre-orders so I can get my $1,000 profit today. I then in the business model was understanding my cost structure to make sure I can make my thousand profit. And then I was figuring out how the hell do I sell jerky? And this is a thing that people are wondering, you don't have jerky, you don't make meat. Right. Like, you don't, where you're going to get the jerky from? But what I have

learned through thousands of seeing other people do it, doing it myself is that if you have the money, if you have the demand, then delivering this stuff is easy. Right, right. What 99% people do wrong is they go make the jerky. They're like, I'm going to go find the happiest cows, you know, and make the best jerky ever to only find out that no one wants it or it's very hard to sell. There's another way. make it easy on yourself. So I contacted people on Facebook. I looked up anybody on Facebook that was a friend of mine. I didn't post on my email list. I didn't use my network or apps or anything like that. And I just looked up people who did keto on Facebook. Any of my friends are like keto.

So I do encourage when you're trying to validate. It's a pre-sell method. Just go see it text people, call people, ask people. A lot of times people are doing it way too passively. Like, oh, I posted it on Reddit. I'm like, did you get anything? No, no, no. Don't even laugh.

It's serious. And I get it because it's safer to get rejected by people you don't know than find the truth for people who care about you. And here's the next. I know I know all the excuses. You know what? Your family and all these people are, of course, they're going to give you money. That's not true. My brother said no.

My parents said no. I was like, Seth. What are you doing? Your mom said no. Yeah. My mom didn't buy it. And what was fascinating, though, was that I started messaging people and this is where the dollar, just getting one dollar comes into play. there's a guy named Eric who I met from Colorado and he's like yeah I'll buy three months and he sent me in the PayPal it was I believe it's $60 and changed everything you believe you believe I was like I can do this I can do it so I messaged him directly I looked at other people you asked for a referral sometimes that works sometimes it doesn't but at least it's something that I think is effective the thing that as business scales it's also noticing what's working so what ended up working extremely well

was one the subscription, but secondly, it was who else has money that is easy to spend that would want this problem solved? And what I recognize is that companies have budgets for snacks. Yes. I have an email provider. I have an accountant. I have a lawyer. Like, I have people that I have paid that have offices and have snacks that they're already spending money on. It is much easier to further a behavior than to change behavior. It's much easier to increase in further behavior. So they're already spending money on it versus if you don't have an office or you're you don't spend money on it and I have to convince you that is really hard and that is what people get wrong so many times. So essentially you've asked yourself the question, who do I know who's in my, who's directly in my phone,

who I already know who already spends money on the thing that I'm trying to sell, the type of thing that I'm trying to sell. Exactly. And if I already know that those people buy, so Sendgrid bought, my accountants bought, then I thought, Well, who of my friends works at companies that do it. And so I asked companies or friends to introduce me to their office managers. The reality of it is that almost any business deal will eventually work if you stick with it. And what happens is that it's hard.

What happens is you're going to get rejected. What happens is my brother said now, my own brother. Older or younger? Older, two years older, Seth. Oh, man. I know. I know. Somehow that hurts more.

It's a big brother. He's supposed to. Well, I think what I've realized about that in these rejections and teaching about it and showing it in a lot of my videos, rejection is a test if you really want something or not. Even, you know, as I'm working on this book and I'm talking to different people and I'm promoting it and I'm proud of it, I get rejected. Like I had a good friend. I was like, hey, can we do something? He's like, I don't think so. I was like, oh, that's cool.

You know why? Because I really want to promote this. I really am proud of what I create it. I do believe it helps. I'm seeing it help. And so as a test of myself, do I want to continue? And that with the jerky was like, okay, I want to prove these people. I want to show I can do it.

Some is going to reject me. But then day, I worked my ass off. And then I think maybe about five or six o'clock, $4,000 revenue, $1,000 profit. And then the next day, I basically called different jerky people that I found on the internet. I said, hey, I have $4,000 in revenue. I did the business model that I was very simple, that anyone can replicate. And I was able to get that jerky delivered. That business, I gave away for free, and I believe about 18 months later, sold for $120,000.

I'm not sure what's happened since then. I don't know if it's at a million or beyond or what they've ended up doing with it. I'm not involved. But I was like, oh, that was just one day that could change it all. Wow. Who did you give the business to? This guy named Ryan. So I had people just submit applications, and his was really good.

And I was like, all right, here's a business. I'm happy to advise you. Wow. And then he ended up selling it. And I was like, okay. Wow. Good for him for good. growing it for 18 months. Yeah. Yeah. It might have been 12. I don't remember the exact

time frame. But I think the thing to realize is just you don't need money. You don't need time. You don't need more excuses. You just need to get started and a playbook to follow along. Right. I think a lot of people just hope and they wait and they want to receive. And it's like, well, you have to go create. You have to go ask. You have to go put yourself out there in some way. Well, see, that's why my first question to you at the beginning of this was, hey, I didn't provide any value for the Yeah. That was the part that was so uncomfortable for me. It wasn't really the asking for a dollar.

Yeah. It was asking for a dollar for nothing, for providing you with no value in exchange. I'm always shocked in a positive way how much people want to help. Yeah. And what we do, though, is we create narratives in our head about why they don't want to give us money, why they have to have a reason to give us a dollar. I did a video where I asked people in first class seats what they do for living. which is super uncomfortable. That was the most uncomfortable ones I've done.

Did you get like kicked off the plane? I was trying to be mindful not to get kicked off because I'm going to sit with them for eight hours. And one of the guys looked like someone who would never talk to me. He had his button up and polo and he had a $100,000 watch on and Otomar Puget. I just remember creating all these excuses and fears and doubts why he's just not going to talk to me. but through practicing it, through the some things that we've already talked about and things in the book, I'm going to go do it. Upside, I get a meet someone new. I learn a lot of things, downside moment of rejection.

And it's an experiment. Let's keep going. Let's keep practicing. And let's have some rejection goals we talked about. Turns out, he's awesome. Turns out he was happy to be on film. Turns out his family is rich through creating signs. Oh, like traffic signs?

Not traffic signs on buildings. Oh, yeah, yeah, building signs. So he's super rich through creating signs. And that was just because I asked. And you're creating the assumption that I have to give you something. And you should. I think generally you want to be, hey, I'd love to learn your story. Hey, I'd love to hear about you.

And it's surprising how much people want to talk, how much people want to help. And so me and you have a relationship, but why did you create a thing that, of course, why did you create an expectation that I wouldn't want to give you a dollar? That's your thought. I do think it's good to give context in whatever. I would encourage is like, hey, I'm working on a business. This is an experiment that the teacher, Noah, told me to do. And you can also call it your board of directors. Like, hey, I have a business. Can you be my investor? You're not getting any equity, but you'll be, it'll be front seat to my

business weekend challenge. And that is a way that they can be a part of the process. And then you can give them updates. That's another way of maybe framing it for other people. I actually got a WhatsApp message yesterday from a woman. We were classmates at Columbia and she messaged me and said, I'm starting my own news organization. And I was wondering if you would be on my board. So she hasn't asked for money yet. I mean, that's a whole, that's a whole rabbit hole about how to ask. Like the art of asking itself is, and I don't know if people realize how often they could actually get more what they want if they improve to ask. If they asked and then they improved how they asked. How you improve how you ask.

Let's do an example. So what's something you've asked for? Afford Anything is going to be doing some in-person retreats this year in-2020. We've done one in the past. We did one in 2021, I believe. But that's the only one that we've done so far. Great. We kind of neglected it after that.

And now we're picking the ball back up. And how are you planning on asking people? Because you're doing an ask. You're going to ask for money in exchange for. what you think they'll want. Right. Exactly. Yes. So I'll be, so I'll be going to people and asking, like, hey, will you pay money in exchange for and admission to this retreat? And what's your current plan around that at a high level of how you're going to ask? Write an email that basically outlines these are the problems that this retreat is designed to solve. And if those problems

resonate with you, then here's exactly what we plan to do in order to solve them. And if that resonates with you, then here are the logistics, the date, the time, the location. It's good. Yeah. It's good. And then when are you sending this email? The dates for 2024 right now are still a little bit tentative. But as soon as we lock down the specific venues, that's one we'll be ready to announce. And how would you feel if you emailed out and no one buys? that would give me the information that the idea is not resonating with people, with anyone. So then what I would do is I would email them and say, hey, I noticed you weren't interested. Would you let me know why?

Is it because of the timing? Is it because of the problems that we're addressing are just not problems that resonate? Is it because the way that we're proposing to solve them is not a way. that resonates? Is it logistics? Is it timing? Like, what, what specifically is it about this that was a turnoff? What would it, what would happen if you could find out today that everyone would pay? What would that do for you? Today, you're like, we know we'd sell out. Well, I mean, then you just go through the motions of doing it, right? Yeah, then you book the venue, you organize the logistics, and you do it. So there's a lot less stress, and it sounds like you'd feel confident and excited

because you know you have all these people committed to doing the thing that you believe they want. Yeah, exactly. So how could you find out now, maybe after the show, or that people actually want it? Pre-sell it before going too deep down the rabbit hole. Yeah, exactly. So you can find out literally with a phone call or with a text or anyone who's come to your previous event, doing an event and what I've learned from Absumo from doing, I think we've done over $200 million in sales in the past few years.

some urgency. Like, hey, there's some reason that you need to take action. Hey, we have this many spots. We're trying to make a decision by this day. I need to encourage you to make a decision. And just texting someone, calling someone, sending an email to 10 people versus sending it to everyone. And you could literally validate that this is a business that will be working versus, you know, you spend money, you spend time, you spend opportunity cost of something else you could do. And you could find out right now.

Yeah. I would do a one in a business model to make sure the economics were going on. for you. You guys do budgets and you know, budgets are like, well. Yeah, I think there's that. I think the other thing, especially if people are uncomfortable, how do you do lighter asks? For instance, with your event, instead of saying, hey, we're having an event, we're selling it, you could put out a survey. Hey, I'm thinking of doing events and things like that. I'd love for you to fill out the survey about what things you'd really like from it. And what will happen is that your customers are literally raising their hand, telling you what they want to give you money for.

And so the survey is like, hey, here's some of the areas. What things would you want to talk about? What areas would you want them to be in? Whatever questions you think would help. And literally, you send it out and you get all of these customers. You just email, text, call, and say, hey, we have this slot open. We can actually solve your problem. And that survey is not you selling them anything.

You're literally delivering and educating and giving the value of what problem they want. Right. You're listening, essentially. You are listening. Listen. As you've scaled, what are the challenges in scaling that are unique or different from starting? Because most of our conversation so far has been about starting. Yeah. Yeah, you know, they're both magical.

The scaling is different. It is different. Anyone who's got a business, maybe they're making $100 a month or they're making $1,000 a month. I would say our one major cheat code that everyone can copy you, any listener can copy for any business out there. is to hire elite advisors on hourly. That is a cheat code of ours.

So what does that do is that I get people that I could never afford still to the state can afford. And they are teaching us and showing us what the future looks like. So, for example, we have the guy, his name is Raj Mukherjee. He runs Indeed.com, helping us with operations. Oh, Indeed.com is one of our sponsors too. Shout out Indeed.com, Raj Mukerjee. I love that guy. He's amazing. And he's one of our advisors.

Moody Glasgow, CMO of Glassdoor, CMO of Zapier, Vice President at Electronic Arts is our marketing advisor. We have Dan Putt of Reboot.I.O. We have the chief people officer of duolingo. And so every single person across every single department in leadership gets a cheat code. They get an advisor that we just pay hourly for. And that hourly is a lot. But relative to what they help us not have to learn the hard way or the long way or the expense, way is insanely violent. I don't think enough companies are doing that. They're like, oh, I have to

hire someone. No, you can hire an affordable person and then affordable. I love that word. Right. And get someone on hourly to be your advisor. Two follow-up questions. Sure. Number one, how did you find them and know that they were available for hourly consultation? Number two, is there an implementation gap between the advice that they give and your ability to execute on that advice? And if so, how do you bridge that? Yeah. So, how you find him is first off identifying what are the three problems if you had someone that they would actually solve for you. Okay, if they were here right now, you had a perfect person. What would they solve? Like, oh, they would solve this and solve this. Okay, cool. Now you know what you actually need.

Because otherwise you're just going to go, oh, this person works at a cool company, which I've done a lot of. I'm like, oh, they went to Harvard. Yeah, they don't know. Still. Right. What did you actually do? And so really understanding what you need. So when you go to people and say, here's my three problems, walking through how you'd solve them or how you have solved them. For instance, with Moody, we are going over, it gets more technical. We're getting over like our return buyer strategy. So not brand new buyers, but people who bought once, how do we get them to come back second, third, fourth, fifth, sixth, seventh, and tenth time?

And he's like, focusing on one to two is wrong. Focus on three to five. And then we did some analysis of like the frequency that people come back at. Point being he's right. And he cheated for us telling us that that is probably because one to two is really hard. The inelasticity to get them to back is hard versus if someone's already buying, just to get them to buy a little more is easier. Now, how do we find Moody? We knew our problems. We started LinkedIn in different companies that we thought people would work at that

could be advised us. And then that was just cold emailing. So I'd say there's two strategies within that that I highly recommend. Number one, tell them you're going to pay them a lot of money. That's it. So I would, and I get these sometimes and I send these often as we're recruiting people. hey, we want to pay $1,000 for an hour just to talk to you. Almost everyone replies that, you know. That is very effective. So, number one, when you're emailing someone, what do they get right away? And these people are already so rich that at 1,000 an hour,

you're like, at least know these guys are serious. Right. That's one. Second way is who do you already really, really admire and like that you're like, this person knows? And then I'm going to ask that person for, for instance, Danputt, reboot.io, which is a, they have a great podcast. We hire them as coaches for us, as my CEO.

CEO coach, I said, we're having a lot of HR issues. Like, here's our issues that we're having within our HR department. Who do you know? He's like, oh, the chief people officer digginglingo. Let me introduce you. So who can refer you that is connected? Because great people stay with great people. Right. And so he was able to refer it. And then your second question was, like, how to, oh, the implementation gap. So it's understanding the expectations of the advisors. We have some advisors who will do spreadsheet modeling. We have some advisors who will do the work. And we have some advisors that are like, we're not doing, I'm not doing anything. Right.

Don't expect anything. And so it is just very dependent on who you're working with of what they're willing to do. Right. But do you have problems with your internal team not being necessarily equipped to be able to implement what is being advised? No, it's the opposite problem. Because what happens is, let's say you're in any company. You're like, I want to get a great content creator. I want to get a great salesperson.

I want to get a great developer. They don't want to work for you. Right. They want to work where they're going to get paid fat and they don't have to do anything or they're already in a really happy job. So you can't get them. They're probably at Google or some company making a lot of money doing nothing. The strategy that's the APSumo way is I can hire someone who's got heart that wants to work hard but doesn't have the experience necessarily for much more affordable. Eventually we raise their sellers, but then the advisor advise them because it's much easier to hire someone who's willing. and they don't have all the capabilities, but we can pay for them to get the capabilities.

So, for instance, we have Sean. Sean joined as our junior sales guy, the lowest paid lowest person at our company. And he joined five years ago. And he did work hard, so we liked him. It was very intelligent. And now five years later, he is our head of all revenue. He's responsible for $70 million, which is impressive. And so we've hired the chief revenue officer of MindBody Online, you know, that like,

yoga thing. Oh, yeah, yeah. So we hired him for a while and then we've hired, you know, outdoorsy? It's like the RV Airbnb company. Oh, interesting. It's huge. It's huge. So we hired, we've hired both of them and we've hired other people for Sean to be coached up. So Sean had all the abilities, you just have some of the experience. And now Sean's, it's insane. Like, we can predict our revenue within 5% every single month. And that's hard because we don't have recurring revenue. That's right. It's, it's good. And so it's daily deals. It's daily deals on, you know, software for solopreneers and small business. and so a deal can do really well and a deal could, you know, be a surprise. And so we've shone

with coaching over five, six years and our culture is, that's what we want to see succeed. That's who our customers are. They're the underdogs. They're the people that want a chance. Same as this book. It's like, hey, I want a chance to do something different. Okay, we're going to show you. We'll help you do it. And that's the same thing how we've hired in our company. Like, Amin worked at was a project manager at Microsoft. He became CEO. You know, I was fired and rejected all through Silicon Valley. Yeah, you, you were turned down from a job at Google because you couldn't do long division. I've known you for 10 years. I never knew that. I never knew you almost. I still can't do long division. It's hard. Well, there's a few. I do like Matt. Actually, I got rejected by Google twice.

Yeah, rejected by Google twice, rejected by Microsoft. Wait, so once was for Long Division, what was the other time for? First time, it was in college, they rescinded the offer. I don't, I don't know why. And the second time was after Facebook, I went and got applied for the job. And I was doing the Long Division and I couldn't do it. And they rejected it. But just rejected across the board. And, you know, I think that's how I think of myself. And I feel like that was at the same time a training ground to learn how to run a company, how to do content, how to learn how to start a business that I can teach other people doing that too. So yeah, I do feel like our company serve the people that have a belief, but maybe need a little bit of confidence, need a little

support. Right. All right. Well, we're coming to the end of our time. Are there any things I haven't asked about that you really want to emphasize? What's the number one thing your audience would love to know? Not just in money, but like if you could solve one problem for your listeners and your viewers, what would be the one thing you can magically solve for them? I'd say the question that I most commonly hear is that people say, hey, I have all of these different goals and priorities. You know, I want X, I want Y, I want Z, but I only have a very limited bucket of money. How do I pick what's most important? What do you tell them?

Timeline everything out. You want to pay for a wedding in one year. You want to pay for a bunch of travel, X amount of money per year. So you want to have a wedding. You want to have a travel. You want to make a down payment on a house. You want to replace your car within the next five years. You want two kids and you want to be able to send them to college.

Right. Timeline out all of those goals. Just draw those out on a giant timeline, figure out when each goal is due and how much each one is going to cost. And then you divide to figure out how much you would need to be saving right now based on a particular return projection in order to save that money. And typically what will happen is when people do this exercise, they find out that the amount of money that they would need to save is more than they make, right? Or just very unrealistic. And so then it becomes, all right, how can we get you to either drop some of these or expand out the timelines or shrink the budgets on the goals or make more money? Those are really going to be your four choices there. What are people's dreams like, hey, I want to be able to afford different things and how can I do it ultimately? With you afford anything audience, a lot of people want work to ultimately be optional, you know, like freedom. Right? And that's what it is for both of us. Like we could stop working tomorrow. I don't want to. And I know you don't want to. But in theory, that's possible. And there is a certain psychological freedom that comes from knowing that we could, you know, that that option is always on the table. Yeah, it was crazy. Even though I would never take it, you know? Well, I have a financial manager and this wealth manager guy, and he's like, you know, you never have to work again? He's like, at your current spending, I spend around $20,000 a month. He's like, you never have to work in.

I was like, can you double check those numbers? I was like, really? That's wild. But the bigger thing that I thought of this morning, I was thinking of talking with you and sharing with your audience, though, is that I planted the seed and I started. It wasn't that I had all this money. In fact, you lost a billion dollars. I go to his life coach therapist after I didn't get this money. She goes, no, let's just write out everything you could have bought with a billion.

It wasn't a billion then. It was only, I think, about $100 million. She was like, write everything you want. I was like, I want an M3, BMW M3. I want to get like a house in Palo Alto. All right, how much is that? At the time, maybe it would say $1.5. M3 is $45,000.

Okay, so you didn't get $100 million. But to live the life, you're telling me you'd like to live, you need about a million and a half dollars. Like, do you think you can get that? I was like, yeah, I do. Maybe you didn't really miss out too much. If you're getting to live and get the things you actually really want it. So I do think for the people out there that want to be able to prioritize things, why not just get all of them? And the way you can do it is there's upside when you have your own businesses.

Right, yeah. You don't have to, like, there's some things lately that I feel lucky and fortunate that I have the capital to not have to think about it. For instance, my girlfriend lives in Spain, so I'm buying duplicates of almost most of things I own. Spain and America. So I have two $15,000 bikes. And I have all this massage equipment, two different versions of it in American Spain. That's super luxury to me. But it's because 13 years ago, I had a freedom number of $3,000. And I was like, okay, let's figure how I can get there. And that's led now to me make millions of dollars a year for myself. But that's because I found it. I started it and I stuck with it. Which I think a lot of people, they dream about it, they hope about it,

but they're not doing about it. It's like, okay, just plant one thing today. Get the $1. dollar, right? Get that one small thing. And that, that to me is don't worry about the downside. Just worry about how far can you go with these different options. Right. How do you avoid thinking small? Right? Your original freedom number was 3,000 a month, 36,000 a year. Yeah. Right. And that, okay, that was 13 years ago. So with inflation, we'll say it's less than $4,000 per month. The equivalent of we'll say $48,000 a year in today's dollars. Totally. I lived very cheap till I was 37. And when I talk about cheap, Let me be very concrete. I lived in my mom's house for two years.

I lived in my aunt's basement for a year. I lived on couches for a year. While I was making six figures at mint.com, I was living on couches because I didn't want to pay rent. And then I didn't really spend money on clothes. I didn't spend money pretty much on anything. And to some extent, I thought money can't buy happiness. I think the point I'm trying to say is the point I'm making for people is that find the thing that actually gives you the joy, find the life you actually want to live.

and then you can actually go execute towards it. Like you can go and do it, but you have to start it today because it's not going to happen for some time, 10 years is what it could take and find a thing that you want to stick with for that long of time. For me,

is promoting free goods talking about this. The other thing I would say that changed my perspective about my freedom number and how it's evolved because I didn't really change it. I was making millions still living like I needed to only have 30,000 and not spending any of it,

was you got to test before you invest. This is an absolute value. And so when COVID happened, that is when I finally enjoyed my money. Like I have, you know, I had a 2004 Miata, which I still own and I love. And when COVID happened, I was like, I really could probably die. I could die. Why don't I try living a bigger life? Let me just try it out.

Because like sometimes it's hard to have, it's hard to know the ending if you haven't seen it. That's why I hire these advisors. They've seen the ending. They've seen the big thing. So I bring them on and they show me their bigger vision. And so when COVID happened, I started renting fancy houses. I rented a $20,000 Malibu beach house. And then I rented a lakehouse in Austin that was $7,000.

They were cheaper. They're all half price, by the way. Because normally because it was COVID, no one was going. Then I rented in Rollingwood, Austin, Texas, which is one of the most expensive neighborhoods where like McConnor and all these people live. And after testing a bigger vision, testing a bigger dream, I wasn't going to go back. I didn't want to play smaller. Right. I felt better.

It wasn't, I guess growing up, I thought material is bad and owning. things is bad and it owns you and all these things. And it also makes me feel good. It makes me feel happy. I can share it. It makes me feel excited that when I go in this house, I'm proud of myself. What you're describing is money shaming and money negativity, right? These are lessons that a lot of us learn in childhood. Big time. Right? We learn to associate being rich with being bad, right? Rich people are evil kind of a thing. The Montgomery Burns from The Simpsons. Yeah. And then it's not talked about because the people, no one wants to hear someone complain they can't enjoy money.

Right. But I think the takeaway for anyone out there is just what do you actually enjoy? Is it really a million dollars that you need or is it just to have a job you like? Is it really just you want to have creativity so you can start a business to be creative, to be making baskets, to do something on Etsy, to do some consulting, to do some maybe lawn work or pool care, whatever it is. It's finding that what you actually enjoy and then, you know, trying it out and moving towards it. I think the other thing I would like to encourage people with money is have a dream. And I think when people they have visions and the future, they're like, it always sounds so ominous sometimes.

It's so big and it's so unlimited, which is so amazing, but also scary. And so I like coming back to the book and coming back to a million dollar weekend, these things, just right out of a dream. Just like, don't limit it. I like one year time frames. It's just very digestible. It's like, what do you want to do this year? Just one year. What's my one year dream list?

And so having that and then really thinking, okay, what am I actually, is this, is this what I want? or is this what others went? Having that and then thinking about, what am I really excited about? And so with Absumo, it was having people around that have big dreams, big visions, and then also really thinking about,

okay, what do I want to spend the next year on? That's gotten me excited. I can have a big vision. I can do this stuff. Like, I find the thing you're actually excited to kind of keep moving forward towards.

And it takes some work. And a lot of different years, therapy, failures, depressions, all these different things to finally get to this point where I'm at. Right. You asked me, you said you thought we'd be talking about money a bit more. What are some of the other kind of major takeaways or a ha's that you've had, particularly in the last couple of years? As I've enjoyed the money more. I think one, I believe every single person should go on a date with their money and figure out what relationship you have. Everyone has a different relationship. Some people are monogamous. Some people are little freaky. And you just have such a variety of relationships based on your parents, based on your network.

based on who your friends are. And I think understanding where it is and then maybe thinking about who do I want to be dating. Right. So let's say you go on a date with your money and you realize that you are money avoidant. Oh, boy, way. Which I guess if you're money avoidant, you probably wouldn't be listening this deep into a personal finance podcast. These people, the people who are listening. Yeah.

People here are in the right place. But I'm sure the people who are listening have spouses, friends, siblings who are money avoidant, right? Yeah. My brother. Yeah. So for me, in terms of aha moments, one of the things that I found insanely helpful with money is have just a number where you're not making a decision about money. And that number should go probably up over time. So mine is $1,000.

If it's under $1,000, I'm not going to spend time thinking about it. Why is because I'll spend time. I'm like, oh, do I really need this? Do I really? It really doesn't matter. Right. I won't notice it gone. But the amount of time.

I spend, oh, I don't know, I don't know, I don't know. That number can be $10. It doesn't have to, mine has now at 1,000. I don't have it, like, I don't know, I'm wearing an Apsumo shirt and Farity and Swaths. Oh, Farity was also a podcast podcast. Oh, shut out. I love, dude, I'm like your target listener. Like, these people know me.

This is why I'm here. I love Farity. I think it's a little overpriced, so you have to wait for coupons if you can. I still like a good deal. But, like, I think we probably still have a discount code. If you got that code, shout out Farity. Yeah. They're F-A-H-E-R-T-Y brand.

I love their clothes. But figure out whatever number it is because I know that there's some times where I'm spending 30 minutes trying to think, do I really need this thing? Do I want it? If not, I can give it to someone else. So that's been an aha moment. Just picking some numbers. So if there's two colors, get both. It's under the number.

Yeah. So, yeah, having your number is such a big one. I think trying things. Like, you don't have to buy a Ferrari to see if you like it or not. You can just rent it on Turo.com for day. Right. You don't have to live in a house. Maybe house doesn't matter to you.

Maybe you want to live in a van or whatever. Yeah. I tried it. And I was like, yeah, hell yeah. I love this. Find the, you know, try these things out. A few other things I would recommend are AHA moments. One, create an LLC.

If you have an LLC, you can actually expense your cell phone. You can expense your home internet. You can expense a lot of things. And so an AHA moment is like having your own business, as much as there's now unlimited upside, there's a lot of opportunities for you to expense things that you would be paying post-tax money from your personal. Right. So that's another AHA moment.

Hiring staff. I know it sounds a hell of rich life. It's not, it's not even crazy. You don't have to be a multimillioner be that. Like I have a house manager. They're generally between $25 and $35. It's like having staff so I don't have to. I actually sometimes do it.

I do it myself because I like it at times. Like, all right, I'm going to return these items. But if you don't want to do it or you want to do other things or you want to relax with your wife or husband or work on things, for 30 bucks an hour, they do the mail, they put the groceries away, they pick up the groceries, they return. packages, they supervise if things need to get fixed in my house. It's not that expensive. And the fact that I can either relax or work on things that can make more money, I don't know if I could have to go back to not having that. It's not even a rich person

life. Like that's affordable to most people, 30 bucks. Yeah. Yeah. So, I mean, if they're working, what, five hours a week or something? Yeah. It's about, it ends up being about $1,000 a month. Okay. So for $12,000 a year, which, remember what I've talked about again, I have business expensive. So it's a business expense because this is stuff that I'm now doing so I can work on things. It just creates a lot more time and relaxation in my life to have a person that, hey, can you go take my car to the shop? Hey, can you go get this washed, whatever it is? If you ever want to have a business, you don't have to trade your money for time. You could hire someone for that money. Right. And that's a really big misnomer people miss.

It's like, oh, I don't want to do trade my time for dollars. Like, fine, hire someone you can. I say last thing that's been pretty interesting aha moments. Get two of everything. I think that's been a thing where I just find the things you like and just go with those. So like I have two of my bikes. But is that because you live between Austin and Spain? And in case it whenever goes away, they go to stock. Like I don't want to not be able to get it again.

So now a lot of things, not just because Spain and America, I'm buying doubles of like my clothes, doubles of my like bike shoes just to have a backup. Because I don't know. It's, I do know. It reduces the amount of stress of trying to find new things versus like, I like these shoes. I like these items.

Let me just go and I have double of them. And I don't have to think about it again if they're ever out of stock. Yeah. Well, okay. So I do a modified version of that, which is once I find a brand that I like, I just,

I stop. I'm not looking at any other brands. What would have been in seven of your home moments with money and how it's and it evolves, right? It does. People might hear me and like, oh,

it's like, at my previous house, which I told you, I went to a month ago, it's an 800 square feet. It's a wreck. The floors are cracked. The doors are barely lock. I used to think people are breaking in. The roof has like a kind of like sinking in the kitchen. I lived for three years.

And I remember when you first bought it. Yeah. That's a trash, man. Holy crap. But I think it says, what does it say about me? You talked about vision? It's like, okay, my vision is to live in a place that I don't feel good about myself. And I feel like, I honestly felt scared there.

And I was like, is this what I, is this what I want? Because like my house, I think I can do forever, the one I meant I can do forever. It's like, this is beyond my dream. So thinking about where you are now, is like, is this where you want to be and what does it say about you? And try some other things out and see where that is. What would have been some of your money aha moments? Big a ha. Yeah, and evolutions.

You know, I think when I was, when I was in my 20s, I, especially in my early 20s, I had so, such little confidence in my ability to make money that that lack of confidence drove my frugality because it was ultimately a scarcity mindset, right? I was not confident in my ability to make money and therefore I felt like I had to cling on to whatever I had. I became very, very, very, very frugal. But that frugality was driven by really being in a bad mental space by just scarcity and lack. And as I've become more confident over time, my spending has increased. And then the pandemic really helped shift things because it was, and we were talking about this before we started recording, that was a big light bulb moment for me of like, you know, I've, I've always assumed that

I'm going to live until my, my 90s. I've just, I've always assumed I would live to a, to a very old age. And the pandemic was the first time that I was like, no, I could be dead tomorrow. Like, truly. And I know that's a little bit of a cliche, like, oh, you're bad a mom. No, no, no, it's a catalyst. You know, but that was when I was like, I'm, I'm, I need to enjoy this now. And I need to stop letting the tail wag the dog. I think that was the biggest. Uh-huh.

Like it used to be, I would make decisions around what is the most economical. I'd find the most cost effective option. And that would be the one that I would choose. And I flip the script and said, you know what? What's the one that I want? the one I want is what I'm going to pick. And in the context of what I want, I'll try to find the most economical possible way to do it, but I'm not going to deviate from what I want.

Or to put that more succinctly, let the heart lead and the mind execute rather than let the mind lead. What things have you spent money on? And what's the opposite? Because I think that's also appealing because everyone's got different things that matter. I have a house cleaner. That's amazing. I'd fly business class. I have enough status that that can.

It's paid for for miles, but like, you know, all of that is opportunity cost. Things I've bought that I've really loved. I mean, I think I think largely it's like building out a team around me. You know, it's it's paying for people to do certain jobs. I think that's the bulk of it. That practice of generosity, I talked about how lack of confidence and scarcity mindset fueled my, particularly my early 20s, early to mid-20s. one of the ways that I was able to get over that, that scarcity mindset is that practice of generosity.

And sometimes it's really subtle. Sometimes it's just it's tipping 25% instead of 20, right? Or friends will go see a movie and I'll pick up movie tickets for the entire group. You know, and my friends are like, oh, Venmo you. And I'm like, no, don't worry about it. One dollar. Yeah, exactly. But things like that, that to me,

those are like little reminders of, hey, I'm capable of making more. Yeah. Yeah. It's being generous pretty cool. It is a nice feeling that you can actually help other people out and, I don't know, just be thoughtful and be able to afford these different things. Yeah. And not worry about the money so much.

It's a real luxury. And I think a lot of people aren't there and some people are and wherever you are in your path. It's just, it's accessible. It's available. And it is funny that it's like, oh, I don't know if it's available. I can't do it because I have a day job because I have kids like, no, you can actually, just like you, you had a day job and then you created your own jobs and then you can that evolved.

It doesn't happen overnight, but it won't happen if it doesn't start. Right. Thank you, Noah. So the link is what million dollar weekend.com slash afford anything? Yes. So all the resources, if you want to see how to do one-minute business model, if they want to see the walkthrough of how to understand the market's growing, if they want to see some of my income, I actually have a sheet on there about my income sources.

It's my day job, which I have a company, my real estate and these different things about how I get my money. Nice. Awesome. Cool. We'll link to all of that in the show notes. Thank you, Noah. Thanks. Thank you, Noah. What are three key takeaways that we got from this conversation? Number one, when anyone starts a business, they want to get an initial customer base up and going as soon as possible. right? If you're starting a business, you need people to buy stuff from you. But it can be hard to figure out who is actually going to be a paying customer. Whose problem are you solving? And who is willing to put money towards the solution that you're offering? So in the first key takeaway, Noah shares a very targeted approach that will help you figure out how to find those first customers. What I'm specifically looking for is as you're getting a business going, generally I think it's easy to think about in three. What are three groups I could go to that I could help?

Right. And so for me, it's like, all right, who do I know? Do I know any people in podcasting? Okay. Is that a group I have access to? Start with who you know because fundamentally a business exists to solve a problem. People have problems and businesses solve those problems in exchange for compensation. And so if you start with the people that you know, you know them best.

And so you know you understand their problems best. And so you're likely going to be able to solve those problems. That's the first key takeaway. Key takeaway number two. It can be terrifying and feel very risky to start a business. And even the most successful entrepreneurs are often plagued by doubt. That is incredibly normal. But there is a way around that.

In this takeaway, Noah shares two things that can help you overcome some of your most challenging moments. The first is redirecting your focus to the bigger picture, the why behind your business. And the second is how to turn potential disadvantages into strengths that can help you differentiate yourself and your product. Everyone is busy. And what I would say on the opposite side, though, is everyone does have a dream. That's why when we started the conversation, just tell me your dream. Yeah. And then we have something to work towards because then we have a blueprint of what we need to go.

There's answers for every one of these. I don't have enough money. That's your advantage. We're doing Black Friday planning at Absumo. It's a team of 10 people to plan Black Friday. Versus if it's you, no money, you don't have time because you're busy with work. That's an advantage. And so it makes you be a lot more creative.

That is the second key takeaway. Finally, key takeaway number three, growing a business, scaling it, getting it to reach new heights is very different than starting a business, initially seeding it. Growing that business can require expertise in a lot of different areas, and gaining that expertise can be costly in terms of both time and money that is lost due to inexperience. And so in the third and final key takeaway, Noah shares his cheat code. to navigate inexperience and grow his business more quickly. I would say our one major cheat code that everyone can copy you, any listener can copy for any business out there, is to hire elite advisors on hourly.

That is a cheat code of ours. So what does that do is that I get people that I could never afford, still to the state can't afford you. And they are teaching us and showing us what the future looks like. Every single person across every single department in leadership gets a cheat code. They get an advisor that we just pay hourly for. And that hourly is a lot. But relative to what they help us not have to learn the hard way or the long way or the expensive way is insanely violent.

Those are three key takeaways from this conversation with entrepreneur, Noah Kagan. The guy who famously is not a billionaire, but that's okay. because his layout from Facebook provided the seeds, the impetus, the motivation for him to go out on his own and start his own business and become very, very successful on his own terms. If you have made it this far into the episode, then you're clearly interested in starting a business. And so here's what I would recommend.

Go to afford anything.com slash show notes. sign up to get the show notes, give us your email address. The reason for that is because we are going to, on Kickstarter, we're going to see whether or not you are interested in us developing a course on how to start your first online business. We haven't built this course yet. We just want to know whether or not this is something that you want us to do. And we are going to announce this Kickstarter to people who subscribe to our show notes.

So afford anything.com slash show notes. Sign up to receive our show notes in your inbox. It's completely free, of course. And you will be the first to know when we announce our Kickstarter for this course. We want to see whether or not this is something that you want us to build. And if it is, we'll build it, but we'll only build it if you want us to. So again, afford anything.com slash show notes, sign up for the show notes. And when we are ready, we will roll out this Kickstarter.

Thank you so much for tuning in. My name is Paula Pant. This is the Afford Anything podcast. I hope you enjoyed today's episode. If you did, please share it with a friend, a colleague, a sibling. Share it with the people you know. Thanks so much for tuning in. Thanks for being part of the community.

And I will catch you. in the next episode.