Deep Questions with Cal Newport - Ep. 290: Financing the Deep Life (w/ Noah Kagan)

Episode Date: March 4, 2024

One of the most common strategies for achieving a powerful ideal lifestyle vision is to leverage entrepreneurial activities to find a stable source of income that allows autonomy and flexibility. To help understand how to succeed in such ventures, Cal interviews the entrepreneur and author Noah Kagan about his new book, "The Million Dollar Weekend." Recording on the road as part of his book tour for "Slow Productivity," Cal also shares some lessons about what he's been observing.Below are the questions covered in today's episode (with their timestamps). Get your questions answered by Cal! Here’s the link: bit.ly/3U3sTvoVideo from today’s episode:  youtube.com/calnewportmediaINTERVIEW: Marketing guru Noah Kagan [11:06]Links:Use this link to preorder a signed copy of “Slow Productivity”: peoplesbooktakoma.com/preorder-slow-productivity/ FREE download excerpt and 2 Bonuses for “Slow Productivity”: calnewport.com/slow Thanks to our Sponsors: This show is brought to you by BetterHelp. Give online therapy a try at betterhelp.com/deepquestionsmauinuivenison.com/deepquestionszocdoc.com/deepexpressvpn.com/deepThanks to Jesse Miller for production, Jay Kerstens for the intro music, Kieron Rees for slow productivity music, and Mark Miles for mastering. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

I'm Cal Newport, and this is Deep Questions, the show about cultivating a deep life in a world drowning in digital distraction. Now, normally I would be joining you from the Deep Work HQ in Tacoma Park, Maryland, along with my producer Jesse, but not today. Today, I'm actually recording from my hotel room in Austin, Texas. I am on a book tour recording podcast in advance of the publication of my new book, low productivity, which is released here in the U.S. on Tuesday, March 5th, the day after this podcast air. So I'm very excited about that. So because I'm on the road, what I've done is I recorded an interview before I left, an interview that's relevant to the pragmatic quest to live a deeper life.

So that's what I'm going to get to for the bulk of the episode. But I thought it might be fun before we get to the interview for me to share three observations I have from being on the road promoting this book. First things first, however, a final gentle reminder. If you ordered, if you pre-ordered slow productivity, please make sure that you submit your receipt to get your pre-order bonuses. All you have to do is send your receipt to slow at pre-order bonuses.com, regardless of where you ordered the book, and we will get those bonuses to you.

If you submit this as late as March 5th, we'll still get you the bonuses. I want to quickly note one of the bonuses I've added to this list is audio commentary on every chapter of the book. I recorded a five to ten minute commentary on each of the chapters of the book where I give you a behind-the-scenes look on my struggles to make that chapter work and how the ideas in it came together. It's a cool behind-the-scenes understanding of how books like this are written. That's one of multiple bonuses you'll get when you submit your receipt. You can find out more at calnewport.com slash slow. And of course, if you're listening to this after March 5th, the book is out. It is ready for you to order and get to you right away.

I know you're going to love it. If you like this podcast, you'll love the book. Order slow productivity wherever books are sold. If you want to come see me in person in Washington, D.C., I want to see you as well. March 16th is your chance. So on March 16th, we're having a book launch event at Politics and Pros on Connecticut Avenue. It's going to be at 3 p.m. It's going to be me on stage with friend of the show, Dave Epstein, New York Times bestselling author of Range.

We're going to have a conversation about slow productivity. I'm going to take questions from the audience. I'm going to sign books. I would love to see some of you that have been listening to me over all these years. I'd love to see you in person, March 16th, Politics and Pros in Washington, D.C. at 3 p.m. You can find out more details at the Politics and Prose website. All right, so let's get into my three observations from being on the road promoting slow productivity. One, and I think this is positive, people are resonating with the term slow productivity.

Even before they know exactly what that term means, they like the sound of it. Now, I had a similar thing happen with deep work and digital minimalism. In both cases, the terms excited people before they even know. knew the details. And what that tells me, when this happens, what this tells me is that there is a deeply felt cultural issue that I'm getting at. So I think slow productivity is resonating because people are tired of fast productivity. They feel overloaded. They feel busy. Slowness seems right. Somehow being able to slow down yet still produce stuff, the idea that's baked into this definition into this term is appealing to people. So I think, at least this is a lot of. So I think, at least this is

my hypothesis. When people begin to resonate with terms before they know the details, it's my sense that I'm touching a important point in the cultural conversation. So I think that's a good sign. All right. My second observation, reactions to the book really break down depending on the background of the person who is interviewing me. So there are three different reactions I've been getting to this book, each of which is resonating with a different one of the three core principles of slow productivity that I cover in the book. So the first big group is the entrepreneurial group. This is perhaps best captured by the pre-publication interview that went live last week,

me and Tim Ferriss. He's more from the entrepreneurial group. And what you'll see is in the entrepreneurial-minded interviewers, they really hone in on principle number three of the book, obsess over quality. So look, for example, at the quotes and clips that Tim Ferriss has tweeted or sent out about my interview, and a lot of this is really focused on, do things really well. Don't get distracted from the main thing that you do of value, the main thing that's going to turn heads.

Business is a trap that gets in the way of producing awesome work. That's what the entrepreneurial crowd is honing in on. On the other hand, we have more of the organizational corporate business crowd. I did an interview like this just the other day down in LA with a show that deals a lot more with people within big organizations. They really hone in on principle number one. Do fewer things. Right? So they're concerned about overload.

The corrosion here is not busyness as keeping you away necessarily from your core positive selling proposition. It's having too much on your plate keeping you miserable. And they're really interested in these interviews on the practical. on the practical tips when you're working within a larger organization for workload management. How can I reduce the number of things I have on my plate at once without somehow making myself a pariah or making it seem like I'm putting on airs? How do I navigate the social political space of a large corporation to get towards something like a slower definition of productivity? Now, the book gets deep into the weeds on those tactics. Specifically, here's different things you can do to manage your workload in a way that can keep it reasonable.

without upsetting people and in fact making people be more impressed by you. The third group, and this is probably the smallest, is more of the artistic professional writer crew. For them, it's principle number two that resonates. Work at a natural pace. So, you know, if, and this makes sense, if you live, as one of the interviewers said in an interview yesterday, the artist life where you have full autonomy over what you're doing and it's you.

You're not trying to grow a business. you're not an entrepreneur, you're just trying to produce art, they really hone in on principle number two, work at a natural pace. I don't want to have too much work on any one day. I want to balance periods of intensity with periods of rest. Seasonality is a real big topic of conversation, how you spread out work so that it's not too intense in any one moment. So it's just interesting.

Different people are resonating with different parts of this book. And so what I find myself having to do as I do this tour, which includes, and I'm checking my notes here, all the podcasts in the world, or at least that's what it feels like, I have to code switch pretty quickly. Oh, which of the, what's the tone here? Oh, this is a artist crowd. Oh, this is an entrepreneur crowd. Oh, this is a corporate crowd. But I think it's a good sign again for the book that we can cover that many bases. All right, here's my third observation. This is not specific to my book, but more about the media industry writ large. I found it very poignant the other day. I was in L.A. being driven out to a podcast. And so we're driving, I was staying in West Hollywood, and then we were driving out to the Malibu Hills, driving by leaving Hollywood, the Big Fox Studio. So we're driving by one of these massive television movie studios,

huge sound stages, the gates, the famed gates. And you go through the gates, and there's a gatehouse and a palm tree line colonnade that leads you to these big art deco, administrative buildings. It's just they're massive, like 20, 30, 40 acre campuses. So driving by a large studio

and Fox Studio in particular, we keep driving until we get to a light industrial sector in a parking lot somewhere. And in like a relatively modest warehouse, this podcaster had built out a nice studio. Warehouse is good for building studios because you have room to put up lighting grids

and room for the editing teams, etc. And what struck me is, there is a growing group of people for when they sit down at their TV, they're like, I'm going to eat lunch, I'm going to sit down at my smart TV. The stuff that's being produced in that Fox studio, the TV shows that they can find that Netflix has bought,

is directly now in competition with the video coming out of that podcast they recorded in that light industrial warehouse. But the person sitting down there is as likely to say, let me go over and watch this Fox produced television show as they are to say, let me load up the YouTube app on my smart TV and watch an episode of a podcast where, you know, it's shot in 4K, it's well lit, the host is great, it's a two-hour conversation with someone I really care about, and this is going to be interesting. It's David and Goliath.

It's in direct competition. But look at the difference in scale. 40 acres, giant campus, multi-billion dollar company. On the other hand, four guys in a warehouse. So something really interesting is happening out here. I mean, the reason why I'm on the road is that most of the major podcast, a big podcast, are all in on video. You have to be there in person. They're building these studios.

From the point of view of a podcaster, the studios seem large. From the point of view of the television and movie industry, they seem teeny, laughably teeny. And yet, they're becoming a source of competition. So I think something is happening here. I really do think emerging from podcasting is not going to be competition to radio. It's going to be competition to linear television. I have a carousel of super high quality shot podcast episodes with people I really like, and I have Young Sheldon over on my Netflix carousel.

I don't know. These both depends what mood I'm in. But the production costs are so much lower for the formal that this becomes a really interesting battle. So I really think something's interesting going on. If you're caring too much about the specifics of YouTube, don't. YouTube just happens to be the place where people are practicing video right now. It's the only game in town. It's not going to be the game that wins.

I don't think the future of independent video media is going to have much to do with a curation algorithm like YouTube has. Something interesting is happening and that experience of driving from the Fox Studio to a small warehouse that's making competitive programming, I find that really interesting. All right. So let's talk about the interview. Enough about me. Let's talk about the interview. Today I'm going to be talking with Noah Kagan.

Noah Kagan is a well-known entrepreneur. He was Facebook employee number 30. So he has good tales about young Mark. Zuckerberg, was also employee number four at Mint, went on to start multiple seven-figure companies, including his current company app, Sumo. The reason why I had him on is he published a book recently called Million Dollar Weekend, which tries to give an evidence-based concrete step-by-step plan for how do you start up a company that could do seven figures in revenue, not five figures in revenue, but also not eight or nine figures in revenue, right? Not how do I

start the next Facebook and also not how do I have a hobby, but how do I start a company that I can make a real good living on, but is not going to consume all my time? Now, I thought this was an important topic because when we discuss the deep life on this show, one of the main levers a lot of people are interested in exploring to cultivate their vision of an ideal lifestyle is to have some sort of entrepreneurial source of income, enough income that they have options, but not so much income that they have to put all of their energy into trying to grow this business. So I thought Noah could give us some evidence-based step-by-step advice for what is the reality of trying to build one of these sustainable sources of autonomy granting entrepreneurial income. He had a lot of

interesting things to say. I think you're going to enjoy this interview. Enjoy my discussion with Noah Kagan. All right. Noah Kagan. I am glad you are here. I am happy that you are here. I feel as if for the last 20 years, we've kind of circled each other. Like my Silicon Valley friends all knew you, you know, so you were always like one degree of separation away. I can't believe it took this long, 20 years, but I'm glad we finally get a chance to talk. It's awesome to talk. Definitely.

You know, I've read your books and you're online. I think you've used some of our software that we've built. So it's good to have a deeper chat today. There we go. Yes. I do insist that every guest on my show use deep as an adjective obsessively. It's a deep question, Cal. We're going to call the book A Million Deep Weekend, but we changed it last minute.

Oh, man, I'm telling you, it works. Put deep on a book cover itself. So that is, let me, I'll cue up for my, for my listeners, my game plan for this interview, because I've got a plan here. So as Noah mentioned, he has a new book out, million dollar weekend. At the high level, it talks about how do you get a company started that can do a million dollars in revenue quickly? of course, even in a weekend. So we're not talking about how do I start the next Facebook, right? How do I create a giant unicorn?

How do I get a good revenue producing company that can support an interesting life? How does that actually happen? No one knows what he's talking about. He's probably best known. Would you say for Apsumo? I mean, this is your big company. Yeah, I think AppSuma.com are getting, you know, I've been talking about getting fired by Facebook now for 20 years. So that too, I was number 30 there.

So that was a pretty popular thing. Yeah. So you know, so you've seen, yeah, you know how Facebook started. And by the way, we'll come back to that later. I want to hear about early day Zuck. But, you know, Absumo is a big company, but also you've been involved in many different seven-figure plus startup. So just you know about this. You know the formula.

So I'll explain to you, Noah, what my listeners are going to be interested in, which is we often talk about on our show, this idea of the deep life where you intentionally craft an ideal image of what your life is like, what all the different attributes are, the values, your day-to-day experience. And then you work backwards to get there. For a lot of people, work is not at the center of that. So what they're looking for is work that they enjoy that also gives them financial flexibility, that gives them the autonomy to help fulfill maybe a more remarkable vision of their life. And so what we want to learn from you today is we're going to learn a lot about the reality, the myths and the reality of trying to create a flexible, autonomous business that really is successful, but is not the all-consuming, you know, we have huge venture capital investment and the lights are on all night.

I mean, how do we find that sweet spot of entrepreneurship unlocking depth? So first of all, is my premise going to match, am I correct in saying that my premise matches what I've read in your book? Are we going to be on the same, we're on the same wavelength here? Yeah. The only thing I would call out is you can build Facebook in a weekend. It was actually started in a weekend. And Airbnb, I think you mentioned that too. That also started in a weekend with just an email.

And it doesn't take people that have PhDs to do that. There's also a lot of ordinary companies and businesses. And I think to your original premise, that's exactly right, where you can start something really quickly, which people find surprising and is a common myth you can't, and create these amazing dream lives. And really, you know, through entrepreneurship, find out who you are. And that's been the biggest surprise and, you know, amazement for myself.

So before we get into what works, what is it that people, people like me get wrong. But like me, I mean, we're navel gazing. We over rationalize. We don't take action. We draw out like a 17-step plan. Like, I'm going to figure out when we think about using entrepreneurship to unlock more options in our life. What are people like me? What are the traps?

What have you seen we get wrong? So the first trap is the certificate life. I have a lot of those, Noah. I know you do. I only have one. I'm like so ashamed to even talk to you. I only went to one college with, I did get two majors,

but that's twice. My brother's a doctor. That's two more than Mark Zuckerberg, though, right? He has no major. So it's all, let's be honest. It's all relative.

That's true. That's true. And, you know, I think certificate life, my brother's a doctor, and, you know, he graduated and he's got,

you know, hundred thousands of debt. And he's like, damn it, you didn't have any debt. And you, like, just started stuff. And now you're rich.

and I'm having to stuck to this 9 to 5 thing that I don't really care for all the time. And what's interesting about it is that you don't need a certificate to succeed in life anymore. I think if you want to do certain things like be a doctor, probably need a certificate. But there's just such a cool life regardless if you follow that path or not.

And I think that's just something that people think they need permission for or they need to get certified and then you just don't, which is so amazing. Just to jump in real quick. Would you say certificate life also really biased you towards trading time for money, which can become a trap, especially for more remarkable things. That's just the path there. I'm a doctor. I'm trading my time for money. I'm a lawyer.

I'm trading my time for money, which can only get you so far because you have to up stressed up income. You can. I mean, I think that that's also another myth of trading time for money. You can trade your money for someone else's time, though, at some point. I think that people don't realize that. Like, all right, well, I'm getting paid $1,000 an hour. Why don't I pay someone $500 a hour and I'll pay for their time to go do that work and make a fit $500 on it. That's entrepreneurship. And everyone out there, if you haven't hired an assistant, I recommend a site called HireMyMom.com or if you hire like a house cleaner.

Those are practices of how am I using money to have time to either make more of it or frankly just chill and spend time doing the things you really want to enjoy. So a lot of times when you go to college and you're taught to stay in the lane, like I grew up in the middle class lane and the middle class lane loves health insurance. Mm-hmm. They're very worried about health insurance. Yeah. They're very worried about health insurance.

And my parents are terrified. Like when I was at Intel, I worked at a cubicle, just, you know, very standard. Like most people, like, I didn't know how people figured out their careers. And when I was leaving to go to this little company called Facebook, they're like, you're leaving health insurance? You are crazy, my friend. I was like, Facebook has health insurance. Don't worry.

So number one, I think that just the reality that you don't need permission to be successful in these areas, you can do it anywhere. Like, there's no physical discrimination. Like, you could be short and succeed in business. You could be looking any color, any gender, and succeed. And I think that's really cool. That's amazing. Like, what other things in this world can ordinary people succeed like that?

Like, you can't do it in most sports. Excuse me. Yeah, that's for sure. Right. Yeah, you can't be a basketball player just because you want to. Yeah. But you can't be an entrepreneurship if you want to. And the beauty is that you can start it today.

And that's one of the things I tell people to do it right. now like today, don't worry how it works. And I think that sometimes people are too smart, right? And a lot of non-smart people have a lot of success as well just because they get started. Yeah. And so they're realizing like, huh, what could I do today? Especially if maybe you're an educated, you know, significantly educated person. Maybe you're good at research. That's a cool business to do. Maybe you have expertise in certain areas. That's a cool business. And realizing you can actually get those things going a lot quicker than you realize and cheaper than you expect is kind of as an eye-opener for most people when they think it's it's supposed to be this

hard, complicated, long process similar to the education maybe they've had. So if that's the first trap that they just don't think it's possible, what happens for those, what goes wrong when someone says, you know what, I'm convinced and I'm just going to, I'm going to jump into it and then it goes awry. So when you see the cases of like, okay, I'm quitting my job, let's rock and roll, my business is going to kill it and it doesn't. What's tripping people up there as well? For those who like the idea of making the move,

but maybe don't think it through or have the evidence, what goes wrong? Well, I always thought risky was having a day job. And I never think that it has to be this big thing that you're like, quit your job and try this thing. It has to work. It's going to take time. And it doesn't work. Like, I've tried 20 businesses to finally get to the one APSumo over a decade that

eventually worked, but you've got to keep trying and trying and trying and starting. Like there's a story in college. I went to Cal and I had a history of economics class. And I was like, you know, I'm smart. I didn't try very hard on this midterm. And I got a C plus. I've never got a C plus. I was like a 3-8 GPA.

I was really proud of myself. And I go to the teacher and I was like, how did I get a C-plus? She's like, well, you didn't try that hard. You didn't really put in the work. And I was like, you're right. True. Yeah, I tried to just get by doing minimal work for maximum return. That's how I got to Berkeley.

And, but it was great. And when you think about that story, it made me recognize, we're, okay, well, yeah, I didn't, I didn't put in the work and that's okay. Let me go put in the work and see what happens. And I ended up getting, I think it would be plus in that class. And it was just more of the valuable lesson. And the same thing applies in business. It's not going to work right away. And all of these failures, you're a professor, you know, when you're doing professing or you're doing new ideas, you have hypothesis.

And then you test them. So think of yourself as an experimenter or a scientist. And you experiment on these things, like, I wanted to try a business blogging today, or I wanted to try this weekend doing a research business. Or this weekend, I wanted to try a consulting business. Hmm. That's my hypothesis. It failed. Okay, what did I learn from that?

And now I'm going to use that in my next experiment next weekend. And all these failures are actually getting you closer to where you want to be. So looking at them as more positives and what am I growing out of this experience versus, I would say most people, like look at YouTube or podcast as a great example. they do one show and they stop. And there's really no difference between the people who win and succeed, except the winners really, besides finding something people want, they stick with it. Yeah. See, I love this idea because I think people get this wrong.

I've seen this even myself is when it comes to doing something that has an interesting or desirable reward, like a business that takes off and is successful, they're hard to find. You have to explore the space of the adjacent possible, right? So new ideas that are possible to build on things that exist before. And it's hard to find what actually works. But too often, just what I think about people I know who have failed at entrepreneurship, when they're looking at case studies, they don't realize that you're seeing a sampling of how many tries it took to succeed. So a lot of people, the average might be seven or eight businesses.

But you're like, let's look at the tail. So like Mark Zuckerberg's first idea or second idea, that did really well. Steve Jobs' second idea. Oh, so my first site, that's how it works. You come up with an idea, and if it's good enough, it's really successful. And if it's not, then you shouldn't be an entrepreneur, so you might as well go all in. Where you're saying, which is my experience from academia, by the way, researchers, you're always exploring this adjacent possible. We publish a lot of papers because you're trying to seek, like, what's really going to take off?

Like, what's really going to change the field? If you knew it in advance, you would only need, like, three researchers. They could just write, here we go. This is like the paper we need this year. So I love this mindset. But then that means, though, if exploration is key, you probably shouldn't be making the really grandiose, I'm just going to quit everything. This first idea, you know, our mortgage depends on. It's definitely going to work tomorrow.

You need to have more of an experimentalist mindset. That seems like a shift for a lot of people. It is. And I've seen this a million-dollar weekend where people realize it could be fun. And, again, it doesn't have to be this big, scary monster. Like, oh, I've got to make all this money. it's like can you get one customer today? Really? Just one? Yeah.

Or can you do one thing that you're maybe a little bit afraid of and realizing that the life you want to live and engineer is just on that a little bit of that other side of discomfort? And I'm seeing it. Like there's a guy who read a million dollar weekend. And he emailed me and he's like, yeah, I read the book and I just went and did stand up this week. I was like, go you. He's like, wow, I didn't realize there's so much more I can do. And, you know, I think that's been almost the interesting part of entrepreneurship about it being fun. but also finding out who you can really become and who you are and realizing it's actually

accessible to everyone. I think there's this intimidation that, oh, I'm not a business person. I'm not that. It's like, great. Embrace that. How do we take that? And what I think, especially if you're an academic or if you had a day job, have you ever, have you ever been fired, Cal?

I've never not been in academia. My entire adult life. Oh, okay. Never not been in academia. Out in the non-academic world, we get fired. I don't know about this. I've been fired twice. My ivory tower doesn't have this word.

We just have your tenure case was declined and then you very quietly leave academia and get a job in industry. That's as close as we get to firing people. Yeah, man. When you've been fired, you kind of realize like, oh, wow, this one person chose my, decided my livelihood. And I think entrepreneurship is a great way to explore creativity in a lot of different areas. And if someone ever's saying like, hey, you're losing your mortgage payments and your food and all these things, like you, at least have a backup plan. And you can have both. I think people are surprised. I'm like, yeah, you can have both. And it's such a fun outlet. Like, there's a woman who had a day job at

Warby Parker, you know, that eyeglass company? Sure. Yeah. And she was just like, her name is Mary, and she's dreamed of having her own business. She's like, I just, I don't want to wonder what if. Yeah. And I will say, if you want to engineer a great life, be an entrepreneur, like you can literally take off forever. It has you get it going. At some point, you can literally just take off forever. Or you can live wherever you want. Like, I spent half the year in Spain. And so this Mary woman wanted that life, and it's accessible for her. And she just sent an email to friends and family. And I guess people want to make it complicated.

And there is more in the book that I break down exactly how you can do it with scripts and all these things. But she sent an email to friends and family and said, hey, I've got this idea for greeting cards. Does anyone want greeting cards? Just hit reply. Yeah. Fast forward in 2023, she sold $50,000 of greeting cards. Wow. And it's not, that was not just one rich uncle bought a lot of greeting cards or I spent 50,000.

It's all. And then you start realizing like there's a, there's a process. Just like there is an academia, you can create, there is a million dollar weekend process. You can do over and over that. And eventually you find something like that that does work. And now she has 50,000. And I would be surprised this year if it's not a six-finger business. And now she's able, she did actually, she quit her job and is now doing that full time.

Yeah. Well, and I'm excited to get into this process. Let me ask you to confirm something you. changed my mind about. And I want you to confirm if I got this right. Your book changed my mind about this. So something I've always noticed is that entrepreneurs seem to live cooler lives outside of their work too. Like they tend to have more interesting like hobbies or interest or the travel habits. I always used to think that's just directly because they have flexibility and autonomy. Like oh, it's just, hey, if you have more flexibility and autonomy,

you're your own boss, you can finally go explore other things. My new belief on this that I want to check with you, like that's part of it. but it's also the entrepreneur your mindset is one that is open to, as you were just saying, why not try this? This could be really interesting. Why don't we take up this sport? I don't know. We live near the ocean. What's surfing?

Like it's actually the mindset itself opens you more to, there's a lot in life. What it? Like, let's try it. It's a more open mindset. So did I, have you, did I correctly have my mind changed by you on that one? I would, yes. Yes. I would say so. I mean, I think what I've noticed about entrepreneurs is they're willing to fail and then get feedback, right? Like, just like when you do a paper, you submit a paper and research and then you get feedback and then you improve it. And they're more willing to do that. I'm more willing to do that because it's cool. I get it better. And you can do this in all aspects of your life. And especially in business, that's how you can keep making your business better and better and better. Hey, you didn't buy. How come? Hey, you did buy? How come? And then you make your product better and better and better. The other thing I've noticed about entrepreneurs and, and, and, and,

and successful people I admire is they're very curious. And they're willing to be wrong with their curiosity, too. So one of my best friends, Tynan, I think you're familiar at Tynan.com. He's here. He's upstairs actually playing pinball right now. And Tynan's just curious. Like he's curious about this. Yesterday we were researching yachts that could cross the Atlantic, but you don't

need staff on them and they're solar paneled. And it was just a fun curiosity to think like, what if? Right. And then I think that's part of the, the entrepreneurship thing, you're curious about it. And then you're like, maybe that can be a reality. And then if you're wrong, you're okay with being wrong or change your mind. If you're right, you're like, wow, that's amazing. We could actually do that. And I think that's probably outside of the certificate life where you're going outside, maybe some of the lines that are set for what other

people think. Right. And we were talking, you and I were talking about this offline, but there's like a small group of us who are full-time just normal professors, who also podcasts for large audiences. and no one understands what we do. It's a constant, the certificate world doesn't understand. So if you get, you know, I was just talking to Adam Grant about this yesterday. He's in that club. Huberman's in that club. Our colleagues are like, what?

What's at the pod? It's just, can, is that you publish this? Like, how does this work, you know? So you're right. I think you're absolutely right. The certificate life is not, it does close off possibilities. I want to take a quick break from our conversation with Noah. to tell you about one of the sponsors that makes this show possible.

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That's BetterHelp, H-E-L-P.com slash deep questions. All right, let's get back to our interview now with Noah Kagan. Okay, well, let's get into it now, though. So now my odds, like, great, I want to now experiment. And I understand that I don't have to quit my job tomorrow because if I do, I'll lose my health insurance and Noah's mom's going to get really mad at me. And so, no, I can have an experimentalist mindset to it. What I love about the book is it's nuts and bolts, which I like. Okay.

And you build the conceit around roughly a weekend. So you can, you're trying to make it clear. Don't take too long. Let's go. Let's get after it. And you can right away experiment with an idea. I like early on your idea of a freedom number as a source of courage or for inspiration. You want to unpack that a little bit?

Yeah. Yeah. So the freedom number is the minimum number you need to actually do the things you want and live the life you want to live. And I have a best friend who works at Amazon makes half a million dollars a year. And it's very hard when you have a day job at that amount because he's got a one. he's got a kid, he's got obligation. So that's why also in a weekend, because everyone's got at least an hour free in a weekend to change their life. But the reality with the freedom number for him and for so many people why it's empowering is realizing, all right, well, how much

do I actually need to make if I start my own business to be able to go and work on the thing I like, which turns out that actually is how you can make a lot of money. And when you calculate it, and I generally think it breaks down to the three areas, which is like your savings, your living, and then entertainment. And for me, when I was started, it was $3,000. Now for my best friend, because it's got a family, kid mortgage, about 10,000. And what's powerful and empowering about the freedom number is once you found yours, and I encourage everyone to just write theirs down right now in their phone or on paper. One, it's actually more attainable than people realize.

Like, huh, I only need it. Like most people I've seen, depending on where they're at the stage of life, between 5,000. Yeah. Like, that's actually more reasonable than I thought. And most people never become millionaires because they're going to make a dollar. And now that the other part of this is now that you're like, well, that's not that hard to actually get to a monthly number. The second thing is when you start businesses, it's not going to work right away.

And when it does start, you make your first dollar or $100 in a weekend. You're like, well, dude, I make $20,000 a month or $10,000 a month or $5,000 a month already in my day job. Like, this sucks. Yeah. It's like, hold on. Like, this is the success part. Even if you get one customer, which everyone can get three customers. I would recommend three customers or $40 hours.

And when you have this freedom number, again, you're just realizing like, wow, Hmm. Okay, so I can get it. And maybe if I just stick with this for a little bit, maybe a year, two years, three years, you will get to that number. I promise you. And if you see it getting closer, yeah, that's motivated. A hundred percent. And for me, I am never this entrepreneur. I know people are like jump off cliffs without a parachute, which seems silly. I don't know who anyone who has ever done that. You know, I think that's like a silly maxim. I think the reality for me is like have your day job be your investor. Create these side hustles, get to your fee member, and then make the choice. I even had someone to read. recently who messaged me is like, I have a day job that I like and I have a freedom

number that I hit. What do you think I should do? I was like, keep both. You don't have to. You don't have to make it binary. Yeah. Well, two points on this. One is I assume something people get wrong often with freedom numbers because I've seen this

is they used the wrong heuristic, which is, okay, what is my current salary? Right. And that's missing a lot of, it's missing a lot of options when you just think, okay, how I replace my Amazon salary. That's the wrong way to do it, right? Because your freedom number is not just reflecting, I'm in my exact same circumstance, your freedom number is also reflecting you can really re-engineer a lot about your life, including how much your life actually cost.

And I think what's crazy, and let me just give my own example, is that my freedom number is $3,000, so I had a day job, started Apsumo, got obsessed with the problem, not necessarily the solution, which is I think most smart people get backwards. My freedom number is 3,000. After about, I think it was three months, I hit my freedom number, quit my job. So I'm making $3,000 a month living my dream life already, which was amazing. Now here's where it's interesting. Fast forward 14 years.

I'm now, I don't know what this is monthly, but I made around $3 million last year. And that's not to brag, it's just to show you that, yeah, just because I got to my $3,000 and I could do what I really wanted. And then there's ways, like how do I not quit? and how do I stick with things? 14 years later, it's now, I don't know, $100,000 a month number.

And doing the thing you want, one, even if you're not making crazy amounts of money, at least you're making as much as you need and you're living the life you want to live. Yeah. Well, and once you're able to go full time to what you're doing,

now you're amplifying. You're accelerating, right? So it's not surprising. If you got to the $3,000 while working at Intel or whatever the day job was at the time, what happens when you now get to give all of your energy

to it like well obviously it's going to grow faster uh so you have some sort of acceleration that right which i love about it um i also just want to put a pin in something you just said there as well problem not solution because i mean assuming what you're getting out there is again the experimentalist mindset the good problem is great because you know if you solve it you're going to have an audience finding solutions is hard so if you just fix on a solution maybe that's a good solution like you don't know like you know you have to put it on the market and see and then you don't want to just be uh chasing like a terrible idea. I mean, if your original solution for AppSumo was, for the problem was, yeah, we're going to fax people, these recommendations, like, and if you really stuck to that,

like, well, we got to make the faxing work. We just need better advertising. Like, you know, you're going to be in trouble. But if you have the, no, we're trying to solve this problem. The technology might change. Yeah. That wasn't a side, but I think that's a really smart aside. A great problem is easier to find the correct solution. Oh, yeah. So at Absumo, I was obsessed with the problem of how do I get software creators customers? That's what I just wanted to solve. And my first two experiments did not work. One of them was called Software Taco, which was software reviews.

No one came. And then I built another thing called reward level, which I can't even explain what we did. And then I did App Sumo where I was like, all right, it's like a Groupon for software. And I launched it in a weekend on Reddit and instantly people bought this deal. I was like, oh, that's cool. The other parts I got a comment on problem versus solution is that a lot of smart people, are solution-oriented, which is great. But your customers don't care about your solutions.

They care about their problems. And so the most obvious example that most people are getting backwards today is AI. Everyone's like, AI, it's going to replace Cal Newport. Noah Kagan's gone. All of us are gone. But people still wake up. You woke up today, Cal, and you have your family. You have the show.

You have your book. Those are problems that are going on in your life. And everything that's inconveniencing you, everything that takes your time, everything annoys you are all actually business opportunities, that you can actually create businesses around. And one of the ways I know your audience and what you focus on is, like, how do you engineer great lives? How do you work backwards from this?

And one of the easiest ways is think about your problems and experiment around it. You know, when I was experimenting how to create my dream life, I don't know, everyone, I guess when you get rich, they buy Ferraris. And so I like rented one on Turro and it, and it sucked. I was like, this is, I'm so stressed out. So I was like, I'm pretty good with my Tesla and Miata. Yeah. And so, again, just the same thing.

Think about the problem you have. Like, hey, I want to figure out where I want to live. All right. Go experiment living different places and see if there's places that actually solve that problem for you. And with AI, coming back to that example, people are like, how do I fit AI into different stuff? It's like, no one cares about it. But they do care about how do you help them do their travel plans. Yeah.

Huh. Then maybe AI can support it. And I just, especially with absolutely one, I'm seeing literally hundreds of thousands of people build things and then try to go. find people to convince to use it versus the other way around, which is who else has problems? What's your problem? Let me try to solve it and then see if this AI or technology can then support it. Yep. Yeah, you get the feedback.

Okay, well, let me try this. Well, let me try this. I mean, when it comes to courage, sticking with this a little bit too, what I've seen with courage is people get not addicted to, but what they're really seeking is the drug hit of the immediate aftermath of doing something big. and that becomes a substitute for actually executing successfully something big. What they get excited about is not this new life I could probably create if I had a business, they could support me. They get excited about if I quit everything. This could be so dramatic.

That's going to feel really exciting, and I want that hit. The problem is that it wears off in about a day, and you still have to create a business. So I wrote about this in 2012, and so good they can't ignore you. or I was saying, oh, you have to be very careful about courage culture, I called it, that lionizes the feeling of making a courageous decision, that that's a trap. Yeah, that feels good, and then it wears off. So, like, what you need to focus on is execution. Entrepreneurship is rife with that, right?

The people that they really just want the hit of I'm doing my own thing and just calling themselves entrepreneur, which is fine. but it blinds them to wait, how do I actually, what do I do day two? What do I do day three? You know, how do I actually execute? So I'm assuming you see a lot of that as well. Like courage feels good for like 24 hours. What I believe is that everyone can be an entrepreneur and everyone is courageous. And what I found through myself putting this book together in the past four years is how afraid I was of putting the book together. And then realizing that what's the hard thing we're avoiding? for everyone out there. And most of us know that reality.

We know that answer. Like, hey, I don't like my job. I don't like my partner. I don't like where I live. I don't like that I'm not consistent. I like that I'm too consistent. And then being mindful aware, okay, if I can face this problem,

what's on the other side of that? And that was this book experience for me. And that's what this book, to me is for other people. It's like, what is the life of you want to be engineering? And what are you afraid of that we can face? And I think you brought up a great point. I don't think it has to be some,

I got to quit my job today, I think today, today, you could literally right now, not how, post on social media, hey, I'm looking for one person to talk about gardening. You could text your WhatsApp friends or Discord or Slack or whatever. Hey, I was thinking about starting a newsletter about AI for 10 bucks a month. Does anyone want to join that? And that's courageous. You know, in the book, there's so many books about entrepreneurship.

There's really a place called Harvard. I don't know if you've heard of it that teaches entrepreneurship. I know it. But then how come everyone's not being entrepreneurs? Yeah. And it's because they're scared, right? And they're led to believe it's this thing that there's a big gap that they can't do it. And you have to listen to more things or be prepared.

But the reality is that everyone can't start today. And then the other part of it that we've talked about and courageous is that you have to practice the fear of asking. Yeah. And both these things of starting and asking are really what hold most people back. And when they do it, they realize like, holy crap, confidence is built through courage. And it doesn't have to be a big thing, but it could be. small things that compound over significant periods of time. Yeah.

Well, this is real courage for fake courage, maybe, right? The real courage is the thing that people really need courage for is I'm going to do something where I could get negative feedback right away. I could fail right away. It could be clear. I'm going to ask someone, would you like to subscribe to my newsletter? Like, that's where you need real courage. It's almost like fake courage, whereas I'm going to make a big, grandiose gesture.

But I can just do that. Like, I'm not going to, you know, I'm not going to say, I'm quitting my job to start a company and then the universe says, no, you're not allowed. Like, oh, I failed on it. There's no real courage in it in the sense that you're not getting, it's not something you can fail out in the moment. So, yeah, you're right. We have the fake courage of let me make a big declaration on social media about, you know,

how I'm quitting my job. But the real courage is, let me put this out here. Will you actually, will you actually buy this? I get this a lot. I don't know if you've seen this when you were thinking about writing a book. A lot of nonfiction writers come to me like this, where they want to do the big gesture. I'm going to write a book. But as soon as you give them the real steps you have to do, which all involve you having to put yourself or your idea out there and try to get someone to sign off on it, they do anything they can to avoid that.

It's like, no, I don't want to try to talk to an agent. The agent could say no. I don't want to pitch this book to a publisher. They could say no. So what I've done is I've invested a lot of money into this PR firm and I'm going to build up a following for my self-published book. And it's going to become so successful that the publishers are going to beg me to sell. There's a real conversation I had. I was like, you've just engineered every point of acute failure out of your plan.

That's what you're doing there. You've invented a path to publishing a book that does not really exist so that you never have to have real courage of an agent saying, you know, this idea is not there. Or you're not the right person to the right idea. Keep trying. Yeah. People go a long way to get away from that type of real courage. So maybe we've coined a new term here. Yeah.

Real courage requires I might fail right away. Yeah, and everyone can do it. I truly believe that. And it's really just facing yourself. And, you know, if you think about driving, like when you went to your office today or you're driving somewhere, you have a destination and you plan a route. And most people, it's very fun to plan the route. But when you start driving, the route might change. But that only happens when you start driving.

Yeah. And same with swimming. Same with cooking. Same with everything in life is that you can't learn it not being in the kitchen. You're not going to swim sitting outside the pool. And when people post something today or ask one person today, and realize they can get started today, huh.

Like, when you were talking about this fake courage, it made me think through therapy, and I found I have a lot of anxiety when I'm home alone, and my therapist would always kind of say, the only way in is through. And I was just like, what are you talking about? Like, I don't appreciate your, you're in is through. I'm trying to go through, man.

So I would do this grandiose things where I'm like, I'm going to go in the woods alone for a week. And that's what I would do. And I would just be alone. I turn my phone. and I come home and I'm like, okay, I did it. I'm not afraid of being alone. And he's like, dude, life still goes on.

What about today? And my reality, I haven't really shared this, but it's like, yeah, now when I'm home on a Saturday, there's a moment where it hits and I'm afraid and I'm anxious, what am I doing today? And it's like, oh, cool, this is a chance for me to learn who I can become. Yeah. And yes, it's still hard, but it's something we're now with positive self-talk and experiencing it.

That is going through it on an ongoing business. and it's available worldwide for free for everyone to face these things and do things. Again, today, I think that's the myth entrepreneurship. Like, I don't know. I need to wait for my domain. I need to wait for this patent thing. No, you need to talk to one person, put yourself out there just a little bit and see what happens. I think you'll be shocked.

All right. So let's get back now to the nitty gritty. So I caught my attention here. I think it's a cool idea. You recommend getting your first one to three customers way earlier in the process and people think. People think customers come after I perfected everything. I have my idea figured out.

You say you should be getting one to three customers. In the first 48 hour, you get your freedom number. And almost the next thing you should do is be trying to get customers. Walk us through this inversion here. Yeah. The inversion here is that most people are founder first. So they're like, I got this problem, which is good. You should always be your first customer and make things that you're excited to make.

But then they're like, I'm going to go build it. And then I'm going to try to find problems to then. eat my solution. And they're like, damn, this is hard. But the reality, which is actually a lot easier of a path, if people want to make it easier on themselves, is just really thinking customer first. So what's the expertise you have or areas you're interested in? And who are in your zones of influence? So someone emailed me yesterday. And he said, I want to do stuff in real estate. I know two people. I want to do stuff in kidneys. I know one person. But I think I'm going to try to do something online in this area. I know no one. Yeah.

I was like, okay, why don't you try both? Again, it doesn't have to be binary. Yeah. And see what happens. And what I'm encouraging people to do is work backwards from how to make it easier on yourself. Like, I've, you know, I've been in tech this world since I was, you know, a little kid. And so it's easier for me to understand it and succeed in it. It doesn't mean you can't.

Well, why would people want to make it harder on themselves? Yeah. Okay, so excellent. So then you have a customer to, or you've learned. in failing to get a customer for this idea, like, okay, yeah, like, there's like something not going on. Like, in this general area, I'm exploring, I'm not getting friction. Over here, though, like, like, someone's interested in it. So, so you get to a point where you have a few people buying your greeting cards, right?

Now what's the growth? Now we're thinking about the growth. And you talk about zero to one is probably the hardest. One to 100, 100 to a thousand, thousand to a million. Like, these steps are no harder than zero to one. but how do you now that we're at one, what's the right way to think about those next growth steps? Yeah, most people don't become millioners because they never make a dollar is what I'm, excuse me, is what I've noticed.

As I asked people, I'm like, oh, how much money have you made in your business? Zero. How long have you been doing it? 12 months. Okay, maybe there's another way to approach it. And so again, coming back to the customer first approach, how do we get three customers this weekend? And guess what?

If you didn't get any, awesome. You didn't waste money. You didn't buy Shopify. You didn't get a domain. you didn't hire people and spent on this money. And then all these people that weren't interested in what you were doing, you could ask them why not. Hey,

hey, how come you weren't interested? Because I don't care about lawn care. Because I don't want to buy a greeting card because I don't need consulting on this thing. Okay, well, tell me more what you're doing. And if you start listening to people, listen to yourself, but listening to others, they'll just tell you their problems. And those are all business opportunities. And so the scale is generally not the harder part.

It's getting going and then practicing the skills of starting. and asking, right? Because that's what all business is. Just like this show, it's like, you're asking me questions and I'm answering. And if you want to ask for a raise, if you want to ask for a husband or wife, and you have to do the same thing in business, you have to ask for customers. And that is something that everyone can practice. And you've heard me talk about the coffee challenge. It's a million dollar weekend. And it's practicing asking at a coffee shop for a discount. And then ideally you get rejected. You ask for 10% off. You get rejected. And you're like, oh, that's not so scary. What's next? And then when you get to a customer,

you can ask them to buy your service. You get rejected or not. And then you find out, wow, I've been practicing it, this is a lot easier. Now, the two things I would say, once you've gotten your three customers, is delivering for those three people. The best businesses are the ones that work. And people who, you know, in life, stop doing the things that got them successful. I don't know if you've noticed that.

A lot of times in life, it's like, hey, how did you get to this point? Well, I did therapy. I work out. You know, maybe I have this morning routine. Maybe I've read all Cal Newport's books. I'm good with my technology. Well, how's it going today? Yeah, I'm not really doing that in much.

Yeah. Okay, just go back and do more of what works. And so, you know, the two kind of frameworks that have helped Absumo and myself and I think, you know, now tens of thousands of other people. One is this law of 100 concept. And literally we have a website. We're going to have a free app around this. But just like, do the thing a hundred times and then quit. Interesting.

Interesting. Not before. Because people, no. So once you've had success, so let's say, and what I mean by success is, customers. People are like, yeah, this woman, what was her name? Stephanie? Emo. And she's like, yeah, I got my first customer five bucks. I'm like, hell, yeah, you did. I'm like, you don't think absumo first sale, $12. Yesterday sales, $33,000 in a day. But I started with $12. That's how every business starts. That's how everything starts. Just one. And so the concepts I would say is

do this law of 100, which is like, do 100 posts on social media, if that's it. Do 100 calls. Do hundred clients, do 100 days, and then have a checklist just each day. And then at the end of it, then you quit. And what happens is people by the end of the hundreds are like, actually, this is working. I'm like, I know. Just keep doing it. And then the other part that people need to really think about in business and frankly in life for engineering is how do you just keep doubling down what's working? Yes. And that's one of these annoying maxims and cliches that we all hear, but we don't actually embrace. Let me tell you an example literally from 7 a.m. today. we built this thing called a business idea generator at App Sumo.

We spent like two months and, you know, I don't know, with soft developers and stuff, it's probably like 30,000, maybe 20 to 40 to build it. We've never launched it, never finished it. And someone on the team's like, oh, we should launch it. And another person's like, yeah, it'll only take, you know, 10 hours. And I was like, okay, well, what's already working in the business? It's like, oh, we have this product, tidicow.com. It's a calendar alternative.

Yeah. It's growing like a weed. I like TidyCal, by the way. It's a great product. Oh, yeah, like Apsumo. We hate subscriptions. Yep. Down with subscriptions on software.

So we built this anti-subscription calendar tool called TidyCal. And I'm like, all right, well, 10 hours in TidyCal, I know it's working. Why don't we just keep doing that? And I just, I used to try all these things. We're like, okay, this is working, but I'm going to go off and play on these other areas. And I've seen, like, if you just kept doing more of what works, and that's why we always use that phrase, just double down, keep doing more of what works. you keep getting the success that you got. So in business, really, in life, like, just look backwards.

How did you get your first three customers? I just DMed people on Twitter. How many have you DMed today? None. Okay, do that. Yeah. How did you get first customers? Referrals.

Have you done that? No, do more of that. And people get really obsessed. And I will tell you, we have a, you know, two-person business intelligence team. We spend a million dollars a year just on data. At absolute, just on data. Yeah. Like, we do very complicated stuff.

And people kind of laugh sometimes when I'm telling them, like, Yeah, you just DM because that's it worked. Like, no, no, no. Tell me the secret stuff. I'm like, you don't need the secret stuff. Yeah. That doesn't help for you right now. Yeah.

I love the double down idea, by the way, when I came across that because it seems like everyone I know who's doing something entrepreneurial very successful, this is a real common threat. This is working. Like, we found a fitness peak in the fitness landscape that we're moving up the slope. Let's just pick up our pace. Like, we know this is actually working, acquiring customers this way, offering. them this type of thing. Why don't we keep pushing that until that thing is no longer going? You know, I think a weird, and tell me if this is wrong, but to me, like, an interesting, isolated, purified example of that is, like, in the YouTube world, this is what, like, Mr. Beast did.

He sort of figured out, like, what's working on videos that the algorithm is recommending on YouTube, and they just kept doubling down, like, let's clarify that, let's make that even bigger, let's spend more money, let's get rid of more of the stuff that's not working. We don't need to invent a new format. We don't need to do what we think is going to work. This is working. Let's just double the amount of money. Let's double the stakes.

It was just this continual doubling down. And they end up in this interesting place where you might spend $20 million on a video and get 200 million views on the video, just everything scaled up. But it's probably the same template he had when it was 100,000 views and they were spending $10,000 on a video. They just kept pushing, right? this let's keep going. I see that all the time. It's weird though because people don't want to do that.

I don't know why you would think that would be our instinct, but people like the platform you were working on. They want the, they have this idea of like, just going to be some other idea that's going to really take things, really take things up. I mean, look, this is Steve Jobs returning to Apple in 97.

What's working? Like people like these Macs. So get rid of all the junk. Let's make it much clearer what we sell. We have two groups. Let's just be as clear as possible. This is what we are doing for you and just push those things. You know, this is clarity.

But I'm also self-assessing here, though, Noah, because I should be doing this in parts of my life. And I know I know I'm not. Like, I know I should be doing this like with my podcast or like there's elements I know that really worked. I really should be doubling down on. But it's hard. I don't know why that psychology is so hard. but hey, this is working. This did better than this.

Do more of this. It's interesting why that's so hard. Yeah, there's a, I don't know which woman said it, but there's a famous quote that I like, which is like, if you want variety in dating, date one person. And, you know, you're married and I'm in a committed relationship about to have a child.

And the idea that people need to consider is like, how do I find the thing I'm enjoying and that I can just keep going deeper and deeper and deeper and on? Because success is boring. Because it's working. And I remember I went to my business partner, Chad, who was a CTO. He's one of my best friends. I'm like, Chad, you like doing all the boring stuff.

And I like starting new stuff. I'm the new guy. And he's like, shut up, dude. I like new stuff too. Everyone does. And, you know, in my 40s, I would say what's exciting to me is things that work. Yep. And just making them work better.

And I joke about this. I bought this house from an NFL kicker, the one I live in. And I just joke, I think you'd text to this guy. I was like, dude, what's your work? week like. Think about his days. Eight to five, like, what'd you do to kick the ball?

And then his job is like 10 seconds on a Sunday for a few months. And it's something we've all stuck with things for long periods of time. I think people don't give themselves enough credit. Like you've probably stuck with brushing your teeth, ideally twice a day. Or you've stuck with certain habits. And you maybe haven't given yourself enough credit for it. And then thinking about, okay, what are these elements in my? personal life as well in professional life ideally in entrepreneurship or in your job and how can

i replicate that and in terms of engineering your life like you can replicate the ones that generally haven't been as much work for you right so with with youtube content i you know we found this video where i knock on doors works i just go knock on people's doors every one of our videos was me knocking on doors now the the reality there is over time it's just it's very stressful for me yeah it's very anxiety and uh it's not necessarily sustainable. And in terms of success, what I find very sexy is longevity. And so you have to find the Venn diagram in success, which is what do you like and what is the world want? And so now with content, and I even say with Absumo is how do I do these things for 10 years? How do I do it for 10 years?

So if I'm doing content like knocking doors, I cannot do that for 10 years. And there's a lot more, I want more glorification. I want more sexification on sustainability. Because there's a lot of glory and like you made you got rich this year off crypto or you got rich off some like this youtube is big all of a sudden it's like be big over 20 years yeah and you know I've worked for billionaires and I've interviewed a lot of my channel and they find things are excited to work on and they get rich after 20 years and those are really interesting nuances it's like ah find something that works find something I enjoy that works for me and my lifestyle I think that's missed out upon especially on Silicon Valley and then stick with that for a long period of time and live a great life yeah

and finally be happy that there's enough with it? Hmm. Really? I can do it that way? Yeah, you can. Yep. Well, you know who I think personifies that often? It's novelist.

It's something I've studied. And it's actually, there's two categories of novelists. And I call them the Michael Crichton's and the John Grishams because they capture the two different mindsets. Crichton was all about, I want to do everything, right? My novels are doing well. I want to direct. I want to screenwrite. I want to start my own production.

company, I want to do television. He saw, I have my foot in the door. Now I want to do everything. Grisham, on the other hand, said, great, the firm did well, his second book, the firm did well. Great. I can quit my job. I can, you know, move to some property. And I can just write for six months a year. And then the other six months a year, I'm going to be the commissioner of my kids, little league. He bought a bunch of fields and built a really nice Little League complex and loves baseball. I want to coach baseball. And so he, and a lot of novelists follow the, approach, which is this is great. Like, I hope no one notices, but I'm making a living, just writing a book every year. And it's all I have to do. And I have to do publicity for like three weeks

because like, you know, fiction writer publicity. What can you do? Right. I mean, there's only so much you can do and you have a name. And they're just happy with it. And they live in cool places. They tend to live in cool places and have really cool offices. So I think there's a, there's a whole cadre of fiction writers that are great at this. I can do this well. I want to do this for the rest of my life. I hope no one takes away my ability to just write. And it's, I don't do anything else. Because you don't see, you know, these fiction writers with seven business ideas and they, they own a bunch of car dealerships. And, you know, they don't do, they're just like, I write books. It's great. And that's crazy. Like, people are paying me to do this. So we can all learn from

John Grisham, I guess, even though our temptations to be Michael Crichton. well i think your your common here is what i've observed from tens of thousands of people and talking with them and a million dollar weekend i'm meeting them most people don't believe they can actually live these dream lives and the dream life it doesn't have to be what people imagine that's where even the freedom number comes in it could be literally so my buddy tyn's here his dream life is getting up at 10 drinking tea from 10 to 12 playing pinball for the next three hours is that what well no no so pinball's at night so he does a pinball tournament with us wife, but from like 12 to 5, he'll do like house projects. And then he has a cruise site,

cruise sheet.com. And then from like seven to 10, he'll do a pinball tournament with his wife, hot tub, steam room, which he built his own steam room and built his own secret pinball room. And that's his life. And guess what? He's living it. And it's not as expensive as people think, but that's his. And I don't think people realize that their dream life is possible. And it's actually not as far away as they imagine. Like my dream life is not, I get anxiety. I like working. I like it. I love it. I was up at 6 a.m.

working today. I'm so excited about this book. I'm so excited promoting software deals. I like making content. Tinen doesn't. And he's okay with that too. He's okay. He puts out a blog post every month.

That's great. And I think when people think about how do they want to end the year, that's a really like fixed good time frame, I think, for people to have clarity on. You can write out how that dream life looks like. And then, huh, maybe like, when you talk about lifestyle engineering, you can work backwards and that. Maybe what can I start today that actually gets me a little closer to that. Yeah.

And for me, it took me, I don't know, man, 15 years to finally get it. It takes time. And so be patient and kind of along the way. And one kind of hack that I've done the past five years, give or take five years, is just review my week at the end of each week. Yeah. And you start doing these things. You're like, oh, this week sucked because of this meeting.

This week sucked because of this or here's what sucked because of me. And then you say, well, how can I make next week better? And you start doing that week after week after week after week. And like I have it every week. I have my review later today. I just have this automatic review on Slack notification. Well, this is part of what I liked about your book and why I wanted you on the show is you're almost unique, I think, among people, especially Silicon Valley people, talk about entrepreneurship and how congruent you are with the way we talk about this on the show, which is we always are emphasizing. You need to picture your ideal lifestyle holistically.

It's everything about your life. what is your day look like? Are you walking outside into the woods or are you walking down like a cool city street to like an interesting coffee shop? Are you like a master of the universe making moves and things or has that kind of appeal to you? Or is it the like, I'm having tea and there's going to be like the hot, like not don't get specific about like this is the specific city where I live a specific job. But like what are the attributes of your day? Do you imagine like sitting outside? I'm on my back patio and we have cafe lights and like my family and friends are over.

We're just kind of like shooting the breeze just out like having something. There's like a real social aspect. What resonates, non-specific in terms of I live exactly here. I do exactly this. And then figure out how I get there. And for a lot of people, this leads them to places that they didn't think about before because what we tend to do without that holistic type of assessment, which your book really pushes. And I want to touch here in a second on your last chapter, which like gets systematic.

Let's get into color code of calendars here. When people don't do that, they overpriced the feeling of pride that comes with elite professional accomplishment. And they say, this is the thing that's going to matter most. So in Silicon Valley, I'm assuming there's a real pressure for, yeah, but imagine that feeling when you're king of the roost. You just had the billion dollar IPO. And like, that's going to feel really good. And I'm sure it does kind of feel good and you have some pride with that. But how valuable is that compared to everything else?

How long does, I mean, versus all of these other things are important to your life. Don't overpriced that as if that's going to be the most important thing. Or if you're a writer, if my book is like number one in the New York Times best seller, like, that'll feel good. But also then like you're doing the dishes, right? And the day to day of your reality matters. So I love how you have this holistic approach as well. You're building a life. Your work is part of it because you have to, you need money.

And also you're going to spend a lot of time on it. But you're building a life. And there's a lot of different aspects of your life, like pinball tournaments and doing hot tub time. We have a pinball hot tub tournament. Well, we're not going to turn a hot tub, but we're going to pinball hot tub sauna cold plunge after this. But the thing I would say just to kind of give people suggestions is it's possible. And you have to start it because it's not going to happen overnight. It's going to happen today.

Like when I worked at Intel, I, and then this is, if other people feel this way, you know, let me know. I remember dreading Sundays. I was like, oh my God, please know. just let me not have to work Monday ever again. And I think it's such an interesting thing to reflect on how you're feeling about your week. And if you have a job, you can't change your meetings necessarily. Like it's very hard to get out of that. But you can start making changes that can get you out of them over time.

And I left Silicon Valley because I noticed people were so obsessed with this external validation. Oh, you want a lifestyle business? I'm like, yeah, I want a life and a style and a business. Oh, you're not changing the world. Guess what? Changing the world is by changing. yourself and then maybe just change one person. And I think a lot of people, you know, it's this external validation, how many subs, how much money. And then when you actually take a step back

of how you want to live, like, okay, maybe I don't actually care of all that stuff. Maybe I can, like for me, my dream, and I wrote it down, is to live half the year in Spain, half the year in in America, in Texas, have a dog, have some kids, be able to work on promoting things, making content, talking to smart people like yourself, promoting your books. Like, that's my dream. That's my life. I think most people like their one our lives are already pretty great. And I think that's a good way to already be happy with our lives. Because it's not like if I finally get there, I'm going to be happier or my life will be complete. You'll still be yourself.

But you can't get to a point I promise you everyone out there. And I think about it. I'm like, I can't believe this is my life. And I'm like, wow, you know what? Everyone else can do this too. It's not some exclusive club. And, you know, I think about people that, you know, are like, and I know them. They're like, oh, you know, I can't do it.

And I'm like, take your power and do something today. Yeah. Because maybe you don't like where you live, maybe you don't like your job. Maybe you don't like, hey, but guess what? If you start today, in five years, you're going to thank yourself for listening to Kelluport, Noah. And then you tried it today. You got going.

Maybe it didn't work, but you tried again. And again, again, and then start working in five years from now, where could you be? And even year where could you be? I want to take another quick break here to talk about another sponsor that makes this show possible. And that is our friends at the ever so fun to say, Zoc. Doc. Zoc Doc is a free app and website where you can search and compare highly rated end network doctors

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visiting expressvpn.com slash deep today. That's EXPR-E-S-S-V-PN.com slash deep. And you can get it extra three months free if you use that slash deep. So go to ExpressVPN.com. com slash deep to get three extra months for free. All right. Let's get back now to our conversation with Noah. So with something people get paralyzed by is they say, I don't have the full vision yet. Okay, I agree. Like, I don't want to just get the external validation.

I don't have the full vision yet, so I can't start. But one of your ideas is your vision for what matters gets refined as you start paying more attention and trying to do more that matters. It's like for you, for example, maybe we'll use you as a case study. what was the path from you're at Intel, you know you don't like it, to your current situation where you've engineered, you just explain it to us. It's an intentional life that has a lot of very intentional specific aspects to it. I'm assuming in Intel you did not write down on a piece of paper all of these aspects that you wanted in your life. So tell us a little bit about, you know,

how you evolve from I don't like this to I really have a good sense of what I like. It takes time. And I would encourage everyone positive self-talk. consistent positive self-talk like when you say a negative thing about yourself say something positive and be patient with yourself because I made it very hard on myself and very and I think if you're an academic if you're an entrepreneur if you're an intelligent person I think you have you have high standards yeah and so it's constantly like kind of for me being like the worst and I'm like the worst coach of myself for so long and I've really worked on how do I just be more positive about who I am to myself separate if the book sells well separate if I come on a show or not

and that's a practice. And so when I was at Intel, I think there's categories of our life, right? So there's your work life, there's your friends, there's your living, there's your relationships. And really,

I think most people are actually pretty self-aware what part of their life isn't satisfactory. I don't think there's a secret out there. I think most people understand it, but it's a little hard. And so at Intel,

I was like, I hate this job. Yeah. I hate this job. And that was a great motivator. And then I hated being at Facebook to some of them. it even though it was a great experience. And over time, I just kept, then I finally got to start my own business and I hated my partners, or they probably hated me too, and I hated making Facebook games.

But each of these things, and encourage, you know, you take a little bit of courage, that build your confidence, and that happened through action. Yep. That happens through action. Like, you can only plan for so long, but then traffic accidents happened. You didn't plan for that. And so you have to adjust. And so all these steps, Intel, then Facebook, then Mint, then this gaming company. I hate games. I only play chess. That's the only game I like. And then I didn't like these partners. And then I was like, I also wanted to have a company that I just would, I'd love to do all day for the rest of my life. That's why I don't care to go IPO or sell this business. And that's what Absumo started as. And that was just one aspect. And I think it took time in each

of these categories, even relationships. You know, in the book, I talk, we talk very deeply about how the power of asking is so important and it's a skill everyone needs to get better at. Because in relationships, in terms of life intentionality, having a great partner is the number one life upgrade. If number one is yourself, I'd say it's tied for improving yourself and how you feel by yourself and having a partner,

number one life for it in the world. And I would just get what I was getting. And my business partner is like, if you've got to ask and you can get what you want, and you have to think about what you want and you have to ask for it. And I would say that was another really key thing intentionally where it was like, well, she doesn't have a job.

I want someone with the job. She really criticized, me a lot for doing social media and YouTube. Okay, that's not really working. She, you know, and you know, each one, you know, these failures are learning opportunities where they kept getting better and better and better until I finally met somewhere. It's like, oh my God. And I think I had the misconception though. You meet someone and then it's over. You don't have to do anything. Yeah. But no, it's like still work every day. It's still showing up. And yeah, in all these aspects of my life, I finally got to a part where one, I think I could have been happier with myself all along. I think that's an

important message. Yep. But then now being at a place where I'm very content with it, also just being like, okay, you actually are content. You don't have to keep chasing. Just be good with internal. And it's just through recognizing these different errors. And there's still stuff. I got super mad at someone this week. It was just, it was kind of silly.

And I was really frustrated with myself all week about it. And I was mad that this person I thought cheated me. Yeah. And I was talking with my friend and he was like, hmm, you know, what would your daughter think about this behavior that you're doing? I was like, oh, that's a good one. That's a good one. I was like, well, I'd want to show her that I can, I could be the better man and let this go. And then move on to more positive things.

I was like, oh, damn, that's good, but I'm still angry. So I let it go. And then, yeah, the, but again, I'm saying that it's still, there's still problems. There's still different challenges, but it's just being content across all these different areas yourself, your work, your relationship. You're probably where you're living. I was living in a shitty house or cheap houses for, I don't know, 20 years. I lived on floors. Like, literally, I lived on floors for a year because I was so cheap.

And then I finally bought like a multi-million dollar house during COVID because I was like, I finally, let me try, I tried it out. I experimented. I was like, yo, this is amazing. My previous house is 800 square feet. It's cracked. floors are literally cracked as well as the walls. It's got cockroaches. It's pretty bad. And then during COVID, I tried out nice houses. And I was like, oh my God, I can actually want to, I think I can deserve this for myself and I can afford it. And then I, as I tested it, I loved it, bought it. And I'm so blessed. I love this house. And that's all the different kind of pieces. And that's, that's your schedule calendar as well. I don't think any of these are secret elements, but it's being mindful across the spectrum. And then making those adjustments and being patient that I can take some time. Well, I like that calendar advice you have because, so later this last chapter of the book, Chapter 9, where you're talking about integrating this into a bigger picture of your life. You're suggesting being pretty systematic about making sure there's time being invested to different aspects of your life that's important. Yes. Part of that, I'm assuming, based on this conversation, is that also make sure not just that you're spending time on the different parts of your life that are important, you're continuing to learn about each of those parts. So like you have a relationship part.

Now you're learning about like what you want or how to succeed in a relationship. You have a part just for yourself, nonprofessional. If you're not regular spending time now, you don't know what it is that you want to do when something else is doing better. I love that idea of and you use colors, right? You said use different colors for the events on your calendar. So you can just see, hey, there's no blue on the calendar this week. This is out of whack. But I love thinking about that as a curriculum almost.

It's a self-learning curriculum as much as it is trying to build a balanced schedule. Yeah, so just for the people out there, if you had, you know, I break it down in the book. At a high level, it's, you know, most people have 24 hours in a day. I don't know. Maybe you're a different, Cal. Then why is it that some people seem to get more done and seem to be more satisfied with what gets done? And it's because they're working backwards from clarity.

That's the only difference. It's the only difference. They're very clear where they're trying to go and then they're prioritizing a, accordingly. So the way that's worked for me, I've done this at the same method, the color coding and stuff is definitely involved in the past decade. But have a clear goal where you're going to end the year, have clear weekly outcomes that you want to do. And those weekly outcomes, which should match to your yearly ones, then break those down on a daily basis. And I like a lot of, the best things in my calendar are almost always audio, or auto, excuse me, so I mean that they're

automatically, they're color coded. So I can see, hey, like even this week, I don't, I don't have, I hurt myself. So I'm not. doing as much green and my green as my workouts. Huh, that's interesting. Or relationship. So each week I have a relationship goal like things I want to do with my girlfriend. Then, wow, there's relationship activities that I then scheduled. So it's intentional about what's going to happen versus surprised. And it doesn't mean that every single second of every day has to be allocated. But at least in these areas, you know you're going towards the directions that you want to do. So being on shows, yeah, I'm hanging out with Cal Newport. I want to make sure I have some light green, which is being

and talking about the book and being connecting with people. And so it's a very quick way that I can literally just glance right now and see where am I spending more time and where am I spending less. I mean, it sounds simple if people don't do it. It's, well, I don't know. I worked a lot. I did a lot of phone time, right? If you could go back and auto color code people's calendars, they'd be not very happy by how out of whack that is. I know we're short on time, but I just wanted to ask you just because I have you here.

unrelated to the book. I'm just curious, Facebook employee 30. What was it like there at that time? What year was that? What was it like there? I'm just curious. Man, it was the best.

It was the best. It was 2005. So just when it got started. And it's super early. Even a million dollar weekend, I have the story about the day I got fired, which was traumatic. And if you haven't gotten fired,

I recommend it to everyone. It's a good learning lesson. And what was beautiful about it, though, Cal, there's a lot of, I feel so lucky that I got to have so many learnings being at Facebook, like working directly for Mark and seeing how big of a vision he had. Yeah. That he hired coaches early on. That his focus is actually a focus. He's like, we're only trying to grow the side. I don't care about making money. And I'd always bring him money making ideas. And he got really annoyed. He's like, and he wrote on a whiteboard, billion.

Yeah. And he's like, we're going to get to a billion people. That's it. Don't talk to me if you're not helping me get to a billion people. I was like, oh, that was good. And he just had a great vision. Like most people, your vision doesn't have to be, doesn't have to be anything, but it has to be exciting for yourself. And he's like, hey, I'm going to connect every single person on this planet. 24 years old saying stuff like that. And let me be clear. One, he did try two other businesses you've never heard of, face smash and wirehog.

So he's trying. And by the way, he started a weekend copying someone else. Yep. So don't innovate, just iterate. That's what he did. Look, it's a two trillion dollar business. Not bad. And I was going to say, by the way, I love this vision of like 2005 Noah Kagan going up to Mark Zuckerberg and be like, Mark, if we sold T-shirts, we could make a million dollars. All right. So I think this is what we need to focus on.

Here, let's go. Do you realize we have 100,000 subscribers on this site? If we sold T-shirt to just 10% of them. Well, I think that was a good teaching moment from him about focus, but also his, his, strategy at that point, which I thought was smart, subsequently, was that if we get a bigger distribution channel, then monetization is a lot easier. Versus focusing on monetization, this is all coming back to doubling down.

Like, if we do monetization, we're going to probably be sacrificing the distribution channel. Yeah. Okay, that's good. You know, being around, you know, excellence, being around people with exceedingly high standards where everyone had already high standards and then there's people that have even higher and just having that on a regular basis.

And then the level of like urgency and the fact that we're working on something that was just like critical. And that was special. You know, I hope everyone gets to experience these hypergrowth kind of, wow, doing something that people really want.

And those are great businesses to be a part of. And they don't have to be as size of Facebook. But they can be, you know, like Mint did it, Absumo did it. You know, and this book seems to be doing it. You can do it at whatever size you want.

I would say, though, if you can find ways either through earbuds like we're doing with the podcast and the show, find yourself, how can you be around other people like this? People that are saying, hey, I think you could be a little better here. Or even asking people for that feedback right now today. There was a lot of great things that I was fortunate to be able to get there. Did you also? At Mint and Facebook, did you also learn the negative advice of, oh, hypergrowth is not really what I want to do?

Like, you also got to see, this is what hypergrowth venture back companies are like. okay, great, now I know that's not what I want to do. Like, IPO is not what I. So you also, which is valuable, right? Negative, negative insight is also valuable, I assume. Yeah. Ooh, I like that a lot. I think people have heard that, but I don't know if they ever do it.

They're like, yeah, try a lot of things you don't, you don't like to find out what you do. Yeah. You know, at Facebook, I've read my old, old journals. And I just remember when we got larger, which sounds ironic, we were only 150 people, which is almost the size of Absumo today. I remember really being frustrated that we'd have a lot of meetings. And I was like, can we just do work? And so I learned that. I felt very insecure at that time.

I was like, man, these guys are, there's MIT, Caltech, Harvard, Stanford. It was like elite of the elite. And I just, it was a very insecure feeling daily, which is also probably means you're growing. And yeah, I learned a lot of good things about how to run a company. And also one day there's a guy named Dan who died on a freak bike accident. And everyone just like went back to work. And I was like, that's freaking bullshit. Yeah.

Like, this guy died and he's like special to us and he mattered and he helped and like, we're just going back to work. Like there's definitely a lot of negative things that I didn't admire that I wanted to do better in my own company. And that was cool. That's all that you're teaching people, Cal, which is great. Like you can create the life you want to live and it's not as hard as you think it is. Yeah.

And it's also not easy. It just takes persistent effort. It's easy. There's no like one step that's impossible that you might not succeed with. But there's also just no one step that makes. the whole thing happened. This seems to be the takeaway from this is, yeah, there's not some impossible obstacle at some point where you're going to get stuck, but there is like a thousand steps. So if you're not like start walking and have a pretty good map for the, the trailer

following, you're not going to get there. But you know how to walk and if you keep walking eventually you will get there. You will get there. Yeah. So it's no step as hard, but there's a lot. So you better start racking them up metaphor time. Exactly, man. I mean, I think you're a great example for writing books. Like you write a book and then you write a book and you read a book and I'm assuming you enjoy it. And for everyone out there, what's this first step they can take today? Yeah. I mean, I decided when I was 20 years old. This is what I want to do on to write books. And whatever book I could write, I wrote that first. And then I tried to make next one better and the next one better. And that's all I've done. 20 years later. This is all I've done. I just want to keep writing books. Just clarity on that. Keep doing something. You know, you learn about it. You learn how to direct and how to avoid the pitfalls and, and it's funny how that unfolds, you know, like I was talking to someone,

well-known person, a lot of subs, a big online personality, and I was like, oh, it's really cool what you're doing. And he was like, no, no, no, like, my dream is what you're doing. So, you know, you never know. He's like, just they're like, write books, you know, like, the right books and, like, people know your ideas and you can just sit there. And, yeah, and it was just, let me write another. That was always my thing.

Write another. Sell another. Work it out. Sell another. Just keep going. You know, and I think one of the important lessons that I looked on lifestyle engineering was, I was talking with Charlie Hoan, who he was an editor of this book and he's got great stuff out there. I know Charlie. Yeah, I love Charlie.

He's been a good longtime friend, one of my guardian angels. I have a few of these guardian angels in my life. And I remember talking to him like, you know, Jeff Bezos, who I think he's so cool and he's built his company. He doesn't have a podcast. And he's like, Noah, you're not Jeff Bezos. You're Noah Kagan. and you could do it the Noah Kagan way. Yep.

I was like, oh, that's spicy. And that's for everyone. That's the Cal Newport way. That's your way, whatever your name is listening, and embracing that. Like, you can have a podcast and a YouTube and a family and all these things, or you can have just one thing, and that's great too. And recognizing that that's how it can be was also very liberating for me. That I was like, ah, I can have a YouTube and podcast.

Cal, I'm only writing one book. I don't know how you did multiple. I'm one and done, my man. This is what I'm going to be talking about for the next. a decade. But that works for me. I'm very satisfied with that. Well, I love it. Well, Noah, I know I've held you over, but I just love talking about this. Thanks for coming on. Million Dollar Weekend. Look, I recommend this book for all your deep lifers out there. This is not just about though it is what actually works in making a successful business. I really do think

it is a blueprint for how do you explore the adjacent possible, the configurations of what your life could and couldn't be, and systematically navigate. towards something better. That's the key, systematic. This is the long game, not the, I solve it all with one big idea that I have tomorrow or with one big moment of courage. So no, I'm not surprised your book is doing really well because I've learned from my listeners, people want this. So, you know, thanks for coming on and talking to us about it. Thanks for happening. All right. Well, that was great. I think I got a lot of practical advice out of that interview. It was nice to meet Noah and learn more about his book. So I'm here in Austin. I have to run

now I have to go do yet another podcast interview. Hopefully I have to check the schedule. I think we will be back next week in person for a normal episode of the Deep Questions podcast. So thank you for sticking with me. Thank you for all your support on my book, slow productivity. If you haven't bought it yet, please do. And I hope I see you on March 16th at Politics and Pros in Washington, D.C. for my in-person event at 3 p.m. And until then, as always, stay deep. Hi, it's Cal here. One more thing before you go. If you like the Deep Questions podcast, you will love my email newsletter,

which you can sign up for at calnewport.com. Each week, I send out a new essay about the theory or practice of living deeply. I've been writing this newsletter since 2007, and over 70,000 subscribers get it sent to their inboxes each week. So if you are serious about resisting the forces of distraction and shallowness that afflict our world, you've got to sign up for my newsletter at calnewport.com and get some deep wisdom delivered to your inbox each week.