My First Million - Brainstorming The Best Business Ideas To Start In 2022 with Noah Kagan

Episode Date: January 18, 2022

Sam Parr (@theSamParr) and is joined by Noah Kagan (@NoahKagan) to discuss the most profitable businesses on AppSumo, the best business ideas to start in 2022, businesses you can start with zero startup costs, and much more.  _____ * Do you love MFM and want to see Sam and Shaan's smiling faces? Subscribe to our Youtube channel. * Want more insights like MFM? Check out Shaan's newsletter. _____ Show Notes: (00:30) - TheColdPlunge.com (04:15) - OkDork.com (05:55) - How to grow a YouTube channel (10:45) - TikTok vs YouTube (13:50) - Chrome extension businesses (22:20) - What Mint.com did wrong (32:45) - How to become "Wirecutter for the end of the world" (34:10) - One person businesses and businesses with zero startup costs (34:40) - The best selling AppSumo app of all time (49:30) - Noah's yearly and monthly reviews (54:17) - Best buys under $100 ----- Past guests on My First Million include Rob Dyrdek, Hasan Minhaj, Balaji Srinivasan, Jake Paul, Dr. Andrew Huberman, Gary Vee, Lance Armstrong, Sophia Amoruso, Ariel Helwani, Ramit Sethi, Stanley Druckenmiller, Peter Diamandis, Dharmesh Shah, Brian Halligan, Marc Lore, Jason Calacanis, Andrew Wilkinson, Julian Shapiro, Kat Cole, Codie Sanchez, Nader Al-Naji, Steph Smith, Trung Phan, Nick Huber, Anthony Pompliano, Ben Askren, Ramon Van Meer, Brianne Kimmel, Andrew Gazdecki, Scott Belsky, Moiz Ali, Dan Held, Elaine Zelby, Michael Saylor, Ryan Begelman, Jack Butcher, Reed Duchscher, Tai Lopez, Harley Finkelstein, Alexa von Tobel, Noah Kagan, Nick Bare, Greg Isenberg, James Altucher, Randy Hetrick and more. ----- Additional episodes you might enjoy: • #224 Rob Dyrdek - How Tracking Every Second of His Life Took Rob Drydek from 0 to $405M in Exits • #209 Gary Vaynerchuk - Why NFTS Are the Future • #178 Balaji Srinivasan - Balaji on How to Fix the Media, Cloud Cities & Crypto #169 - How One Man Started 5, Billion Dollar Companies, Dan Gilbert's Empire, & Talking With Warren Buffett • ​​​​#218 - Why You Should Take a Think Week Like Bill Gates • Dave Portnoy vs The World, Extreme Body Monitoring, The Future of Apparel Retail, "How Much is Anthony Pompliano Worth?", and More • How Mr Beast Got 100M Views in Less Than 4 Days, The $25M Chrome Extension, and More

So last year we had our highest day, Black Friday was our highest day, almost $2 million in that one day. Are we ready to roll? Can we roll? Bro, you got to take that hat off, though. I can't see you. All right. I was just trying to, I wanted to wear a costume of sorts. Oh, there, I can see you like that. A little bit more spicy. Yeah, you're good like that. I couldn't see your eyes. Do you, um, I, uh, do you have an ice bath? Yeah, have a cold. Have you not jumping in our cold tub? So is it called cold plunge?

Yeah, the cold plunge. I have one too. And, um, What is your opinion of it so far? I like it. I like it. I use it about twice a week. I use it Monday morning for coffee. It's basically my wake-up thing and then I'll use it Wednesdays after a workout. What's interesting, though, there's a book I think called Endurance. Yeah, I love that. And they basically said, there's a book.

And I think what they said was that scientifically it doesn't do anything. Yes. And so that's why I have like a problem with cold plunge, which is the actual product is amazing. Like if you want to be cold, it's a good one. It stays like 39 degrees all the time. But it doesn't, I'm almost certain that it doesn't do anything. And some people say it impacts your brain if it does anything. But like there's still even conflicting research on that.

I think the big thing that I like about it is that it makes me feel tough. Yeah. It makes me feel good. It makes me feel good about myself. I'm like, Noah, you're not tough, man. You're weak. And I don't know. I don't really have that self-talk in my head.

But I go into this thing and I was like, do 10. And then when I'm about to get to 10, I'm like, you could do 15. And then I just feel proud of myself. How long do you sit in that? And then I get out and I'm like, um, it varies, maybe like a minute,

two minutes. Dude, I did five minutes at 39 degrees and it was incredibly painful. That's what it said online to do. So I did it. And I was just like, I was legitimately in pain. Like,

like more pain than I've ever felt just through exercise. How'd you feel about yourself? I felt tough. I felt tough. Yeah. So like I understand why it works. But I'm still looking. for like peer reviewed research that shows that it works and I've not found it.

And so that's why I was asking how you thought about your cold plunge because I heard you had the same way. I got to jump in here because I'm a cold plunge spokesman. They're the one sponsor for my podcast. So I got to. Oh, wow. For their honor here. So the thing I'm saying the cold plunge product, it's awesome.

I have it too. Here's the thing. Here's where you're wrong though. The thing that you're right about is there's no research that shows that it is good for recovery. And that's what everyone says they use it for. recovery and it's just like not accurate that it's it's actually better to use heat therapy for recovery than cold but like some of the brain stuff there is like more uh research there as well as

like um some of the other benefits around um like mood and like have you heard this brown fat cell storage stuff like that yeah but it yeah i hear you know i hear you I think it kind of works. I'm still, I still need to be convinced. It's like, it's like a workout. The way to think about it is like,

it's a workout for your nervous system. Like, it improves a lot of stuff that way, but it's just not good for recovery. I guess I would actually pitch the opposite, Sam and Ben, where lately I've been really into baths. That's just like been my go-to.

So like, I have, I got these bath bombs, got a little CBD in it. I'll light a candle. And then I'll either put on a podcast or I'll read. But that lately, I mean,

men, especially men, Because women have gotten, they knew about this. They just didn't want to tell us. But like, I literally just came from a pedicure. If men are not pampering themselves, look, if you're working hard. I'm saying if you're like putting in the work, you're working out, you're doing the stuff at the job. Like, take a little time for that R&R, man.

Go jump in a bath. A pedicure, though, is not relaxing at all for me. Like, I don't want someone digging into my nails. Gross. Can you see that? Red, white, and blue. Oh, my God. Look, I did the American flag.

That's awesome. I don't know. It's, honestly, it's fun. We're living once on this planet. Have a good time. All right, let's talk about, you came on last time. I personally thought the episode was only going to do okay. I'm telling you I got tons of people that DM'd me.

Ben says that people thought it was pretty good. I thought people thought it was great. But for this one, you have a list of one, two, like eight bullet point. There's a ton of ideas here. Oh, and also people criticize me because I didn't introduce you. So this is Noah Kagan. Noah runs this company. He founded it and is now the CEO of App Sumo.

It's like Groupon for nerds. It's quite large. I think last time you said 80-ish million in revenue. Mitchell just said you guys now have 165 employees. That's amazing. And you also do content. So you have a sick blog called OKDork, which I've read for like 10 years. And you have your YouTube, which now has 250,000 subscribers, I think, right?

Almost 300,000, man. It's unbelievable. YouTube.com. It's unbelievable. That's sick. And I remember you doing it years ago, just like on your phone. kind of lame. It wasn't lame. It was just like you weren't trying. And then like you started

trying two years ago, I think, right? Yeah, that was an interesting journey. When COVID hit two years ago, I was just shirtless at home with my iPhone. And I was like, I just felt good about what was going on. And I felt like I could help. And so I just started recording on my phone and uploading it. And so, you know, in all the people that are

listening to show, a lot of want to start businesses, like, just do now, not how. You know, something Mitchell I talk about, which is just get going. So I just upload it that. And from there now, There's a team of, I don't know, maybe six people will spend about half a million dollars on just the team this year. You know, from just me doing shirtless in my house talking about how to get your business going to your confidence.

But the reason why you're able to spend, why you're able to lose money is because you are, somehow it drives traffic and awareness to app sumo, which is like your main thing. But does the ad, does the ad sense or the YouTube ad at all covered the cost? Actually, it just started. So what was fascinating. And by the way, a lot of people know me because I worked at Facebook. I worked at Mint.com. So that's a little bit of what people heard about me.

So this year, let me just pull up our stats right now. So the first last year we spent, I mean, I think around 400K. I can look how much we made. Just getting it going, really. Just getting, it's an investment. It's like a lot of these things. Fortunately, we had Absuma as our bank roller. Last year on AdSense, we made $121,842.

In year one? In our year, first hardcore year of having a team. I think that's really good. It's surprising. This year is actually, but here's the thing. This is going to blow your mind and I think this is a really kind of good lesson for business. We put out 800 and I think 49 videos. Three of them basically generated all this money. Which ones? Isn't that kind of one that's sad? Either A, we suck at making videos or B, you know, a lot of businesses you keep going, keep going, keep going, keep going. Aren't all the channels like that, though?

I think it's a lot of business, like a power lot distribution. It's like a few things do a lot of the significance. So the three videos that made all of the money, the first one was I went and knocked on doors in Austin. We just released that, right? We just released it, but that came out towards the end of the year and drove a lot of our money. Asking crypto millionaires how to invest $5,000, and then asking NFT millionaires how to invest $1,000. More or less, those three videos made us the year. And that was after 100 and almost 50 videos.

That's crazy. Do you think you're all surpassed your 500,000? Do you think you'll break even on AdSense this year? Yeah. Our goal is not that. Our goal is around a subscriber growth. But this year, I think we'll lose the budget wise. It looks like we'll lose around $200,000.

Just depends how ads do. But I'm basically not really optimizing around that. That's crazy. I did a call with this lady who has a bunch of YouTube channels. And she was telling me it's her and a six-person team. I can't say her name, but she said that they're doing a million dollars a month in profit from YouTube. Just YouTube. Yeah, it's crazy. Just YouTube. Are you guys? I think the thing with YouTube, YouTube is slept on. I mean, TikTok is another one. It's a different type of audience.

But you guys have upped your YouTube game yourselves. I feel like almost every business out there. Or if you were broke and you're in any country in the world and you have nothing to do, this is the easiest, freest business anyone can start. So I just signed up to monthly.com has this course with Casey Nystatt. Did you see that? So Casey Nicestat has a course where every day he gives you a lesson on YouTube videos and I bought it for like $300 and I'm loving it. It is really, really cool. What are some of the takeaways? Well, so it's only three days in. And so, but like in the first or second lesson, he just walked around his office. He goes, I'm going to show you how I find cool stories. And he's just walking around and he goes, oh, that's a cool idea. You guys hear that beeping.

That's a truck backing up. And that ruins like it makes it really hard. for me to record throughout the day. I'm just going to make a video on that. Or he'll walk by a guy selling fake Louis Vuitton purses. And he goes, oh, that's a cool idea. Let's create a video on how to buy a fake purse in New York City. And so he's just like walking down the street coming up with ideas and you're like, look, I'm going to create, these are just small silly ideas, but I'm going to execute them really well. So in the next series, he's going to show us how he's actually going to execute these small ideas. That is awesome. Kind of cool, right? I love that you're still learning. Well, no, I mean, I think people assume that once you get to certain sizes like you, I would assume you don't, but I love that you're still curious and you're exploring how to improve your craft.

Yeah, I don't know anything about video. I've been making videos for my own YouTube just for fun, but I'm trying to learn. So anyway, it's a cool course. It was only like $300. Yeah. I mean, it is kind of crazy when you think about the things we spend on and the potential value upside you can get out of it. Like the downside you lost $300. The upside, I mean, how much could this make you or also could. from an enjoyment level. And I was like, I can use the stuff that I'm learning just in the podcast, I think. How much, like, what have you noticed or observed in your own YouTube channel? I know for my first million, you definitely, you guys have been looking to grow it. It seems like a few things are, I think what I've learned is that like things that like things that like don't seem like big ideas, but that can be kind of boring, can do really well.

So for example, I bought the house the lot next to me and I just like film a video. I'm like, here's just a, here's a video of the house. And I'm just walking around my iPhone. here's why I think it could be a good investment. Here's why it might be a bad investment. And I just posted that on my personal channel. And I didn't have any subscribers. Oh, I sent you that video.

And it got like three, four, five thousand views, but like a lot of comments. And I was just amazed that people cared. It was my first video. I was amazed that people care about little things that are small that are part of your daily life that you don't really think about. And so I think what I'm learning with Casey, when I'm learning with my stuff, is that small stuff that you think about throughout the day, more likely than not a lot of other people think about that, and they'll find it interesting enough to watch. You know what I mean?

Yeah. Yeah, I've always, I always think about that with restaurants where they sell their cookbooks. Like, people want to see what happens in the kitchen and you'll be surprised what people want to win. Yeah, so anyway, it's a cool course. You want to talk about mudwater? I do in a second.

One other thing I'm curious is, what have you noticed? Because I don't know, this is what I'm curious about as well. What have you noticed about the YouTube channel versus your TikTok channel? In terms of the audience and the growth and the experience. So let me tell you about the TikTok thing. So I have a TikTok, but I don't actually post on it.

I mean, I did once or twice, but it has no views. So we did this thing. I was texting you about this. We did this thing where on the podcast like three weeks ago, we said we're going to give $5,000 to maybe at least one, up to three people. And it's going to be a combination of if we like your videos and how many views they have. And we told people to go to our YouTube, chop up the videos and post it. So far, the hashtag that we asked people to use has gotten 30 million views.

in three weeks. Yeah, 30 million views. Sounds too easy. Go on. So these kids, it's mostly like these like 19 to 20 year olds, like one kid in college at Michigan, he is one of the guys.

I just started talking to him and they create, he created a handle called like MFM minis. And he started posting our videos and he like would animate them. And he has gotten multiple videos over a million views. And you know Fat Fire? Yeah. I made a podcast where I talked about how much I love Fatfire, the subreddit, which I found through you.

And he made a video about that. And it got so many views that Fat Fire made an announcement on their subreddit that said, we've been overwhelmed with new applicant or new subreddit people. And we got 30,000 people in one day all from the TikTok video where me, Sam Parr, is talking about Fatfire. All right. Well, that's wild, man. So do you think most business users to try to do this TikTok stuff?

No, I don't. Not most, but definitely some. Right now, of everything that I've seen, it's the fastest way to grow an audience. For sure, without a doubt. Yeah, I guess I've been hesitant because the quality of the audience in terms of the young. They're young. Yeah. Well, it's not even just the young, right? The young is the future to some extent. But it's like YouTube, I feel like the quality of the people that are like really into it and they're available during your newsletter. They want to comment. And I feel like TikTok is just kind of consumption. I think that YouTube is a much higher quality. I think podcast. For a long time, even though my whole life was podcasting, I was like, I would shit on it. I'm like, this is not that cool. And now I've changed because I'll see, I get recognized now like three or four times a week. And it's because they like listen to my voice for 45 minutes. They like think that they know you.

And so they built, people get kind of intimate with you. So do you get recognized from YouTube? I got recognized. Yeah, it was cool. Yeah, sometimes. I love it, man. I mean, the whole part of the journey is that like, this weekend, I went to. a squash tournament.

The Houston squash open. And it was because this guy watches, he knows, Absumo.com, he's watched some of the videos. And I was, I was during the pedicure today, it was one of the guys from our company. And I was like, man, that's why I do social media to some extent. Like, it really provides a cool magnet and window, I don't know if it's a window, but a way to just like connect with really

interesting people. Yeah, I think it's awesome. Like, even if it's that, not money. Like, it's a great thing. Yeah, I think it's badass. So I'm going to continue to do it. Can I, um, you know, so basically Noah has this. this sheet that he sent me.

And it's got a list of a ton of things. Can I just read off and asked questions? I actually want to ask you about Chrome extensions because they're like, I'm like nerding out on Chrome extensions right now. Have you ever even made one? I've bought one. So we have one right now. You have one.

So on here. So I tweeted out. So this is a mutual friend of ours, by the way, but I can't say who it is. They were considering buying a company and it was a Chrome extension and it was two people who were doing $25 million a year in sales. with their Chrome extension. It's pretty crazy. And then Gramerly, you know Gramerly?

Gramerly, I think, is like a $20 billion company at this point. Gramerly does like $800 million in revenue. That is what I like these sleeper ones that people kind of just like don't really consider. Dude, Gramerly is the best, man. It started by this guy named Max, who's, I think he's from like the Ukraine and he lives in Canada. And he's a hardcore engineer. And I asked him at HustleCon, the backstage. like that they had bootstrapped it and they raised a funding, they raised $100 million

at a billion dollar valuation. And I was with them backstage and I was like, dude, that's amazing. So you're like almost a billionaire now. He goes, yeah, it's pretty cool. Like the business is way bigger than no. And he like, he like smirked, but he was real low key. He's like, yeah, it's cool. The business is way bigger than most people realize. Like, it's going to be huge. And it was awesome. So Gramerle is a good business. What's your Chrome extension? Leo.io. What's it do? So it's kind of similar to that momentum one, which I think is pretty popular. It's the main one when you open up a tab.

It has like a nice background. I think that taking a step back on these Chrome extensions, I think what's interesting about your tweet, which was like, does ChromeyCents make $25 million or these? Is what are things that not everyone else is paying attention to that you can acquire for not a market rate? Like I think ultimately that's how you can have a lot of success in business, but that's specifically for marketing a lot of what I look for.

So when we launched sumo.com, I actually bought probably about five. million installs, I think give or take 500 installs of WordPress plugins. So I bought like some of the most popular WordPress plugins around. No way. Which ones? I mean, I have to pull up our list now, but the biggest one was Google Analytics. So it was like a million person install. Yeah, so it was Google Analyticator. We bought WP fonts.

We bought a construction page. So basically what I did is like script. I used a bunch of those. Yeah. So we scraped the thing that it's not just copying this because now people are more aware of it. But what you're looking for is, like, one, can you get structured data? So we went to the WordPress directory and you could get all their rankings. So I got all the rankings and then I sorted it by ones that were not updated recently.

So I said, which ones have the most installs that no one's taken care of? And I would just email them and say, hey, you haven't taken care of it. I'll pay you for it. And because there's not a market for it, you can get a cheaper price. And then I just sent a blast email to a lot of these people and picked up millions of installs. And that drove a significant amount of sumo.com. Did you even pay more than six figures for any of them? For the Google Analytics one, they had a million sales.

I paid 100K. Wow, that's crazy, isn't it? That was the most expensive one. I could pull up my price. Could that Google, so for the people listening, WordPress, if you don't use WordPress, I mean, WordPress is used by like three-fourths of the internet or half of, like, the top 10,000 websites. And they have this, like, crazy database of all types of apps that you could use for plugins.

It's amazing. And Sumo was a email capture plugin. Yeah, I found our list. We had a lot of. I bought Allo One Favicon, just a bunch of random ones. And then we would rebrand them and then cross promo to summa.com within WordPress. And I was thinking I would do the same. And the thing was, is there's not like these websites where people are buying and selling them.

And a lot of these guys weren't monetizing. It was just hobbies. And so I think in marketing and business, you've got to look for something that's a problem that other people haven't identified. And that's also why I bought the Chrome extension. I bought it for, I think, I bought it for $25,000. for 40,000 installs, active installs on Chrome. But with that one, we could not monetize it at all. We tried paid features.

We tried ads to it. We tried to grow it. And we were not as successful. So I pretty much lost almost all the money on that one. What's the CPM on ads for Chrome plugin? Do you know? I don't remember what it was, but it was abysmal. And it wasn't something that we were able to grow dramatically like I thought we could.

Like the WordPress stuff was really cheap. Like we were getting that stuff super cheap back in the day. That's crazy. There's this guy who I bet you know who you definitely know. I think his name's Syed. What's the name Syed? It's a lot of the same. And he owns this thing called awesome.

What's it called? It's called Awesome Corp or something. He owns WP Beginner. He's like the WordPress Underground Mafia. He owns a lot of WordPress blog. Let me explain the story, the story that I know it as. So basically he's only, he's young. I think he's from Pakistan and he's only like 28 or something or 29.

And he started this thing called WP Beginner, which is a website on WordPress. So if you like, how to install blank on WordPress, he'll show up number one. It gets like five or 10 million uniques a month, a ton, a ton of uniques a month. And using his blogs, he would see which plugins would get the most install. So he would say, like, here are all the best, like, forms for WordPress. Or here's all the best, like, font plugins for WordPress. And he would just see which are the best. He would buy the best ones and then just promote them extra hard on.

WP beginner. And at this point, I bet you he makes $50 million a year on all of his WordPress stuff. I wouldn't be surprised. I mean, I love these industries that everyone's sleeping on. Like, I think that WordPress stuff is really interesting. It probably is still a decent category. What's fascinating, though, is the other side of the same. So I actually tried to do the same strategy in Shopify apps.

So I went over to Shopify, and we were launching summa.com on Shopify. And I was like, man, I'll just go buy all these people over there. What was interesting was that a lot of the people on Shopify were a little bit more savvy and they had recurring revenue. So they were like, we want 10x the price where like 10x price of their revenue where the WordPress plugins, they weren't really making money. So I was like, hey, I'll pay one cent for every active install you have. So I was getting them for very, very cheap. But the Shopify one's like I couldn't, I literally couldn't buy almost any. So our friend Andrew Wilkinson bought a couple of them and he rolled them up and eventually took it public. And it currently,

it's in, it's public on the Canadian Stock Exchange right now, probably for $600 million market cap. It's called WeCommerce. And they do like, I think $30 million a year in revenue just off Shopify apps. The Shopify ecosystem was interesting. I mean, it's interesting if you can create something really easily and other people can copy you really easily. And then you don't control the payments. It was a whole wild experience in there because Shopify controls all the money. You don't.

You have to wait for your grandpa to give you your nickels. And they control the whole thing. So we were like, let's get the hell out of this world. But yeah, we commerce looks like, 535 Canadian, which is what, like 100 million American? No, not that bad. Yeah. What's the conversion of Monopoly money to USDA?

No, I think it's almost one to one. So are you bullish? You're into Chrome shit, Chrome plugins? I've pulled. No, I'm not as excited about that. I think what's interesting is like, what are the areas that are either super early on that like savvy people haven't gotten into? So like, for example, one of the older stories for me,

was Facebook News Feed ads. So look for these ad channels or places that not a lot of people are like kind of all paying attention to. When Newsfeed came out, no one was doing it. And we went bonkers on it. And that was a huge driver at Absumo for a lot of our growth. Because it was just so much cheaper because not everyone, if you're paying, if you're playing in the market, you're going to pay market rate.

And that's not how you're going to want. What did you use to get clicks for on Facebook? Oh, man. Let me pull it up. Pennies. Yeah, I mean, I wouldn't say it's pennies, but it's definitely like dollar email subscribers and then like low 10 figures for Facebook. paying customers. And now I think Absumo would have to pull up our dashboard. But I mean,

I think we're paying like $60 for a paying customer now. It's so expensive when we start. So we got to like 200,000 subscribers just through blogging. And then we started doing paid marketing. And I think we paid $1.50. When we sold, it might have been like $4. And if I had a guess now, I wouldn't be surprised if it's $6 to $8. Yeah. I still think there's opportunity. I mean, the opportunities are always there. It's just that you have to be creating. You have to look. So, like, for me, I was thinking about this recently. Like, if I was trying to grow a newsletter, I probably would go try to sponsor, like, super micro people on TikTok and YouTube.

Like, these guys that are guys and girls that are, like, sub 10,000 subs. Like, if your channel has, like, 966 subscribers, like, you'd be a perfect person. Because you have, like, an engaged audience. You're super smaller. You don't know how much money you're supposed to be making. And the fact that I'm giving you attention. It's kind of like what I did at Mint.com. We've done this with Absumo.

Mitchell on our team is doing it with Absumo currently. I think that's still a really affordable way. Let me ask you about... In a creative way to get a lot of growth. Let me ask you about Mitt. So, Mitt, you were like the one of the first hires there, right? Yeah, it was number four. And Mint eventually at the time, it sold for like $120 million or $200 million, something like that, right?

Yeah, one seven. And at the time, that was considered massive. It's still a lot of money, but like particularly then, it was like, it might as well have been a billion. And I loved Mitt. It sucks now, though. Like, I don't like Mitt. Totally. Why?

What would you do different? differently if you were running the show now. Oh, wow. I mean, Aaron was running the show, to be clear, and he was really impressive. I got to give him props. When he started it, and I want to talk about this because I think your audience, I don't know, I've been thinking about this lot. I think it resonates with your audience.

Aaron worked alone in his room by himself for six months building a prototype and then came out and convinced the world to come check out this product. And I just have a lot of admiration and respect for people like him. Like we have an intern, George. He's living in my guest house. He works. Did he move from Miami? Or sorry,

he moved from Hawaii to live in, he was living in another room. His desk was an Amazon box. Right. Now his desk is my washer and dryer. That's awesome. Right. And he's like,

I mean, the point is I think with Aaron Patser as well as, you know, as well as myself, I was living on floors, but in my aunt's basement. There's something to be said for like the sacrifice and the dream.

And I have a lot of respect for Aaron and George. And, you know, even back in the day with where I was at, getting all this stuff started. With Mint, I think, I mean, look at how big some of these finance. Look at Plaid, right? So we used another company before Plaid was ever a thing.

And Plaid is now 10 billion. I think some of the stupidest companies that are big that I don't get is like Brex or ramp. They're like credit card branded companies that are like $10 billion. Wait, but why don't you understand that? It's pretty simple. They just convince you to sign up for their credit card and they split the 1% fee with MasterCard on all your spending.

I know, but the fact that that's a $10 billion industry. I mean, it's just kind of. It doesn't seem like there's a lot of value add, but it's almost similar to the mint thing, which is they took a product that existed, which was this bank information, and they predated it up. So I think Mint could have been a much larger role. The VCs were definitely disappointed when Mint sold out. I thought Mint was going to sell for that price. That's why I left early.

Why did you think it was going to sell for that price? I thought the vision for, it's always interesting to think about people's visions. Like, Mark's vision at Facebook was always this big. and it's interesting to see different people and like how big they're thinking. And Aaron thought big, but it was like, hey, we're going to sell credit cards and we're going to sell people turbo tax. And I was like, okay, this at best scenario is going to sell for half a billion. Just in terms of how big that company could actually be.

And I just did the math to think about, well, I own 1%. So max, I'll get $5 million pre-tax, which post-tax means I'll get $2 million. And I was like, I think, you know, in four years, do I think I can generate $2 million for myself? And so I was willing to take that bet. That's kind of interesting because I don't, I don't think that I think that big. I mean, I would say, like most people would think $500 million is a pretty big exit. What could he have done differently to think bigger?

I mean, what would a bigger example be? And so let me be clear. I don't care, like, I don't care what people's visions are per se and everyone should have whatever dream they want. Like, if your dream is to make $5,000 a month or $500 a month or I'm not hating on anybody's dream. it was just I think there's look at how many how big fintech space is today right like plat alone just almost got bought by visa for seven billion uh you have robin hood which is whatever 15 billion

so what mint did which was really interesting was it acquired a lot of customers really cheap i think if they didn't sell out to into it as early there would have been a lot of different avenues that they could have parlayed uh this audience of young people who are interested in personal finance into a lot of different avenues um at the same time No, dude, if someone came to you and you're, you know, you did take that. You did take it, which is a good thing too. Was he wealthy? You can make, no.

How old was he? I mean, he was definitely educated, but he had a chance to cash out. I think he cashed out 30 to 50 million bucks. And honestly, I think he like moved to some like remote area in New Zealand and he's just living there. Yeah, well, he started like an ambulance company, like a software for ambulances or something like that. But like, Aaron, he's a creative guy. He actually tried to start a, uh, an. a sky subway system.

That's crazy. So like in the cities, like in Austin, instead of like having an underground subway, it would be an air-based subway. I was like, he's just crazy, creative. Like, but look, I think everyone's got to figure out what it is they want their own life to be. Like, there's no bad or worth selling out stuff. I guess lately I've been just thinking about like with this one period of time we have here on Earth, like how interesting do we each want to make it?

Yes, but I will, to play devil's advocate, it's also how hard do you, want to grind. So like, do you want to like, because I think that in order to make, in order to make cool shit, I can't decide how I feel at the moment, actually. For the longest time, I was like, dude, in order to make something huge and something amazing, you got to just lock yourself in a room for like three years. Like, you just have to grind. Now my thinking is, I think you actually only need to do that early on and then you can somewhat let up. So where's your opinion on that? Do you have to grind like all the time in order to make something happen? Or do you think that you can, you could have a little bit more balanced.

Because if you have to grind all the time, that's just exhausting. I only have that so many times in my life. Yeah. I mean, I don't know. I guess I'm just trying to think of different examples. Like for me, if you would have told me when I started Absumo like, hey, no, you'll be a millionaire, but it's going to take 10 years. I probably wouldn't have started.

Sure. And most of the people that I've seen, like one of my buddies is now making eight figures as an investor, it took him probably about 10 to 15 years to get to that place. And so the reality, I was. thinking about today, like there's one of our guys who we got pedicures today. He's on the sales team. And I was like, look, you can be as big of a life and a career as you want it to be. It's just like, what path do you want to take that on? And are you willing to put in the work? But I honestly, I think, I kind of think the opposite. Sam, I don't, I think of what I'm doing

with App Sumo and YouTube. It doesn't feel like a grind. Like I'm actually, like your podcast, what you're doing now. Does this feel like a grind? Most of the time, no, but it doesn't feel great all the time. Like, some days I'm like, oh, I don't feel like being happy. Like, I'm in a like, here's an example. my co-host who's out with COVID, he's late every single time. He's five minutes late every single time. Every once in a while,

it'll put me in such a bad mood that I don't want to record. And on those days, I'm like, I fucking hate this. I don't want to do this. I got to like snap out of this mood and being a good... So anyway, it's not always fun.

I mean, I think about my buddy Adam Gilbert, it's like the times that you don't want to show up is when it counts. Like, I think about that a lot of times when I'm, like, it's the things you're doing when no one else is watching that matters.

And that's like going to the gym when no one wants to do it. Or like last night at 7.30, I didn't feel like doing a podcast. But I'm, you know, it was like, okay, it needed to get done. And I think that, you know, that'll help you separate whether you want to get some of the things in life you want or not. Like, are you willing to sacrifice and for how long? And I think there, I don't know, I was thinking about this equation. Like, I wonder if there's a time, time sacrifice equals success equation.

Plus a little bit of unhappiness. And if you could do that for some period of time, you'll get success. I think it's the way that I, the question I ask myself is, what am I willing to pay in order to achieve blank? So like, to me, that's like, what price am I going to pay in order to get to this particular goal? And I ask myself, am I willing to pay that price? And sometimes I am, sometimes I'm not. So like, at the current, at my current stage in life, it's do I want to grind for a long time on a software company in order to achieve X amount of money? and I'm like, no, I don't want to pay that price at the moment. Maybe like in the future I would.

And for sure, when I was younger, I would, but not at the current point in my life. I think with all this stuff, it's better to be naive and just get going. Just find the things that you're curious about. Like if it's, you know, your audio editor Benji and be like, look, I like making these audio shows. I'm just going to go for it. Or lately, you know, like, I've been really enjoying Absumo work or doing the YouTube stuff. And it's better just just not almost not think about it because I think you'll psych yourself out. Like one of the stories we were talking about on the sheet was like this mudwater guy.

Yeah. What is that? And this guy just had like a, dude, this is a crazy. Yeah. I mean, it's just stupid. It's basically Indian chai tea. You ever heard of Indian chai? Dude, it's delicious.

I love it. Yeah, you have a really good video of, I watched the video of you testing it out and I bought it because of that. Oh. Oh, yeah. Cool. And I wasn't sponsored. It wasn't affiliate or anything. It was just this guy with one product, which I always find really fascinating.

I think a lot of us get so excited to have like. 18 business ideas, but Apple, mudwater, a lot of other people are making a significant amount of money just with one thing. And so he was having a, I think he was at an agency, just a regular day job. And I think everyone should get a day job or get some basic income. And then he, I think what's fascinating was what's a problem you have and what's a big ass category? And like coffee is one of the biggest categories in the world. And so I love that he kind of said, all right, what's the angle against them. And he created his own version. Literally, I think buying products off Amazon and just mixing himself together. How's it going? He's not like some coffee. What's that? I think he's,

I mean, last we heard, it was a $60 million revenue, which revenue is always different than profit, as I'm sure you, you know. But it's just fascinating that he found one product line and did great branding and just really went hard on that. $60 million is so much money. It makes $60, it does $60 million in sales. That's crazy. I wouldn't be surprised if it's more. I think what, you know, when you're thinking about business idea is number one, what's problems that we have ourselves? That's always just like the easiest way that I try to solve it for me. Like one problem I had recently was like I'm trying to be a doomsday prepper. Same. And I want like a doomsday. I want a doomsday. I want a doomsday prepper in a box. Like I just do. Bro, we had a total episode on that. Clearly you read Tucker

Max's article. We had a toll. I did see his. I did see his article. This is a little bit before because we had our snow pocket. Same. And I'm looking at generators already because I know it's, I'm afraid. Yeah, I just got mine. Uh, what did, what, how much did you spend? Like a thousand dollar generator? it was a thousand dollars. That's what I'm thinking about getting to. Dude, those generators are not that strong. They only charge like four things. Like, they can only be used on like four things at a time.

I'm just going to basically have a generator to a tent. And then when the doomsday comes, just like come knock on my tent door. Dude, I would love a doom day in a box. I'm so on board. The problem is that a lot of the doomsday stuff, they assume that you live in like the country. And I'm like, no, I need like the urban version of this.

So like, tell me like, how do I store water? How do I, like, should I have a gun? or should I not have a gun? What type of generator? What do you use the generator for? All that type of stuff. Yeah, I mean, I think coming back to what we're talking about, it's like with mudwater and, you know, business ideas, it's just like, one, just go to the things that you need help with. Right? And then just start thinking, all right, well, how, you know, how do I do that today? Right. So you, if for this doomsday idea, I'd go hit up you. I'd hit up Neville. I hit out other friends in Austin and say, hey, I'm starting to put together a thing. Do you want something like this and

see if I can get anyone to buy into it before I start. And then from there, if that works, then maybe launch a Shopify site or just start doing YouTube content around that. Yeah, just wire cutter for the end of the world. Honestly, it's a huge category, especially like nowadays, like all the stores are out. I think people are a little bit more aware that that can happen. So we have this friend named Ryan Dice, and Ryan Dice started Digital Marketer, which is like a pretty sizable business that does all types of stuff. And he owned a conference that he sold for a lot of money.

But pre-pandemic, like two years before the pandemic, he owned a website called like Survival something. I forget what it was called. And who would have known, but had he held on to it towards like COVID times, it would have been sold for so much more because now it's so much more popular. But he had this website and it talked all about like article. It was basically articles and affiliates on like which flashlight to buy like for the end of the world. And I'm almost positive that he sold it for around the eight figure range. Remember that site? What was it called? I guess I don't remember the exact thing, survival, something. I remember seeing it, I'm like, ah, that's shady.

Me too. I thought that too. But now I want it. Yeah. It wasn't shady. It was just I didn't understand it. I think sometimes I'll dismiss people or dismiss businesses about that. But I think coming back to like business ideas and like one person businesses, like I was thinking about the crypto space as well and or just all this stuff. It's like you don't have money and you can't buy it. You can always just document it. Just go review it. Like you said it's like your idea, be the wirecutter of these different categories, be the TikTok or YouTube or whatever that is. What's the best selling product ever for AppSumo?

Oh, on the digital sign? Dude, I'll also tell you another business idea. I would love someone to start. I'm going to pull up our Forever list. Hold on. I'm literally just pulling up our backend. The top product of all time, and this is a shocker. Probably five.

Yes. Fonds or stickers. Okay. Ben, do you have a thought? I have no guess. No. Nothing. Maybe font or something involved in photos.

Photos are fonts. maybe. There it is. So our top sell ever. So last year we had our highest day, Black Friday was our highest day, almost $2 million in that one day on Black Friday, which we paid out half of that,

at least half of that to creators, which is fucking wild. The top product, oh, this is interesting. Top product was a video editor. So a lot of video content. So if you want to get a video editing, and the second one was photos.

I'm just looking at this stuff. What are some other interesting trends. Like, oh, have you guys, do you ever invest in companies just because you're able to look at the app sumo stats? So that's something we've gone back and forth. Here's another, well, taking a step back, I know a lot of your people want, you know, to make their first million and beyond. Here's another product category. Tools for agencies, but if you think about what that really is, so I can't say the product, because it's his private numbers, but basically stuff to help agencies manage their project management. But the real thing here to think about, what's a tangential

bit. What's another example that you, so like, so like basically Asana for agencies? Yeah, like click up, like something like a clickup, like a clickup alternative. We have a lot of that on Apsumo. But anyways, the point that's interesting about that is, and this is, this actually surprised me when I came back to work at Apsumo is what are things that you can sell that help people make money? Well, our friend Neville has, says it slightly different.

He says, well, because Neville has a course. And he's like, well, I sell this course and people like it. But like, really what I'm learning is like, when someone, gives me money for a course, I'm just putting them to work. And if you really wanted to make a lot of money, I would just do the work for them and charge them. And that's how he explained it, which is similar. But, so what are some of the other top ones on Apsumo? Yeah, I'm looking them up. So, dude, so one photos, stock photos is a sleeper. I'm shocked at how many people want like stock audio, stock photos, stock video. Secondly, is video editing, which if you're not technical, that's probably harder to do. This is,

This is the area that like, this blew up a lot last year and it's still going, which is all this GPT3 auto content stuff. So auto ads, auto writing. So like copy. com. Yeah, I'm an investor in copy. So we promoted writer, happy scribe. I'm looking up the other major ones around that. Those are just some of the ones that I'm just like shocked at how well they've done.

But I mean, I think cool part about Sumo and like people to check it out is like there's a lot of new products that you honestly can just check out. what's getting popular and then make some type of alternative or make training around those types would you ever invest and stuff based off the app sumo data oh um you know i've actually invested differently so we've talked about this over the 11 years of the company like hey they're doing well instead of us taking a split of the sales what if we took equity instead um and i would have like i mean dude think about this we've promoted hopin there are eight billion dollars we promoted utami mixed panel optimizely mailchimp fresh i mean if we took some splits it would have uh it'd be a different trajectory for our company,

but it's just not something we've done. I do it differently. I invest in the companies that we use in our company. Sure. Like what? Atlassian, I went and invest it. So when we were building Shopify apps five years ago, I was like, I don't know if our Shopify apps are going to work,

but I'll put $10,000 in Shopify stock when it just started. So if our apps suck, I think the Shopify thing will probably work. And that Shopify stock now is like 60K. but Atlassian HubSpot. I bought a lot of HubSpot once we started transitioning a lot of our team to HubSpot. But I think where I just think about

is like where do I have an advantage or understanding that other people may not? Yeah, how many products have you guys promoted on Absumo? Like hundreds or thousands? A thousand. I mean, we've been in 11 years. I think right now on Absumo

we have 11,000 products. Yeah, it's definitely gone a little wild as we become a software marketplace. That's crazy. But 10,490. So when we, like years ago or a couple years ago, we had Zoom was one of our advertisers. And this was before they went public. And the ad crushed it.

It was so good. And we were like, damn, dude, people love this product. They love Zoom. And I ended up buying stock right before or right at IPO and it like knocked it out the park. I think there is like interesting stuff where you can where you can see like, you, you can see interesting information because you're like WP beginner because you're like App Sumo because you're like the hustle and you can see inside of this stuff. Yeah, it's like, and for everyone out there, it's like, where do you have an advantage? Like, where are you, maybe you're in Discord all day so you know what the NFTs are going to be

pop in. Maybe it's going to be out there on Twitter world so you know, like different stocks or different people that are talking about different things. I think it's just finding some advantage or like area that you can get, you know, an unfair competitive advantage. What other ideas interest do? I'm trying to think of just like, uh, the stuff lately, I mean, that's interesting me is basically like three or four areas.

One, I mean, I still think software is gigantic. What specifically? There's just so many. What specifically? I mean, for me, content creation is definitely the area that I've spent a lot of time in. So, like, I would love software on, like, how do you figure out which topics are going to be popular? Like, we spend, I don't know, how many people hours, probably like 10 hours a week, just to figure out which video to make each week. And so there's got to be a more optimized way to do that.

I think with Absumo, it's the same kind of idea. Like, we have a team of, I think, around four people that full time just try software all across the internet. What? Their only job, yeah, they're called like LDRs. Like, I don't even know what their titles are anymore. They don't tell me. But their little job is like, go to product hunt, go to Google, go to Twitter, go to all these like beta lists, go to all these different sites. Try the different software all across the internet and then see which ones are worthy to get, you know, blasted on app suo.com. And so that feels like that should actually be a software solution. So I think a lot of it is just like what are the things we're doing manually that we could automate?

So for me, topics is big. finding products for AppSumo is big. I'm super excited about, you know, I think a lot of people are crypto space. So one of the things I'm looking for is like, how do you scrape Twitter and Reddit and find the new next thing before everyone else? So kind of like a Google Trends or like a discovery thing

for these crypto NFT space. How do you do that now? I don't. Got it. I mean, it's just too hard manually. Right now what I do is that I text my friend who basically just spends 16 hours a day doing NFT I'm like, which one are you buying?

So like a few days ago, I bought a hippo. Did it tell you about, I bought a $5,000? Was it how much was it? How much was it? I spent on that. I think I, no, it's only almost $2,000 hippo, but it's part of a casino. So if you, as the casino makes money, if you own one of the NFTs, you get a cut of the casino rake. So Sean, it feels like a scam to me.

Sean created an email list the other day and he called it the Milk Road. And I don't know, I don't know if it's daily or if it's weekly, but Sarah's, and getting it and loves it. And it's all about crypto. And he tries to talk about like the latest and greatest from a trustworthy point of view. And it's, it's pretty great. The milk road is awesome. That's a great idea. The milk road. What is he recommending? I haven't read it yet because I don't like crypto, but Sarah's been reading it. And like, he'll just say like people are tweeting out. Like, so the weird thing about crypto and NFTs is like it's on Twitter. It's like in groups that like you have to be like on the inside to know what's legit. And so there's like these like stupid discourse

groups, Discord groups, and like these weird Twitter folks where you got to know who to follow. And he'll be like, blank is tweeting about blank. That's interesting because of, and then he'll explain. And so it's kind of interesting. I think what I think it was interesting about a lot of these side hustle ideas. And we put together like top ones around crypto if you're poor, meaning like if you want to be into crypto, but you have no money, like there are a lot of ways to do it. And one of them is just documenting a lot of this stuff.

Right. Like you could start a newsletter just like research. and putting out like, hey, here's things that are interesting that I'm seeing about it. And eventually, that's how you do become an expert in these different areas. How many? Go ahead. No, no. How many coaches do you have in your life?

Oh, right now? Not as much. So I have a CEO coach. So there's a guy I've been working with named Ken Coleman out of the Bay Area. What's the one I have a firm? Is that torch? He's just an independent. So Ken's like old school.

Like, he's not tweeting. He's not on YouTube. He's just been around Silicon Valley. in a lot of these different kind of companies. And a lot of his stuff is very like, like really obvious euphemisms, like leaders, Noah, leaders lead. He's basically like a dad.

I'm like, he's great, man. He's great. Who other coaches ever do? And then I have like a CEO advisor. So this guy named Raj who works at Indeed. He's phenomenal. He's a little bit more operational. So I go to him with different people that were like, yo, here's things that I'm seeing today.

What do you think I should be doing about it? And so him, I have a Hebrew coach. Right now I'm looking for a squash coach. I've been really getting into squash. It's actually, that's kind of been a harder coach to find. So I, you, like, you've always been into coaches and you've always done lessons. I love coaches, man. And so, like, you've always had, like, flight lessons or, like, I think you used to do boxing.

And so after we started. Boxing's on Friday. So after I talked to you, I started hiring coaches. And coaches are pretty sick. So I've got a bunch of them now, and they are badass. It is absolutely up. Most of all my coaches are fitness related. But like if I do want to learn something, I always hire a coach now.

It's 100% the way to go. Dude, I'm glad that's cool to hear that, man. So you have, you have fitness coach well for your boxing? I have like a boxing. Yeah. And like we, like, so he's, because I'm like trying to fight and like prepare for a real match. And so he's like helping me. And then I have a fitness coach as well.

And then for a little while I did my body tutor. I have a different nutritionist now. So yeah, like, I'm all about coaches. I think we're for people, especially if you don't have money to do something like that, it's more also like, how do you just get someone to hold you accountable? Right. At the end of the day, like one of the things I found really helpful, just having accountability buddy.

So if you're trying to start a hustle, if you're trying to be healthy, if you can't afford a coach, like that's an easy way to find someone to just help you make sure that you you're going on your path. What do you use? Like maybe it's in your hustle Facebook group. What do you use to track all your stuff that you have going on? Like you have two or three or four coaches at any point. You've got your work.

You've always got shit going on. Do you have some weird way that you track all this? I track all of it. I think the, I mean, I just have, most of my stuff is just automatic. So I don't really have to track it, meaning that like every Friday, like my calendar is pretty much as automatic as possible. And I think I've talked about it in the past, like it's color coded. Right.

So every Friday at 10 a.m. is boxing. So that's just automatic. And then generally flying is going to be every other week, and that's yellow. So that's one of my learning. And then Hebrews on Thursdays. Therapies Wednesday, every other Wednesday at 11. That's yellow. So yellow is my learning category.

I do squashy, steamy, where we play squash and go to the steam room. That's not really with the coach. But I think if you can have more things on autopilot, so you don't have to think about it, then you don't have to track it. The only thing I think I actively, not aggressively, but I've tracked for 15 years is my personal finance. What are you used for that? Every single, I use a spreadsheet. Everyone knows.

I think on, yeah, OKDort.com, where's my money? It's literally just like, what's my assets? What's my liabilities? And then what are some action items I want to take in the next 30 days? Do you, when you're tracking any of that, do you count privately held stock as anything? And then we can talk about app sumo KPI's because there's some interesting stuff of how we track there. And then the YouTube tracking.

So more business-related stuff. in my net worksheet, I only track the cost basis. So I don't track like how do you have a valuation? No, no. So I literally just track how much I invested in it. So I invested in like circle, invested in buffer, invested in LM&T, Huckberry. I only invest in companies I use. I don't invest in anything I don't use.

And so I just track that like I put $10,000 in. And that's just what it is. I don't track like the appreciation on that at all. Buffers and interesting companies. So Buffer, when I was, when, so a lot of people who listen to this show are young. When I was like younger, when I was younger, when I was 24, 25, Buffer was the most badass company because they did this thing where they revealed all of their revenue. And at the time, that was like revolutionary. Like some small time bloggers were doing it.

But Buffer started doing it. But their company has totally stalled, hasn't it? Like their revenue. That's a tough one, man. $25 million every single year for like the last three years. Yeah, I invested him because I love Leo, I love Joel. I mean, they're very innovative at the time. I think what people don't give like Zuckerberg and some of these people credit for

is how do you stay relevant and consistent? Same with Tim Ferriss. Like, how do you stay relevant for 15 years? It's very easy to come out hot, but to actually kind of have that stuff. How does Zuck do it? You know, for anyone out there. Well, I think for anyone, it's just like you have to stay consistent with it and you have to kind of keep staying on that edge over your little bit uncomfortable.

I think with Buffer, there's, they basically, my guess is that they hit a market saturation of how valuable that is for people to pay for their tweets. Yeah, I'm looking at the revenue now. By the way, it's gone down since 2019. Yeah. I mean, I think they haven't. Well, here's the interesting thing. They've gone down, but Canva is a $40 billion company. And it's pretty much the exact same thing. Canva? Canva is the same thing as Buffer? Are you on drugs? What are you talking about? Canva's amazing. Canva? It's the same thing. It's how do I create content that I can then share or post in other places? but I think where they evolved past Buffer,

which Buffer was like, I'm going to help you make your content for Twitter or Facebook, which really didn't make a difference. And then Canva's like, well, what if we can help you make these templates that you can just use in social media, but as well through a lot of other categories?

And so I think that's kind of like market size is where they, I think, iterated better than, not iterated, but picked a better market. Same as Absuma. We got lucky with this market. Canva is going to be, like software just got. Canva is going to be one of the most valuable

publicly traded companies, I think, in the world when they go public. Dude, have you seen their numbers? They've just crossed a billion in revenue. And it's like doubling. Really? Canva is killing it, man. They raised money at a $40 billion valuation

because they grew the revenue from $500 million to a billion in a year. And it's on a tear, man. Canva's amazing. That is bonkers, man. Canva is crazy. What's crazy is the founders are husband and wives, and they bootstrapped it for a long time. And so the husband and wife, Trio, or a couple,

is worth like $15 or $20 billion right now. Good for them, man. It's nuts. Canva is a crazy story. We're going to have to cover Canvas sometime because they're growing like a weed. I have no idea how they grow so fast. One thing I did want to come back on, Sam. I was talking to Mitchell on the back end.

One thing I do in tracking that when I've told people, they always find it pretty interesting is like I do monthly life and reviews. I told you about this? Every month? Yeah. It's actually been, I mean, it's kind of, dude, so every month, And I've done this now for about seven years. And it's basically an email I sent to Tynan, Nick Gray, and my buddy Jimmy and Leo.

And you basically just review your past month. And I actually started sending it to like my brother, my buddy Johnny and a lot of a few other close friends. But it's pretty fascinating to track what's happened in a month. And it's been fun to go back to like years ago to see what was happening in my life. But it's also interesting to be like, okay, look at all the photos from the month. What happened in the month? What can I understand about myself? And then what do I want to have upcoming in this for me, January?

But I think that's been one. So what I'll do reveal in that email? I'm going to copy that. So you have photos. Yeah, so I'll just tell you. So let me. So I don't share my photos, but basically what I'll do is I'll pull up my photos from December, look through December to the end. And I'm like, damn, a lot of stuff happened versus what I think happened.

I'll start the, so let me just start the December one. I put December was a fucking month, six out of ten. It may not be my greatest, but maybe it was actually better than I think. And then I'll start the email with what are the things I said I was going to do to December and how did I do against them? So a few of them was like at peace with my drinking. And my, I was not at peace with my drinking. I said I'd go to a Niners game, which I did. Lock in my 2022 bucket list, which I did.

And then I'll just try to do like a little bit more of a stream of consciousness, reviewing of how the month actually went about themes, work, travel, family. I've tried it with categories and I've tried also just free flow. There's not whatever works for you. I think the important thing here is having like a group of people that you can send it to that don't even have to give you feedback. Like they don't, you don't need their opinion,

but it's just like, here's my life. How's your life? And if you want opinions, you can ask for it. Would you ever make that public? And then also, this is way too raw to make public.

It's like, um, such good content. I would love to like to read this. I mean, I'll send you, I'll send you the December one. Just don't share it.

But it's just like, well, I'm just saying like, I'm thinking like what I do that as a blog? It's pretty cool. The end of year reviews for a lot of people, the reason why I started thinking about Syed recently, the guy, the WP beginner guy,

is because he has this end of year review. And I always love reading his end of year review. I didn't really see. I'll look him up. Some of this stuff has like, we did this like wild therapy out in Mexico on the beach, which was just like psychedelics. Some of the stuff is just really sensitive.

Yeah, but I don't know if I'd want to make it public. I'll send you. Let me ask about that really quick. then we'll wrap up. But did that stuff make a difference? Just doing psychedelic therapy, which I told a story about how I almost did it one time, but I got kicked out of the group. Did it? Why didn't get kicked out? This lady used to work at Lehman Brothers. She was like worked at the banks that like helped to destroy America at one point. And she got mad at us for talking about money too much. And like she was saying how like her medicine needs to be free for the world but was making me pay $2,000. And I was like,

lady you realize how like hypocritical you are like you're talking about like how capitalism ruins everything but you like you worked at Lehman Brothers and like you're making me pay you two grand to do drugs with you like come on like don't act like your shit don't stink and she kicked me out of the group so I didn't get

to actually do it with her you couldn't have yourself improvement yeah I didn't she didn't let me do drugs with her I do want to end Mitchell is messaging me he's like yo you got to do your favorite purchases or website but tell me really quick did the therapy work So I've done a lot of different therapy. Like I've done ayahuasca, which I put that article out that went viral.

And have you read that article? Yeah, if I remember correctly, the takeaway was like it was cool. Like it made somewhat of a difference, but like it wasn't that great. No, it's definitely impactful. It's just intense. I mean, I think what, you know, there's a lot of different ways to eat a Reese's peanut butter cup, why I always think. It was LSD therapy.

And I think the main theme that I took away from that specific experience, well, a theme in general for me is like, how much should we have life be super predetermined? Like, I want to go make this much money or I want to go on this vacation versus how much should we just let the day like unfold? And I think that's where that was definitely a theme I was trying to just understand. I think the big theme from that specific experience is like, how do I let more joy in my life? Right? Like my word of the year is smile.

Like I think it's good to have an intent. Yeah, like to have an intent or something in the year. And for me, smell just like, yo, just enjoy it. Right. We're all going to die someday. Just like enjoy the grind. enjoy getting to chat with you today, which, you know, this is probably the highlight of my day. I have a buddy coming at 630, but I was like, I really want to talk to Sam today.

Like, I'm looking forward to it. So that was the main theme from that experience. I think there's a lot of ways to learn about ourselves. I think, you know, MDMA or LSD therapy, regular therapy, journaling. There's a lot of different ways, you know, whatever is calling people at the right time. What are your, all right, Mitchell was telling, telling, he also told me this, or he wrote it in the thing about best stuff to buy for under $100. you and I are the same in that we buy lots of crap just because like we're up we're both obsessed

with gadgets um by the way you sent me over so I told no I was going to go camping and he sent me over this massive Tupper container with like all these gadgets there was candy in there that expired in like 2012 like I went camping any of the gadgets in there you yeah I went camping and I used your lantern and I used like one of the flashlights and a headlamp and uh I saw I found some Swedish fish or something like that, but it like expired like years ago. I'm more of a sour patch kid guy now. That's what it was.

Sorry, it was sour patch kid. It was, it was like, it was that type of candy. Yeah. Huh. Different purchase.

I don't know. I was trying to pull up some of the different things that I've bought that I'm like, man, I like these and I use them a lot. Let's start with the cold plunge though. The cold plunge,

I didn't buy it. I was gifted it. It was expensive as shit. It was like five grand. But in my opinion, if you want to be cold, it's a pretty cool gadget. I like it.

I just, I guess the question is, like, I think retail is 5K. I pay, so this, I think you'll appreciate this. I hit them up and I said,

hey, I'm a social media influencer, which I find ironic. Oh my God. I say it as a mockery. I didn't actually say that. I was like, hey,

I mentioned your product. Can I actually just pay cost? And then I'll promote it. Because I figure, like, I want to support them as a business. So I think for people out there that want to get free crap,

like just pay cost, you get it a lot cheaper, and you can promote it if you like it. That's good. I like it, but I don't know. Is it worth 3K? Probably not. I like my,

I've been using the bathtub and the hot tub a lot more often. You have a hot tub? I didn't know you had a hot. Come over. Yeah, come over. Do it all work out. Dude, here's a thing that I think people are sleeping on,

but some people are using it. Have you used Apple Air Tags? I just got one. They're pretty great. Dude, they're like secretly amazing. Like I throw it in my luggage and in my backpack. So if it ever gets lost in like travel or if someone ever jacks my backpack,

there's like a little secret tag in there. Dude, I've been using tiles for years. But the tiles are only okay. The air tags are... What's the difference? I never used those. Just the interface and how loud the beep is. That's it.

Yeah. Just those two things. They're pretty... Dude, you can actually... I haven't messed with 3D printers too much, but Tynen, he puts out a... Dude, Tynan's gear list. If you don't check out Tynin.com's gear list, definitely one of the top gear list ever. Like, in terms of like...

Spell that. T-Y-N-A-N-com. So his gear list is awesome. He has, like, a lot of USB stuff and, like, what's the... smallest charger to be using. But he, what you can do, which is crazy, on Etsy, this is a really neat hack. You can buy a 3D printed thing where you can put an Apple air tag and then secretly attach it to any of your bikes.

So if you're a biker, for like 15 bucks, you can buy a secret thing that it attaches to your water bottle and no one will ever know it's there. So you have a tracker on any of your expensive bikes. Oh, that's sick. But does the air tag? So the air tag only works though if it's in within Bluetooth of an iPhone? Of any iPhone. And I think that's where there's a little bit of like controversy,

but it's any Apple device that has an internet connection. All right. I think is it internet connection or Bluetooth mesh connection? I thought it was Bluetooth, which is kind of like fucked up if you think about it. Bonkers. Right? Dude.

Well, I mean, there's these stories where like someone put it on someone's car and they're tracking them home. I think that's obviously like that's messed up. But I think just the technically, like it's just a fun tool to start playing with and just start experimenting with. All right. So what else have you gotten? Dude, you know what I've gotten really into?

Tea. Why? I'm like, I don't know, man. I've been into like Chinese tea. So I bought a Snow Peak bottle. It's called Snow Peak is the brand. It's like super good for like travel and stuff. And then I buy, it's called a Guy Wan.

I can't believe I'm talking about this publicly. I don't know. It's just so nerdy. It's like what creepy white dudes do. I mean, you are that. These Guy Wan's you have like a little Chinese tea ceremony. And it's really inexpensive. So if you can go to Ali Express,

buy it for like $10. And I bought a travel one actually. So I have one for home, which you can buy an AliExpress for like literally $10. Or from Keith titanium, you can buy a guy one that's for camping. That's like $200. So when I travel,

I'll bring tea around. And I get it from this place in the Bay Area called Old Ways Tea. Is it? Well, yeah, oldwase tea.com. That has definitely been something I'm way more hyped on. And I've definitely been drinking a crap done more tea this year. A good thing that I bought recently, which I'm almost positive you have as well.

What brand chair do you have? I think this is an autonomous. Same. We have the exact same one. So basically these chairs that I was looking at, they're like $1,500. Like a fancy chair, like an Aaron, I think it's called. It's like 1,200 to 2Gs. They're really expensive.

And so Autonomous is a new startup that's making chairs and desk supplies. and it's basically as good, I think, as a really fancy one, but for like $350. Yeah, these are definitely affordable. One thing I'm, one thought I've had, Sam, is like, what if you bought in your life that you're like, man, this is luxurious? I was trying to think of things that I'm like, like, I bought this Levi's jacket because it's getting cold in Austin. It's got the little fur. It was $89. And I probably looked for a coupon.

And I'm like, yo, this is like, I look like a cowboy, like a real cowboy. This is obviously kind of a joke. And so I was just trying to think, like, what are other items in my life where I'm, I'm like, man, I can't believe how rich I am, even though it's not that expensive. And definitely that jacket is an example. Dude, Amazon, oh, you have these Amazon basic moccasins. I got those because of you, actually. Yeah, that's sick.

Dude, those are 20 bucks? I'm like, I walk around my house. I'm like, who's the king? Who's the king? I love that. One thing that we do at my house is we do Costco socks and we'll buy like 50 pairs and just never match socks again. and then at the end of a at the end of like half the year or so we just throw away all the

the socks and get new ones because like if they wear out or if because I I hate matching socks and so I hate you know like it's just stupid why do I got to like spend all this time like putting them in a ball together like just give me like a huge bin where they're all the same and I'll just grab two it's stupid matching socks is stupid I'm I take a stand against that and so anyway I just don't match socks anymore and so that's my splurge is I spend like $200 a year and I just get fancy new socks. Also, another thing that I do that's pretty amazing is I do that same thing, but with ex officiato underwear.

So like, you know, like, when you put underwear on and there's like a pair that's always like the last to be used because like the band is all stretched out or you just like don't like it or it's like stained or it looks ugly, like you're just not about it. So I just threw all those away and I only bought one style, one color, but like 30 pairs. And I spent like $500 to do it because. Ex-o-Fichinato underwear is like $20 to $25 a piece. Dude, I only wear sacks underwear. I think it's the same kind of thing.

But it's got the whole little ball holder stuff. I like those too. I like sacks. They're a good brand and they don't stretch out as fast, but they still do wear out a little bit. I definitely feel pretty luxurious. Do you ever mess with Lulu Lemon socks? Yeah, I'm all about anything, Lulu Lemon.

Dude, Lou Lemon socks. Like these no-show socks, because they always, all either knows that always get holes in them. I'm always just, like, frustrated about that. But the Lulu lemon ones. home what other stuff you bought that you're like yo this is rad and i do want to spend at least five minutes i know we're going to end here um i want to spend five minutes like how do we grow your podcast let's like brainstorm like i know that's something you're you're able to do so let's do

one or two more of these items and like i don't know let me let me let's do that now let me tell you the numbers now so in december we did uh right about two million views um i think or two million downloads, of which, like, I think 600,000 was on YouTube and the rest, so 1.4 million, was just people going onto iTunes or Spotify. Okay. So those are numbers. What's your current goal? Do you have a goal this year around the audience or podcasts?

Yeah. I think three million, consistently getting at least three million downloads a month, would put us in like the top, like, five business podcasts in the country. What's been the biggest thing that's helped you grow it? This is like the way, I'm just kind of brainstorm with you here. What's helped you get the biggest delta and new subscribers? So one of the shitty parts about podcasting is that I've done a lot of growth stuff. It's been crazy hard to grow it.

And so the biggest thing that's done well is we've just invested more time and more energy into good content. So Sean and I prepare. We research a ton. Our chemistry has gotten better. So that's just like one big category of just like improved content. The second thing that we've done that's starting to work really well is we're buying ads on other people's podcasts. And so we've learned this strategy from Jordan Harbinger. Jordan Harbinger has 15 million downloads a month.

Of course, he's in like a big category. It's just like culture, I think is the category he's in. And he basically spent $900,000 in his first year buying ads on other people's podcasts. And that's how he got big. Okay. You should sponsor, okay, my podcast. I'll just put you, I mean, you're coming on next week for free. Well, I'll sponsor it for sure.

Yeah, I mean... How many downloads and episodes do you get? I think it's about 10,000 an episode. Dude, so like, we're a little bit bigger than that now, but like just getting to 10,000 is really hard. Podcasts, do agree. Are podcasts the hardest thing these ever try to grow? That's why I backed out of it.

That's why I went to YouTube. Dude, it's so hard, but it's super sticky. Like every podcast that we launch is going to get at least 50,000, every episode will get at least 50,000 views, I think. All right, here's like one simple thing that I don't know why you don't do. on your, I think one of the ways to think about, one, it's always easy to get people to come from medium to medium. So podcast sponsoring means they come from one show to the other,

super easier. How come you don't promote your podcast or newsletter on YouTube? Well, not, that's not talking about the newsletter, but what do you mean? The podcast? Well, no, no, no, no, no. So think about it as like a gateway drug. So someone on another podcast is highly likely to go to a different podcast, because you already know that they're behavior-wise down.

So sponsoring podcast is a great one. Getting on other people shows is a great one. But you're getting like, a video recently where you got Howard retired over 20 million by H-31 has 140,000 views. But in the description, there's nothing that says

check out my newsletter or my podcast. Yeah, that's stupid. We should do it. You're right. That's low-hanging fruit that we should have solved for. I would think that's a pretty easy one. And then on your about page on YouTube,

you don't link to the podcast. Really? Are you sure? Yeah. It says website. Well, it says website. Where does that go? Yeah, I mean, I guess that's okay.

It says website, Twitter. Instagram, Facebook, I might want to actually just put the link for podcast. I would also consider, I mean, this might be more of a stretch, but I would consider, do you strategically try to really intentionally grow YouTube and or TikTok pick one of those, probably YouTube? And then really think of that as a way to get people in your newsletter, which is like the first step to getting them onto your podcast. No, it's been the other way around. Like lately we've been go for it. My first million has become like almost its own brand. I think here's what I think's going to happen. I think in the future, like within one to three years.

me and Sean and HubSpot, I think what we're going to do is sell the podcast or do some type of licensing deal. There's like no reason for me to think this other than this is just like crazy prediction. I think that we're going to do some type of crazy, there's a world where we would do a crazy licensing deal. HubSpot's a public company.

So I'm not actually, just so everyone knows, I'm just fucking guessing. Like I'm not, this is not based on anything. HubSpot maybe would do a thing where in three or five years, we do some type of licensing deal with like Spotify or whatever,

you know, kind of like to call her, Daddy podcast. Do you know what that podcast is? Call Our Daddy. Yeah. So they did a licensing deal for $60 million over three years. And I think there's a world where we would do that with like Spotify or one of the other big platforms. And I think that's good. I like that as a creative at home. But hold on, why did you say getting people to come on to your, to like grow the YouTube channel or TikTok is not worth it? Or not as it important. You were like, yeah, it's not good. Like what do you mean there?

Well, what we have found is that I think it's better to send people straight to the podcast because if they click subscribe, then they're notified whenever there's a... They're notified whenever there's a new episode. You know what I mean? No. Yeah, but don't you think, like the amount of people available on the YouTube that are like, hey, I want to hear more about this than come on. I mean, think about how much like Joe Rogan got found because of YouTube. Well, and the second answer to that is, I mean, we're trying. It's fucking hard if we're trying.

I'm like that the efforts, if you look at our YouTube page, look at our videos, like, the efforts there, like, they just don't get that many views all the time. It just is taking a long time. I mean, how many views? Look at our YouTube. How do you think it's going? Do you want recommendations? Yeah, I would say it's going okay at best.

Okay, so I think what you're doing is you're uploading podcast to YouTube. You're not actually creating content that people watch on YouTube. Right. So if you look at it at our channel, like YouTube, okay dork, dork, the content is, is made for YouTube. So the two things that I would tell your team, here's what I would recommend you to do. Over the next three months,

look at your CTR, like the click-through rate of all these different videos, and that'll basically show you if you're picking the right topics. And then as well, your thumbnails are... What's the baseline? If you can hit a 5% CTR, you're doing very well.

You're doing very, very well. So, like, would you say 3 to 5 is decent? I mean, three is decent. I think you want to get to 5. You want to be, like, hitting a really high number. So, like, our recent, like, awesome videos are hitting five. So I would basically just start tracking your CTR, your click-the-rate on these things. And the second thing you want to be, this is just the start with this stuff is that I think

this is a way of expanding the pie that people find out about you. And then they're like, oh, in your description about page, go to the newsletter, go to the podcast, which I would just update your top 10 videos here. You don't need to do all of them, but do them moving forward. The second thing is your average view duration. So the Hassaminaj one had, it's a two-hour video. There's a reason it got 26,000 views. It's because it's long as hell, and I'm guessing your average Viteration was like 20 minutes.

How many does that have? 20,000. 26,000. Wow. Where, you know, the serial killer got busted through 23. One, I don't know how that's relevant to people making a million. It's not. Put that on your own channel.

Bro, come on. Don't blame me for all this stuff. You're, who's in charge? I don't know anymore. Well, anyways, I think the second thing is just look at your average Vuderation. Do the same thing. Just look at a line graph. So, like, how are we trending?

And don't worry about super optimizing. Just worry like each month or so. Can we try to get both those numbers moving in an upward direction? Any other things? I think you were able to do that. What's that? Anything else we should do? I mean, your thumbnails aren't really how much.

Dude, I'm pretty sure we're using your thumbnail guy. Yeah, it might be the thumbnail guy, but you're like, how much are you actually spending to make a great thumbnail? So like every one of our thumbnails now, we go and do custom photos. So at 430, I'm literally, it's the third time going out with a photographer to take a thumbnail for the same video. Dude, that's so much work, isn't it? Isn't that crazy? There's so much work to make it like a YouTube video.

I just dismiss it as like, oh, you're just fucking around. It's so much more work than I thought. Yeah. To be good. I mean, I don't know. I'm not going to say some cliche shit. Anything great is worth working on. Do you feel like an idiot though on the side of the street doing this face where you're like hands on your head?

And you're like freaking out about the 2022 stock market and how it's going to go down? Well, I think, I mean, the other thing with, no, it's honestly enjoyable. And I find it kind of like a science. It's like a game more even than a science. Like, how do I, win this game and doing that, it gives me an advantage. So hell yeah, I want to do it. And I find it enjoyable. I think, you know, topics, you should also just kind of consider the topics you're putting out on YouTube. Like, how much do authors make? It's not something that I think people are really, like,

going to immediately stop and drop everything to watch. But like, Salana billionaires, right now, crypto and NFT and stuff like that and how to get rich is always popular on YouTube. But dude, we're not making YouTube specific content. We're just like, whenever we talk, we're just going to chop we just chop shit up. So like it, what we could do is like have pre-planned topics that we think would go get popular on YouTube. It's just a little bit harder to do that naturally in a conversation,

but I think we can do it. But yeah, our goal, like, I'm predicting the future. We're going to get to like the three million range by the end of the year. And once there, I think we're going to be end up being like one of the big,

I think we'll be like in the Dave Ramsey, Tim Ferriss category inside the next year and a half. Here's it. Yeah. We can end it. One thing I find fascinating is there's people who are huge on YouTube that no one knows. But a lot of people know who Tim Ferriss is. Kind of something I've just been reflecting on.

What does that mean? Well, he's been in the game forever. And he also entered the game when the world was smaller. So, like, in the niche of, like, tech and startups, and this whole, like, make money online thing, there weren't that many people on it. And there weren't that many people who were famous for it. And he was definitely one of the first that was famous for it. Do you know what I mean?

Yeah. I mean, yeah, that's interesting. the world gets bigger. It's also getting known in your niche. Like, I have a friend who's popular in the spearfishing category. How popular?

I think, what's that? He's got like a few hundred thousand followers on TikTok. He's got a full-time business now. It's called, uh, CAST.

Casts. It's called cast and Spir-Pond for nerds. I want to be a spearfish influencer. This guy's cool as shit, man. If you ever want to go spearfishing, but I think what's fascinating to me about him is like, he's on TikTok. He just does this,

you know, you talked about this in the beginning where you documented your house. He likes spearfishing and he likes fishing. And so, he just started videoing it, put it on TikTok, got like, I think he's, how many followers do you have on TikTok and YouTube? I think he's got like 200,000 cast and spear. 280,000 followers. He texted him yesterday. I don't want to say his revenue, but he's got a, you know, not a seven figure,

but a pretty healthy business selling spearfishing gear now. So I think instead of getting big at Tim where maybe people are saying, I want to be known or I'm an expert, I've got an imposter's in him. Just like, do the thing you're already excited about, document that. And I think people be shocked that they can make a lot of money doing it. Like my brother, he does insurance claims for hospitals. I don't know about this? No. So when you go to the hospital, you get a bill and the hospital has to fight with the insurance company about how much to pay. Yeah. So he reviews the bill to optimize to make sure that the insurance company pays the full amount. Okay. Because he can be like, no, they didn't need to do this procedure. They need to do this. And now he's, so I think one of the things is what do you

have in your day job that you can make a business out of? And so he's exploring how to help individuals optimize, well, not optimized, but reduce their medical bills. So if he's, you're, you know, You got a medical bill and it's like $5,000 or $1,000 or $10,000. He'll review it for free and then maybe take a cut if he's able to reduce the amount of money that. That's actually a great idea. There's this company called buyer.co and my friend started it and it was called negotiating as a service. And they would negotiate anything on your behalf and take a percentage of the savings. And the company sold to ramp.

So if you go to buyer.com, it redirects to that website. The company you said you don't like ramp. It's not that I hate him I just don't do them very much. And buyer, the guy he started He's like, I sold out too early But I didn't have any money And it was like a cool way to make money

But he was like this could actually be great I would do like a negotiating As a service And have my health bill be one of the big ones Another great company is called Do Not Pay And they're doing this But for a variety of different things Oh yeah, saw that

I like Do Not Pay Yeah, do not pay the robot load There's also like vendor.com Vendor's like a similar one give them your bills, they negotiate, and they just take a cut, or whatever they see. Dude, I love those services. I love no-brainer services. Win-win. No one's down. Like QuickBooks, or not quick, TurboTax. Mint. Yeah, turbo, I'm turbo tax a little. It's like, oh, it's free, it's free. Guess what?

If you really want it, it's paid. But they don't, but they don't take money from you. They just take a percentage of your refund. Yes. Which I like. Yeah, that's fair. So I did want to say, though, dude, honestly for your show, because other people out there, they're trying to do it, I think, obviously, you said go on other people's shows, podcasts. I think optimize these other, these other platforms. We're going hard on the TikTok thing. The TikTok thing definitely has worked.

But has it driven people? I think ultimately it's to see it helping me with my goal. Is it driving people to the podcast? Unfortunately, I have no idea. That's another shitty part about podcast is it's hard to know what works because I can look at my charts

and see how many downloads we have. It won't tell me how they heard about us. It's not like Google Analytics where I can see like the person who bought this came from Google. because they searched blank on this type of phone. Have you done URL genius? No, we've done chartable.

Is that the same thing? Well, URL genius is, I think we use this on our show sometimes. It's app.urlgene.us. It's deep linking, so it'll link deeply into the podcast on Spotify. I don't know if it does iTunes as well. And then you could track,

I think, how those clicks are actually looking. So you can put that on TikTok or put that out on the YouTube world. I didn't know about that. All right, I'll look into that. All right, Samuel. We're going to wrap up.

I love seeing you. Dude, thanks for doing this. You look good. Dude, thanks for having me. How many people reached out from the last one? Ben messaged me. He said it got 65,000 or 70,000 views. Really?

Yeah. Dude, you guys are, man. I told you the first time I ever came on your show, I had like an ex, this girl I wanted a date with was like, I can't believe you're on the show. Yeah, he messaged me. He said he got 65,000 views or download. All right.

Thank you for having me, man. This is excellent. All right. We're talking a little bit. Talk soon.