My First Million - Noah Kagan: Notes From Meeting Peter Thiel and Books that Helped Him Make Millions

Episode Date: December 2, 2021

Sam Parr (@theSamParr) is joined by Noah Kagan (@noahkagan) to discuss how AppSumo started, what he's working on now, what he learned from his recent meeting from Peter Thiel, the books that have had. the biggest impact on him, and what he's reading now.  _____ * 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 & Links: (0:30) - Noah's schedule and what he's working on now (11:30) - Why Noah doesn't think 10 years ahead (22:15) - Does being rich really make you happier? (Yes) (35:05) - Noah's thoughts from meeting Peter Thiel and startup cities (47:10) - How would you live differently if you were a billionaire? (58:15) - What Noah and Sam are reading

No, it just started as a side hustle. I was in a basement in San Francisco that was like, yo, I have a theory about what I think will be big, and I want to make $3,000 a month. Never was it like, I want to make millions of dollars, or I want to have a bunch of people, or I want to have a bunch of customers. How are you, Sam? How are you today?

I'm good. What are you doing? Well, I just got back from Albuquerque. I was hanging out with my family. And then I just got home, and there's just like back-to-back meetings before we go to the Trail of Lights tonight in Austin. I know. Neville and Neil, I've heard all about you guys are going to have some exciting times tonight.

Did, do you weren't working today, like a normal schedule? I actually worked really best in airplanes. So I got up, worked in the airplane, landed, then just been kind of back-to-back meetings now until 630. Do you enjoy having a normal schedule now? Ooh. I had some trauma, you know, by the way, like Silicon Valley tech worker trauma is like, my boss didn't give me a 20% raise. It was a 10% raise

and I am traumatized. Like when I worked at Intel, all I did was meetings. And it was like, and I was like, this is the worst thing ever. And now I'm in, all I do is meetings.

But then, you know, I will say, though, today I was in some meetings and I was interacting. I was like, man, I love you people. There's some meetings where they suck

and you have to figure out how to get rid of them or change the meeting. And there's some where it's like, wow, we're business forward. Like there's things that are happening that are making shit happen

in the business. So, Noah, you, Noah Kagan's here, founder of this company called App Sumo, which we'll talk about in a second. But you basically, you kind of, I don't know, do you say you stepped away? You weren't like actively running the company day to day for like a couple of years. Now you're the CEO again. So I was active for a long time. Now I'm not active. It's amazing.

It's the best. I don't know. Like, I don't think I have it in me to, at least not right now, to go back and do that. Do you think that you have it in you? It's hard. I mean, I was not working. I mean, it sounds such like an ass stuff. But like I wasn't really working.

I was doing podcasts, which isn't really working. And I was making a lot of money. And now I'm working. I actually think I'll make the least I've made this year. Wait, what does that mean? You're making a lot of money from what? Well, Aiman.

So we hired this guy to run appsuma.com. He was running it. And I was like, oh, well, let me make YouTube videos. I'll do podcasts and I'll like build Send Fox and experimental stuff. And then I would get paid. And then Amon wanted to step out and to be an advisor and I stepped in. And now I'm having to do all his work. I will say.

And then, yeah, I think I'll make less money this year. Two things with that. One, sometimes when you criticize another, because I criticized Amon a lot. But I was productive. Just like you could be better. You could be better. Yeah, like Jewish. Why are you doing this?

Yeah. Yeah, Jewish mother. Like Noah, why not your cousin? So you could have been like your brother. He's a doctor. And one, being in his shoes definitely makes me respect him so much more. But just a lot, just a lot. Like he's a very impressive guy.

Also, he had to deal with me. But I say the second thing is that the work now is harder. It's hard. But it's much more rewarding. And so I was even writing that down in my diary this morning. I said, Dear Diary, Hard work is rewarding. Noah, you have the weirdest. So, like, you talk about having a diary.

You always talk about going to therapy, which is no big deal. These, all these things are great. But you act like a tough guy sometimes. And then you talk about, like, how you got to complain to your diary. You kind of shocked me. I think, you know, I think of myself like a Chinese dish. I'm like sweet and sour pork. You know, like you're not really supposed to have pork as a Jew.

And then sometimes it's sweet. and then sometimes you're like kind of sour. It's just like it's a mixed bag. It's a variety. It's entertaining. You're, since I've known you now for, I think like eight or nine years and you've all,

you're cagey with numbers. So I don't want to push you if you don't want to be pushed. Can you talk about how big you guys are now given? I mean, in your YouTube video, I think you said 100 million in revenue. Yeah, we're not going to hit it.

We actually missed our goal this year. It's going to be less than that. Well, KG is weird. You said 80 in another. video. What? You are cage.

Because someone doesn't want to tell you how much they make is a cage? Yes. I don't think that's wrong, though. I don't talk about a lot of stuff either. I say like round numbers sometimes or I'll just say I don't want to talk about that. All right. How much did you sell the hustle for? Let's try these.

Let's try cagey numbers. Tens of millions of dollars. Yeah. How much do you make a year now working at HubSpot? Well, I get paid a whole lot of stock, but my base salary, I think, is only $250,000 maybe. Only. Well, my stock is significant. I will say, this is, you know, in all these shows nowadays and crypto people, they always

like, this is not financial advice. I'm going to get financial advice. I buy a lot of HubSpot stock. I think it's one of the most undervalued stocks on the market. So, by the way, when they bought us, I think it was, they were worth $17 billion or $16 billion dollars in late January around when they bought us. I think today it's 40. So yeah, it's gone up a lot. So and that's why when people ask how much we sold for, I'm like, well, we sold. I basically, I got tens of millions in cash. And then I also got HubSpot stock.

But it's already, it's, it's up significantly since we sold. So, and I don't know, like, what price do you say? And who's wealthy? Yeah, sorry. I don't know. And I don't love exactly saying. What are we going to ask? Who's wealthier? You or Sean. Oh, dude, I don't, I don't, I don't know. I, here, I'll tell you this. We did a podcast. We did a podcast recently. And I basically said, my goal was to make at least $20 million by the age of 30. And I did that. Dude, good for you. And that was the goal. But, you know, like, I also don't, I own assets now in some real estate and I own, um, HubSpot stock and Airbnb stock, but like you own app sumo, which an $80 million year business, do you think you're worth $200 or $300 million?

$1,000? I think Absumo's worth somewhere between a quarter billion and a billion dollars. Isn't that crazy? Yeah, I don't really look at that as part of my net worth. I just look at my own. It's interesting. We've talked about this a little bit. I think there's Silicon Valley entrepreneurs. I think about your valuation of a company. And then there's me and you who are normal people that are like, what's your profit? What's your revenue? All right, you're worth a million. Not like, oh, well, the multiple is this. If they say multiple, they're Silicon Valley. Well, I mean, you guys would sell, if you're, if you think you, if you said that you're going to do it in the range of 80 million in revenue, I mean, I don't know how I would value that five times profits or five times that number, I guess, right? I don't know, man. It's a little surreal. I, and I don't, I'm not sure how different my life would be. My brother did ask me, he's like, if you were to sell, you know, how much would you sell for? And I was like, I don't know. Like, if it was a billion, that's like, and I think people don't realize that. Like when Mark Zuckerberg, I worked at Facebook and I, my, I heard Catherine's like shut up talking about that. But you got to give him credit, man. He turned out a billion dollar offer at 24. Yeah, he's crazy. Like, dude, you took the first offers anyone offered you.

No, I didn't. But, like, yeah, I was like eager. I mean, I think... I say that I would love. I say that would love, dude. No, we had a few other ones, but it was a good one. And I knew that hubs... I didn't know.

I was betting that HubSpot stock was a good buy. And I think that I just, like, I'm not suck. I can't imagine working... Dude, he gets... Do you think his life is enjoyable? I can't imagine it's enjoyable. I mean, I guess he enjoys it, but I just think that that's hell to me. That's why he has to have a virtual.

character enjoy it more for him. Yeah, I don't know. I mean, like, you and I have this buddy. Remember that one time we were out to eat and you could say his name. I don't know, he's your friend. So you could tell me if you want to say his name. But he was like, Noah, you're not growing at three times a year. What the fuck? You're leaving so much on the table. And you're like, dude, I just went mountain biking like on a Tuesday. And then on Wednesday, I like did this. And then on Thursday, I did this. We're going to make like 80 million in revenue this year. And I own most of it. I'm so happy. And he was criticizing you as a friend.

And I was like, no, is he, is he crazy? Like you've got to, this is perfect. This is, don't change. This is perfect. It's, I don't know. I guess how you want to live, do you think that, I guess that changes over the years, right? And I think what's that?

No, no, how you want to live? I mean, I think in your 20s, you're just like scrambling and wanting to, I know for me, I wanted to prove myself. I wanted to have status. I wanted to have it. And then as your 30s, you know, I'm still doing it. What, um.

No, I'm just like, you know, you figure out more what really gives you fulfillment. And I think everyone's got their own stuff. I think figuring it out for yourself is a really tough thing. You, um, how many people work there? 100. I think now we have 140. Isn't that crazy? It's, yeah.

Yeah, it is crazy. Do you see your, like it was just, it was just started as a side. Oh, sorry. Am I cutting you off, dude? No, keep going. I want to hear from you go. No, just started. as a side hustle. I was in a basement in San Francisco that was like, yo, I have a theory about

what I think will be big and I want to make $3,000 a month. Never was it like, I want to make millions of dollars or I want to have a bunch of people or I want to have a bunch of customers. Why $3,000 a month? A thousand was for living. A thousand was for eating and a thousand was for saving. That's funny. That's almost exactly what I did too. It was about that number. Did you, how big do you think it was going to get? I never thought that far ahead. I mean, there's a, go for it. I keep interrupting you. I'm sorry, go ahead.

No, that's all good, man. Well, like, there's a, there's a quote I read by Paul Graham, and it was like, if you're so worried about what's going to, your company's going to be in 10 years, like you're never going to make sure you can take care of your customers today, and your business won't exist in 10 years. So don't worry about it. And I just kind of, I guess that's served me well. I think someone asked me, they're like, what did it take to become a millionaire?

And I think one of the things for me was just like following the curiosity. And I was, like, curious about all this. stuff that, like, that we, me and you get paid for. Yeah, I mean, I'm in the same boat. I think when I, having 140 employees would, I don't know if it would freak me out, but like, I remember, do you still look at your payroll when you pay it every two weeks? Well, so do you want to just tell you the call? I literally, that's why I was late to the podcast.

Yeah. Because I'm, you know, we're, we're taking the whole team out to Costa Rica. And then we're also, we're, it was some spend. for advertising. It was like $50,000. And I'm just like, yes, we make revenue. But at the end day, if you don't have income and you're not a fund of business, you're going to go out of business. And so I think it's figuring out how do you create, you know, checks and balances. So I'm not stressing about it weekly. But there's definitely some net income issues that are keeping me up. And then we're doing budgeting projections. And the fucked up thing with budgeting is if you

budget for $100 million, $120 million, whatever, $150. And you spend on that and you don't make it, then, yeah, you get kind of fucked too. I think that you and I are similar in that like when when I see the so I'll like say yeah I want to I think we can hit 100 million in revenue and then they say all right well then we have to spend 80 million dollars and I look at it and I'm like oh my God what the hell what is this $50,000 expense what is this $10,000 expense are you crazy we can't do this is ridiculous and I get fearful I think that's a cool thing about having a guy like Amen where he's a little bit less attached this company called NerdWalt you know nerd wallet yeah Tim Chen gave me a little bit of money to start the hustle. And it was his idea to give me money. He was like, hey, can I give you some money to start this? And I took it. And they just went public at like three or four billion in valuation. And I went to him one day. I go, Tim, we're spending $80,000 a month and expenses. We're making more than that. But like, that's crazy. He goes, man, it's just an Excel number. Like, it's just a spreadsheet. It has an input and an output. That's all you should care about.

You shouldn't actually care that it's $80,000 a month. And I still find myself, freaking out over that stuff. And so for you, let's say, I don't know. I imagine your payroll is like $40, $50 million a year or something like that, or your payroll and marketing expenses. I'd flip out when I think about that because that's all basically your money. Whereas with Aymann or someone else, you could be more detached. I mean, Aymann always cared. And Aiman, I have a lot of respect and admiration for him. And he's still very involved. I think the way that I've tried to approach it generally is two pieces. Number one, when does the red flag need to be triggered? So every week we have a Monday KPI sheet that they update our gross margin.

They update like customers. And so there's color coding. And it's like, okay, are there red flags in any of the numbers that I need to call shit on? And I think that obviously reduces your anxiety and it helps you make sure that you're trusting but verifying. I think the second thing around it is that how much, if something is a profitable spend, how much should you spend? It depends on it all depends on a lot of different stuff. But if you're spending money and you're making 30% profit, go all in. There's no budget. It's unlimited. And I think that's part of the question with the spending for me is that where is our spending very profitable? Like is it in marketing? Is in development? Is in sales? Is it in the partner success team? Or is there things like that that should be more like AWS where they're a little bit more scalable up and down? And they're not as profitable. So we need to be mindful of that. How big do you think this business could get in like 10 or 20 years? Do you ever think about that?

I'm just trying to survive to next year, dude. I mean, you know, it's funny. We've had, as we've grown, and it's been interesting because I have my YouTube channel, which is a very small team of like five people. And then we have Absumo, which is a larger thing. I come back to the why, right? Like, on Absumo, it's very simple.

We promote dope tools at great prices, and we help people start and grow online businesses. Absumo.com. And I think we have to come back to that. Because people are like, we're going to be in five years. I'm like probably helping people grow and start online businesses. I know you're going to be doing the same thing. But like,

but like, revenue was, I mean, we were, yeah, we, we, we went to the spreadsheet and we tripled numbers, Silicon Valley, double, double, triple from in and out. And, uh, we became a billion dollar company revenue in like five years or something like that. I think right now,

what I, candidly, some of our mechanics in terms of the scalable business means as we had partners, do we get customers and as a business grow? The, the, how do I say it more clearly? It's just not adding up.

Like we added more partners this year and the proportional amount of customers did not come with that. And so we have to work a little bit more on that flywheel. Well, I think that you must have with trends. So we had trends our subscription service. We fucking crushed it during COVID. We crushed it. And I think now sales slow down a little bit. I think it's cyclical.

But if I had a bet COVID was like the best times you ever had. COVID COVID was great, man. I thought it was just great in general. Right. I thought it brought. There's a lot of good about COVID. just about humanity and not the death part maybe, but like bringing people closer.

I don't know, man. I've been doing the internet shit since 2004. I've never had a recession. And it's not that I have some superpower, but it's like, well, the only way to not have recession is just keep doing things that people want. And basically, I think one of the other key things to kind of consider is how do you have discipline when times are good

so you don't have to be as discipline when times are bad? And I think right now, candidly with Absumo, I think we're being a little bit undisciplined with our spending and our hiring because times have been better. and I'm trying to get that a little bit more tighter, whether the, you know, the feature is good or not. Why is your YouTube team so big?

Five people? I don't even think it's that big. I thought it was like 100 people. No way. You think he has 100 employees? At least 50 full time. At least 50 full time. No way. Contractors. Yeah. And are they, what's his name? The Mr. Beast, Jimmy.

Jimmy. Are they all like, it's because it's like the Jimmy show, right? So it's like whatever he wants you do. I think that'd be weird to have 50 employees where it's like, hey guys, next week, I'm thinking I want to do this. The reason I would hate that is because then you've got someone like, hey, Jimmy, what if we had a Rolling Stone song in the background? No, I don't want that. Just like, let me do what I want to do, please.

Just like fulfill that. So we have a head of staff. And one thing I've never, one thing I hate, I hate when someone's like, hey, can you remind me about this? And I'm like, no, bitch, just write it down. I just told you. You want me to remind you, like, do your job. But I will say, you know, becoming CEO, which I never called myself over the years until recently. And is that there is times where you're like, yo, remind me. And you're like,

oh my God, you're going to remind me. Her name's Anna, who's head of staff. She's phenomenal. And then with the YouTube channel, I'm like, hey, I want you to come back with more ideas. Go pitch me 10 more ideas. And they come back and they, I'm like, this is the best ever. And so I think it is figuring out, you know, what areas you like to play in. And then being around people that you're just consistently impressed with. But having people that'll do help you figure out shit, my God, it's epic. Are you getting notice on the street now? No. Not a... Really? You don't?

It varies. In Austin, you know, it's kind of our hometown, so I think more people do it. Not actually, not as... Even though the channel's gotten bigger, we doubled this year. I actually used to get noticed a lot at the gym. The guy who's... Hey, bro, I'm like, hey. I don't know. I'm always still excited when people came and say hi. I just got...

Did you get recognized? Yeah, weekly. Just this, like this morning, just walking down the street. And it makes me a little nervous. because I'm like thinking I got to like like like like I love smoking cigars and I'll just walk around smoking cigars and I'm like I don't want people to see me smoking. It makes me a little nervous. Don't you think it's flattering? I'm always so I always feel honored that like I've worked on. Yeah, something I've worked on has impacted this person and they're excited to say hi to me. Like who have you seen that you've said hi to that you're a little nervous? The other day I saw Logan Paul and I and I and I and I and I respect Logan Paul. And I said, what's up? And I just pounded. And I go, and I just pounded it while I was walking by.

He's huge. Joe Logan's huge. Was this here? New York when I was in, or I guess it wasn't the other day about two or three months ago. I saw him and I, and I respect it. I respect what he built. And he was a big old dude. And I, I could have stopped and be like, hey, like, this is what I do for a living.

Your brother was on my thing. And I probably, we probably got friends of friends. But I was honestly kind of nervous. And I just like, just pounded it when I walked away. Well, you, I'm sure. do a Twitter thing like, hey, I want to have Logan on the show. But anyways, that's awesome, man. Did you see my Twitter thread about when I met the Silk Road guy? No. You didn't see that? I posted it the other day. I was looking through old Dropbox

pictures and, or go to my Instagram or something. You'll see it. And I posted your, yeah, I want you to see it. It's me with Ross Albright, the guy from Silk Road. Oh, I think I remember that story you posted about it. Yeah, I talked about it like here, but I was looking through old Dropbox pictures and I found the pictures of us together. And I originally took him down off Facebook because I was nervous, but now it's no big deal. And I posted the pictures about how I met this guy named Ross at a party. And we just chit-chatted. And he got arrested like months later. And I know, I recognized him. And I was like, oh, my God, that was Ross, the guy we hung out at the party. How much better is your life now being rich? It, you know that $70,000.

that $70,000 study? I've heard that. It sounds like bullshit to me. It's bullshit. It's way better. It's way better. It's significantly better. It's significantly better.

I think like I still worry about stuff. And I was just talking to my friend about this today. And I was like, why am I nervous about this and that? I told Neville, I go, Neville bought this $800 vacuum. And I was like, I went up to his house to borrow it. And I was like, I can't buy one of these. It's $800. It's too expensive.

And he's like, why are you worrying about that? I'm like, I don't know. It freaks me out. I'm afraid to buy stuff. So do you have that? Yeah. Well, I think two things are interesting. One, I went to the grocery store.

I was with my parent, you know, for Thanksgiving. My mom, we get grapes. I really into green grapes lately. And she's like, Noah, these are really expensive today. Let's not get them. I'm like, Deborah, it's your birthday. I'm going to treat you. You get two of them.

I don't. I have no problems. Anything that's health-related, I'll buy. I don't know. I'm still my. of it. I think what's fascinating on the other side of it, Sam, is like, I mentioned it to you on text, but you didn't want me to talk about it, which is like crypto and NFT crap, which all these, you know, former Shopify store owners now are crypto experts, which is funny.

And I like trade and I'll make, or I'll buy something and make like $100 or I'll lose like $1,000. And I'm like, not devastated, but like, like, Absumo, like we promote partners and we'll do like a million dollars in a day and the partners make like $700,000 and our customers are happy. I'm like, well, that's cool. Yeah, it's funny the things. There's a phrase. It's called a penny poor pound rich, I think, right?

Yeah. Something like that. Do you, we're talking about crypto, but you don't actually buy crypto, right? You just bought a bunch at one time and you held on to. No. Well, two things. One thing I want to highlight, this is a phrase that Chad said, my business partner at absuma.com. You like how I plug it.

He actually had this phrase that was great. He's like, Noah, don't confuse the ant hills for the mountains. I was like, damn, that's good. and he's like when we're doing work at Absumo and you know the different products we've built or whatever it is he's like is this a macro thing or a micro thing and let's do the macro thing let's get some fucking mountains man he's like don't sweat this bullshit stuff and I'm like all right but that that's hard man especially I was telling someone recently where there's all these productivity tools and everyone's always everyone's always like what's the latest pretty I'm like

you're not even doing anything like don't worry about the calendar and the productivity tool we're about just doing important things this is the best productivity tool the back of an That's, damn. It's a good job done. Oh, my crypto thing, yeah, I buy, I'm a boring investor. So I think there's active income and passive income, and I try to focus on my active. So I just started buying in 2015, and I just put it on autopilot. And I just auto bought it every month for the past six years.

And it's like made up a substantial, I mean, you've done well with it, I think, which is pretty great. I'll tell you the number on that. That I don't mind. Okay. I mean, you can. I don't have to tell you. It's fine. I, if I had a bet, can I,

Can I guess? Oh, yeah. I'll be cagey. I would guess between one and two million. Not four million, but. It's four million? Yeah. Isn't that nuts?

Well, it's always so funny because then you're like, yesterday I was, this weekend, I was like disappointed. I didn't buy crypto punks when my buddy was like, you should buy it, buy it, dude. But it was like $50,000. And I'm like, that's fucking crazy to buy status and imagery and like, it's an investment. It's only investment when it goes up. It's gambling when it goes down. Well, the NFTs, I think, are.

mostly fucking stupid. Oh, don't get me start. Dude, I just went on a deep hole. Are you on board or not? Dude, I just got scammed. I lost my. I'm like, I can't, I don't even know what happened for the past two weeks. I'm like, yesterday I woke up at 8 a.m. to buy apes. I just spent $1,600 on apes. What, of the, of the $4 million in crypto, how much did you, what's your, what's your basis there? Um, I can pull it up. It's probably maybe about half a million or $400,000.

Isn't that amazing? Is that crazy? Yeah. Well, I think I've always just, it's interesting because I've always, not always. When I started using it, I was like, oh, I can see why this is going to be big. But yeah, the return on it as an investment is pretty insane. That's nuts. What else could do that? Like some public equity equities, but you don't even angel invest, do you? I mean, angel invests could do that. It just takes forever. Yeah, it's not, I mean, I think the best investment for everyone is their own business.

So if you look at it like active income, like really creating your own company has pretty much the highest multiples, I can imagine. Also, you can control it if you can get something to work because most of them don't work that well. Yeah, but you got to grind sometimes, often. I talked to this guy I was biking on Saturday and this guy named Nick, he's like, man, I got to grind. And I was like, how much does he make? He makes these like 60K. And I was like, why don't you, you know, it doesn't, I don't care. I'm not judging him how much you makes. It was like, but if you're going to grind, at least grind something has higher upside for your. because it's the same amount of work. Like, he doesn't work harder than me. I don't work harder than him. I just worked on something that from a strictly financial perspective has a better opportunity. When you're working with Aman, so Aman is, was your CEO, good friend, my good friend

too. How often would you talk to him? It varied, like, it varied probably like once a week on Fridays and then a little bit throughout the week. But they actually kept me out of slack. they kept me out of everything because it's kind of like a noise like my mom's a Jewish mother it's like Noah what's that on the screen what is that it's better to be out and I think that's probably the reason

he wanted to step out I don't think we're airing our private stuff but he wanted to step out because you were nagging him yeah I think to some extent I don't think anyone feels really excited no one wakes up like excited unless it's some weird kink

to be like oh what are you doing today and I think there's probably a little bit too much of that do you think that I mean, I have, I've had people quit for that reason. I do the same thing. You and I are very similar. You know that, right?

And I did the same thing where I'm like, why are you doing this? What's going on today? What are you doing right now today? Like, what actions can we take immediately to fix X, Y, and Z? And I think you need both. You need that urgency. But, like, if you have a good, if you have a winner, you do got to let them chill and get it done. Do you think that Aman, whenever I have hired people to run stuff, I always, I get, I

freak out. I'm like, this guy's going to, when he finds out that I'm like profiting off their work, like they're going to bail. This is so unfair. And I hope they don't figure this out. Did you freak out about that? I used to have a lot of that where I never would post anything on social. Same. Like I wouldn't post any activity. I wouldn't post like my, you know, our YouTube videos were like, hell it made my first million. Like, I would never say shit about that. And eventually, I got to a point where I was like, well, am I helping these people do their best lives at the company? Are I, can I, am I doing my best to pay them whatever they want? So like with Aman, I'm not going to share his numbers.

But I asked him, I was like, how much you want to make? And he said numbers and he made more than that. And so I never really felt this, never felt guilt because that guy got more than he wanted and I got well too. But I think within the company, it's also people are free to work wherever. So it's like, how do you create an environment that people are like, yo, that guy's doing well and I'm doing well. Are you interested in any projects right now?

You had Send Fox. Did you shut down SunFox? No, we're still running SendFox. It's a MailChimp alternative. What do you like? What type of projects are keeping you up? The two things that I'm, I mean, number one is App Sumo. So, you know, becoming more of a marketplace.

So you buy or sell software tools, books. And then the second stuff is like all this NFT stuff is mind blowing. There's just so much. So Sam, I think like you kind of smirk. And, you know, at first, I think that's what a lot of people have done with it. Same with crypto. When I was buying 2015, you're like, I don't fully. get it. But there's something just interesting. Same when I joined Facebook. When I joined Facebook,

people were like, you're going to go work at a social network. Okay. It seems weird. But there's just a lot of these really interesting use cases that I'm very tempted and I'm very excited about. What use cases? So some of the really interesting ones, one is called Citidau. So basically everyone pulls their money and then they buy a city. So they bought land in Wyoming. And now if you own one of the NFTs or tokens within it, you get votes to what they're going to do with the city. So I find that really fascinating. Plus, everything's public. So you see who's voting. You see what the votes are. There's not much hidden. There's other ones that have liked, one's called Head Dow. It's kind of a stupid-ass one. I think conceptually it's really interesting. I don't know if it's run well.

But what I like about it is it is a fund where you buy their NFTs. So there's 10,000. Everyone buys an NFTs. And if you hold the NFTs, And the fund goes and buys stuff. And based on your NFT, you get some return for whatever the fund invests in. So it's kind of like a index fund of crypto and other assets. So I think there's just something. What's the city one called? Citi Dow.

Who's organizing it? Citi Dow, I don't know. But it's all public for the most part. But there's just, there's so much stuff like that. Like, think about this, you can do housing. So like right now housing is like, Noah owns a contract, goes to the thing and all this. It's like, you can have a house. that's shared by a thousand people.

Or like Roblox or Minecraft in the game stuff is really interesting where it's like, there's not like Facebook and Twitter that get everything or Roblox. It's like the creators and the consumers own the whole thing. Same with Absumo. Like how can we create it so the whole customer base owns Absumo? So they're incentivized even to start doing Absumo more. I guess it's kind of like owning a share in Amazon, but kind of on a deeper level. Are you, have you ever like paid money to be part of like a membership group?

Like a Tiger 21 or anything like that? Not yet. I've always, not yet. So there's this thing called, what's it called Friends with Benefits? Have you seen that? I've heard of it. What is this? And so I think the market cap is like hundreds of millions at this point.

And so it was basically a Soho house online. So like cool New York young people paid either 500 or $1,000 or $2,000 to be part of an online group that held meetups. And it was like hot people and fucking young people wearing vans and Supreme and shit, like cool kid shit. and it was, you know, you had to buy an NFT or a coin to join the community. And you were incentivized to make the community awesome because people could sell their membership or like give it up. And it could be worth more than when they initially bought in that. And I think that's interesting. There's just a lot of you.

I mean, it's still so early. So what's going to like what's going to like after the dust settles and the consolidation of all the junk. Because I'll tell you, I jumped in, there's like all this discord. Discord, you know,

it's like slack for juvenile delinquents. Dude, it's so hard to figure out. I feel so old. It's not just that. It's just hard to use. And then it's just like so spammy.

Like I go in it and they're like, there's just a lot going on in the space. And so trying to try not to rush into anything, but just understand like, all right. I think I've seen what we did a good job where people are like, I want to start businesses. I want tools.

And it's like, how is entrepreneurship and startups and stuff evolving? And there's definitely something. where there's so much money and there's so much speed being happening in this crypto-NFT space that I find just, I don't know, at this current time I'm like obsessed with. The guy or the people setting up the town in Wyoming, how are they going to make a profit? How did they get paid? So there's a lot of different, dude, there's all these different.

I fully don't understand every single one out there. I'm not Bologi. But what they do is a few different things. So one, they could keep some of the assets. So when they do a few different things, when you mint the tokens or the, NFTs to give out, people buy into it. So when I create the baseball cards and I sell it to you, it's like one eith each for you to buy, the city Dow keeps all that.

And then they could decide how much of that goes out to use to buy land. They could say 80% buys land or 50%. They can decide that. The second thing they do, which is really interesting, this is what's really clever about NFT stuff is a lot of times on the secondary sales, the original owner gets a cut. You know that? Yeah, I didn't know how much, though. So it varies.

So you can have a thing where if I create NFTs and it's ever resold, I get 5% of all sales forever. So there's some really interesting things. And then you can have people contribute more. There's just a lot of variations. And look, in the end of the day, people have had partnerships. So this is not brand new. I think the medium of exchange through crypto and all this stuff

is creating new opportunities. You and Neville and a couple other friends went and hung out with Peter Thiel a few weeks ago. And you could decide what you want to publicize or not. But one thing that I think I can say is, I think he said this to Neville or something where he was like, you know, businesses are neat, but they die. And he said something like a city, any city that's ever been a somewhat major city, it's never died before. And apparently his obsession right now is on cities. And I actually

invested in this one company where they're doing gene editing, you know, gene editing is. Not familiar. It's like basically the kind of explain like I'm five version is if you get a disease and your skin like goes away or something happens to your skin and it gets messed up. Gene editing, you can tinker with someone's genes and they'll grow back new skin, whereas before they probably wouldn't have. The issue with gene editing is that it's highly regulated by the FDA.

And so like the future of gene editing could be like, if you're an amputee, you can grow back a new leg or you could grow a new liver or kidney or whatever, you know, shit like that. And Peter Thiel has this city in like Bolivia, somewhere in Central or South America, And he basically is like the founder of this city and this company that I invested in is based out of that city because there is no FDA in that city, which is like potentially horrible,

but it's kind of interesting. He said that he's in he's incredibly invested and interested in new cities. And I think so I think that that's cool. When I hear about all these new startup people like Mark Lurie, the founder of Jet, he has a new city. I think these new cities are actually incredibly fascinating. Yeah, I'm more interested in kind of like shared home ownership. I think there's something just kind of clever, like, how do I own a building? But there's a lot of people that own it, a lot of people can use it. I think there's just like too many people that have too much house for just one individual. So I like the concept of that. What did you think about meeting Peter Thiel? You know, there's a lot of interesting things about him. I think when I tweeted

about this, At No Kagan, was that he just uses like an iPhone. phone seven, right? Like, the guys... What are we on now? What, I've got the new one. What is that? Yeah, 13 Pro.5. And he's on a seven? Yeah, and he had like, you know, crappy-ass new balances. He looked like he was wearing like Mervyn socks and like, you know, like Rangler jeans. I got to give a fuck about it. And, you know, was he really? You think he was wearing regular jeans? Wrangler. Just like normal, like Kate Mart jeans. Just like normal. And, you know, but he also had three security guards and, you know, cameras and they checked the building, all that kind of stuff. I think I admired that he is a thinker.

And it made me appreciate, you know, I met him when I worked at Facebook. And I still remember this story. He, like, bought into our poker game. And then he had to go meet with Zuck. And then he lost. And then he's like, can I get my money back? And then Boz, who's now like the CTO was like, fuck no. He asked for his money back?

Yeah, Peter did. And I was like, can't believe. Also, we would say no to the guy who's only, you know, the main investor at the time. I think the other thing that I appreciated about him besides. How much was the buy-in? like 10 bucks. And he asked for it back? Yes, there's money back. I was like, what are you doing, dude? Like, I was kind of surprised he wanted it back, but then I like that boss, like, fuck you.

And he said that exactly like that. He said, fuck you, no. No, no, no, no. He just was like, no. And then the funny thing about that, I, like, busted out, I don't know, me like 20 minutes later. And I go outside and his like half a million dollar McLaren is sitting outside. It's like, all right, all right. Did you tell him that, do you remind him of that story when you were with him recently? No, I don't think he remembers me. but yeah i think the second thing about him is that he's a very i have i was just looking at my notes of

him i don't mind shern i think just like he's just a deep thinker it just felt like this guy's like really like him and and this is another you know him and like keith ra boy and all these guys there are a lot of history readers they're like deep ass like reading boring fucking books about 1900 history that i just won't i'm not won't i just don't do and i think that because that's where a lot of their advantage comes from so ben who's on this podcast has this podcast that's on history. And he just talks about historical figures and he does a biography on them. It's incredibly fascinating. And right before you came on, we did a whole podcast on history and how you could just learn, you could learn, you basically could just not make the mistakes that other

people have made just from reading about them. So it's kind of interesting. Keith or boy, I don't know Keith or boy other than Twitter. Dude, he comes off like such a jerk on Twitter. I don't know if I want to hang out with him. But I definitely would want to meet Peter Thiel. Dude, Keith's a legend. I love me, Keith Rabeoy. Him, David Sacks. I don't listen to All In Show. Have you met?

Keith, is he cool? Keith is sharp. Keith doesn't really respond to me. He doesn't respond to me as much anymore because I've been trying to get him on my show on the No Kagan show. But he's just fucking bright, man. Like, the guy's very bright.

I think he's very astute. I also like people that have a, I think lately I'm more considerate. And I like when he's at a level of wealth in the hundreds of millions that it's just like, fuck it. And he's like, yo, that guy's a dumbass. San Francisco's bullshit. I think this is, and I have a lot of admiration for anyone who has a strong opinion.

I like that, too. I just think that you could do it. I don't think that you need to be polite all the time. I'm an asshole too. I just think that like when you are a boss and you're a winner and you maybe pick on the weak ones publicly in a rude and abrupt way, it makes you look weak and soft and like a bully. And I think that I don't like how it comes off online. but whenever I have seen interviews with him, he seems incredibly kind.

Not kind, but polite. I don't know. I mean, I think, I guess I also agree with his opinion. So I don't mind his approach. Like he's like, Elizabeth Warbin sucks. Miami's the best. Here's like businesses that I'm, you know, really bullish on. You like Miami?

I'm more neutral to it. I haven't spent enough time. It seems appealing. Like, there's, I really wanted to go to Art Basel. Like, that's on a bucket list, man, to see all the cool art and NFT. and just like the vibe. I think every city's got, everyone has a calling when they get into a city.

Miami's never called me to live there when I visit, but it's enjoyable. Would you stay, do you intend to stay in Austin for a while? Yeah, I think it's also, if you ever feel like stuck in life, like I was feeling a little flat

and like frustrated with a lot of work shit going on and, you know, I don't know, I wanted pity party. And I think to take, you know, to take a power party and you got to get the fuck out. So like I was in Albuquerque last week, I'm going to go to Cabo this weekend, going to go to the Bay Area.

in L.A. in a few weeks. I think you didn't get the fuck out sometimes. It just changed geography. So tell me about Peter Thiel. What are your notes say? I would, okay, here's a shocker. This was shocked me. Sam, if you had five, he's probably worth like $10 billion. I was like, Peter, how much are you spending on longevity? And he's like, almost nothing. What? That's crazy. I would like, that's spent everything on that.

I was like, dude, drop a bill. Give me a billion. I'll solve it. So he doesn't spend anything on longevity? He spends very little. He's like, I do. Oh, I don't know how to say some of this stuff. He does some stuff, like, male things to help. But, like, very, like, I thought he would be like, yeah, I have scientists on staff, and I have an institute. And I'm like, you know, and the other thing is I was like, oh, do you have a crazy diet?

And he's like, he's like, none of that really is going to move the needle dramatically. He's like, I eat dark chocolate. I eat chocolate cake at night. Like, he was telling us how his assistant hides food from him so he doesn't eat it when he travels. And I was like, you think the guy who's like this genius, which he is, is like, hyperdiscipline. He's like, no, I'm not, but he also knows he's not, so he accommodates. So I think I was just shocked that he's not doing more longevity. And I talked about, on the podcast, we talked about this guy named Brian Johnson, who started

Braintree. And he's like a billionaire guy now. And he's got a whole website where you can look at, where he's spending millions of dollars a year on his, on longevity. And you can go to his website and look at all the stuff that he's doing. And it's incredibly fascinating. And when I saw that, I'm like, this is exactly what you should do if you're, if you're that wealthy. And I'm amazed that Peter Thiel doesn't do that. Yeah, that was shocking. I was shocked that he had low willpower. He talked to, you know, because you kind of, you watch all these fucking videos and you

listen to the podcast. It's like, I wake up at five and I have, you know, celery and I take a cold shower. He's like, no, I like eating chocolate cake. And he's, you know, and he was drinking wine and like he eat carbs. And I was like, he's a fucking human, which made me have a lot of appreciation for him. And I mean, and I felt like he also was very generous, way more than I thought. He stayed and talked to us the whole time, like four hours without checking his phone, without tweeting any bullshit.

and it was very present, which I really appreciated. I read this book with him in Ryan Holiday, and Ryan Holiday said something really, I thought cool about him, where he said basically, if you ask him a question, he'll say, well, you know,

some people believe this. Other people think that it's this, this, this, and this. Like, he, like, looks at, he looks at all sides, and he doesn't actually always tell his opinion. That's an interesting thought. I think one of the things,

he had a lot of phrases. Do you want to hear a few of these, like, he just had these phrases. I'm like, man, these are great phrases. Look ahead function. I thought that was good. What's that mean?

Basically, like, how are you looking, when you're thinking about a decision, how are you looking ahead to what the outcome could be? I thought that was really clever. Like, how much are you thinking further ahead on things? Zompification.

He's like, everyone is a dumbass. There's no, everyone has, like, the same thoughts. He's like, I'm looking for anyone who has unique thoughts. Incremental versus monumental shifts. God, that's a baller one. That's a really good one. companies are mortal, cities are immortal.

Yeah, I was thinking about that. And I was talking to Novel. He goes, yeah, Peter told me about this. And I was like, yeah, I think that's true. And I was trying to think of a city in America that has, like, just gone away. And one that was at least a mediocre city. And there's nothing. Well, I think the thing that I never thought of that he had, I was like, whoa, that's so interesting.

Like, we think of cities is like, he was trying to talk about how city. you're kind of like a shareholder of a country. And I never thought about that. He's like, you can, you know, remote work is the worst thing that can happen to cities. Did he have an opinion about that? Yeah, he thinks places like California and San Francisco are people can vote now with their feet. And so the ability to work remote now hurts them.

Yeah. And I agree with that. But doesn't he live in L.A.? Yeah. That's kind of weird, right? I admire that. I think I get annoyed with people like, I'm in Puerto Rico to save Ford Nichols. And I'm like, yeah, but you have to look.

Puerto Rico is actually not horrible, but you have to live there. Yeah, there's no fucking power for two weeks if there's a hurricane. And look, there's, dude, you're on the beach. There's, I love Mexican food. It's got a great. It's got a good life. But the other side of that is like, is that, how much is it worth to live a suboptimal life? And I admire that he's like, fuck it.

I'm in LA. I'm going to live baller, um, even whatever tax rate this is. I read that in that same book, what's that Ryan Holiday book? It's awesome. Do you want to tell you or not tell you? No conspiracy or conspiracy theories or something. that's it. That was just conspiracy theory.

Is that it? Conspiracy. He's in that book, he said that wherever Peter Thiel goes, 24 hours a day, he's got a black Mercedes waiting for him. Oh, that's what was outside the car. That was outside the restaurant. Was it a black Mercedes? Yeah.

Yeah. He had a disco ball inside. It was crazy. And I think, I'm almost positive. He says, it's running at all times. He tells him he has, they have to have it running. That's really interesting. In the book, that's what he said.

He goes, he has a Mercedes form all the time. and apparently he's got like some residents or something in New Zealand where I think there's also a jet waiting for him like in a close vicinity wherever he's going and he goes just in case if anything bad happens he could bolt to New Zealand. I think the question that I'm curious that you got me thinking about for myself or for you or for the audience is that if we had a billion dollars, how would we live differently?

What do you think you do? You still want to do stuff, right? Like you still want to work. Like work is fun. People are like, oh, it's like, dude, sit around all day, see how that goes. It's fucking boring. It's fucking lame. Not too much.

I think I would just do the things I'm doing at a higher level now. I would not worry about buying houses. I'm not sure. Dude, I don't know. The absolute amount stuff is hard. I don't think I would pay right away to get out of it, but I'd try to figure something else. It's tough.

I got another year or two in it for this role. Then probably buy houses. I would just try to figure out how to adjust the work to only do the area I want. I would accumulate large amounts of land, and I would create nice residents on all of them. So me and my friends can just go. And like, it's so rare that we can go someplace and do whatever we want.

And that's exciting for me. Like, that's what we should do. Do we have any friends to have lots of land that we can go and shoot guns and drive motorcycles and shit and just be like 12-year-olds? That's what I thought. I thought what you're going to say. I was really hoping, Sam, our answers would be like, you know, I would take that billion dollars and give it out to the world.

Well, I'm not giving it to the world, but I would like anything. Like, I felt bad. Remember that Tony Shea, Tony Shea, the guy from Zappos, you know. That's sad. It was sad. But when I saw that, I'm like, man, I wish it didn't go that way. But at the same time, like, he would travel with an entourage. And I'm like, that is sick.

As, you know, the substance abuse thing was bad. But wherever I went, I would just say, crew, who's coming with? And you and I have a friend, this guy who started Rent Jungle, or not Rent Jungle, Jungle Scout, Greg Mercer. And he bought these fancy seats. to F1. And I don't know how much it costs, but I bet you this box costs $50 to $100,000. And he was like, hey, do you want to come?

And I just had cheapo tickets. And he's like, we took care of everything. And I was like, what? I was like, well, how much is it? I'll pay you. He goes, no, no, no. It's cool, man. It's fun.

I like Sharon. And he brought me. And it was awesome. And he's told me stories about how he takes people to teleride. If he's doing cool shit, he's like, hey, anyone who wants to come, come with me. And it sounds awesome. That's what I want to do. I did, I think I've told you this.

I did my will like a year ago. And then it was kind of like, it was surreal. I was like, oh, I guess I'm going to maybe die one day. But then it really inspired me to live while I'm here and spend the money now while I'm here. So even with my brother, I'm like, do you want to kill me and get the money now? Or can I just give you some of it now? And it's just, it's exciting to start thinking about how to live like you have the will and like live like you're dead and enjoy the money with friends like you're talking about. I think that's a great way to approach it.

Do you, are you going to have kids anytime soon? I mean, it feels weird, make it a will where you gotta, like, give shit to your mom and your brother. Yeah, my brother has a kid, which I was like, that guy's gonna get all this money? Like, that's crazy. It's not even yours. Yeah.

It's not even mine or it's not his. Like, it's not your kid. I mean, it just feels weird. Like, you love him, but you're not, it's not your blood or your, you know. It is part, some blood, I think, genetically. Some. Yeah, I think I'll have kids.

I mean, maybe I'll go to sperm bank and just donate a tonne. And then each of those kids gets like a mill. Maybe each one gets a crypto, punk. Yeah, shit. We're going to wrap up here in a minute, but this has been a meandering episode. I actually think it's going to go over kind of well. I think people are going to dig it.

You know, I got nothing to say to that. I thought it's interesting. I mean, talked about a variety of subjects. What do people want out of the show? Why do I think people listen? Something to, like, entertain, like, empty calories? Frankly, business advice. So there's a few things.

One, I will say, I'm shocked anyone listens. But at this point, we're at, we're like over a million downloads a month now, which is crazy. So some episodes like 50, 60, 70,000 downloads, which is pretty crazy. Two, shockingly, people find us funny. Like, that's what the comments say, which amaze me. And three, I would say, Sean's really good. I think Sean's good. I think a lot of people listen for him.

You're good too, man. You have a good follow on. I mean, I think what it is is you're the only ones left podcasting, like everyone gave up like a few years ago and you're like, no one told you. So you kept going. It's been so hard. It is hard, man.

But I think that's, you know, my mom always says this. Like you forget how hard the last lap is. And I think sometimes when you just kind of push through and you're like, oh, I guess that wasn't so hard. And the further way you get from it.

Well, is YouTube easier, you think? It's hard. You could define easy, right, is the bullshit answer. Well,

yeah. It's challenging in a, in a different way. I think the intimacy of an audience is really high with podcasts. Like, they're really spending a lot of time with you. YouTube, it's harder to be successful on it. I think it's harder. I don't know, harder. But there is a broader audience available for you to reach. So that's why I spend all my time. That's why I stopped podcasting more or less. I do have my show that Noah Cagan presents. But, you know, of my content creation audience building, 95% of that's in YouTube world. That's so hard for people to do it. Like, you can't just go.

It's so hard. It's so hard. You put out a video and like, well, all. All of it takes forever. It's just like, I think, you know, the bullshit answers. Find the thing that you could work forever on. My video that I made my first YouTube video. I'm going to start doing one a week. I got 3,000 views, baby. Huh, which one?

The drinking one? No, the real estate one about my project. How many views do I have? 4.3,000 views. 2.4,000. That's good, man. Look, dude, I didn't even remove the descript logo at the bottom because it costs $25. And I was like, I don't know if I'm going to even do this next month.

Did you edit yourself? Yeah. Good for you. There's no editing. There's just like I spliced clips together. How was it for you? How was this experience doing it? It sucks. I hated it. But it's cool to see the result.

Like, I understand why it's good. You know who the best at? Here's the best YouTuber I think out right now. He's out of this world. Nick Bear. Oh, dude. Love Nick Bear. Nick Bear's the best YouTuber I've been seeing lately.

The other day he put out basically a documentary. And he's doing like one or two a week. He did a documentary in the Leadville 100, this 100 mile race he did. Nick Baer is the most impressive YouTuber I've seen lately. Do you agree with that? Have you had him on your show? Yeah, but it was a little bit more, it was before he was really famous. Nick is just dope, man.

He's just like a good dude. And like, when you find out he like started his business at 4 a.m. when he was in on base in Korea, like, damn, that, like, I'm not surprised when people are successful. I'm like, oh, yeah, you put in the work and you stuck with it for a long period time. That's it. Did you meet him in person? Yeah, it's awesome.

Is he just yoked? Yeah, yeah. I think I'm going to work out with him next month or in January. Oh, you just up with him? Yeah. I think part of it is like, you know, I've said this before. It's like most of my not worth this from who I know. And so Nick, I got to meet him and help out, help his stuff.

He helps me out. But there's certain people that you see like Nick that you're just like, yeah, man, I hope you get there. And he's getting there, obviously. But there's just people you want to see succeed. I think people don't want to see me and you succeed, Sam, but they just can't stop us. Some do. Some are like, Noah, why do you say that? I want to see you succeed. But I think it's just like it's not in us to stop. You and I are very punchable.

That's why we do boxing. We let other people have a chance to punch us. Let me ask you your last question. What can I learn from Nick, from you knowing him? Ooh, I would definitely have him back on the show. When he was on the show, he was super like almost naive. Like, it felt like, like not, but that's not in a bad way where he was like, learning as we were talking to him. Like, he acted like he was unaware of certain things. And I'm like, dude, I know you know about this, but you're just like a sponge.

And you're just trying to get me to tell you everything. So, you know, he was just interesting. He just felt like a student. Yeah, that's, I mean, that could be his, I don't know if he's trying to be strategic about that. I think that's interesting. I don't know. I guess with Nick, I'm impressed his involvement from like someone who was a Marine, or I think he was a ranger to a business operator.

Also, he's kind of in a, to some extent, commoditized space. Right? Like the sugar powder. Yeah, the powder that everyone gets from the same place, but you put a different sticker on it. I think I've been impressed specifically with Nick, how he evolved from like, you know, I'll be straight, like a meathead jocklifter

to like, one, a content creator at like an elite level from the storytelling. And I think he's just, his physical fitness and is really well-rounded. So well-rounded, man. Who on earth can weigh 195 pound and, you know, squat 500 pounds and run a three-hour marathon? It's so interesting.

There's a lot of good YouTubers out there, man. It's just unbelievable how much great content is being created. Who do you like? We'll wrap up with that. Who do you like? Let's look at my homepage. So, obviously, Noah Kagan. Colin and Samir are studs.

I love Colin Samir. Oh, dude, you know who's the best? Andrew Callahan, Channel 5. He was the All Gas No Breaks. Wait, what? Oh, he is, dude, watch the Chet Bake. So, Channel 5 with Andrew Callahan. Watch the

Watch the pickup artist boot camp Or check hangs in here Yeah, this guy He used to be part of like a business That he bailed on He was I think for Vice or something like that All gas, no brakes Yeah, he's sick

Colin and Samir are sick on just Specifically on creators I like watching Dude, my weird freaky fetish lately Is just I love watching like outdoor survival Same, which ones? Who's the guy in Ohio? Dave Canterbury.

So I watched Dave Canterbury. I'm just writing all these down. Dave Canterbury. Yeah, Dave Canterbury. Architectural Digest is gangster. I love seeing, like, celebrity homes. Same. Do you like primitive technologies?

I think I've seen him. I think I'm pretty aggressive on unsubscribing. For some reason, I unsubscribe from them. I see Primitives. Dude, I'm looking at Dave Canterbury. He looks amazing. This is exactly how I want my guys to look. Well, have you watched the show alone?

No. Oh, on Hulu? Yes. Where they're out like, have you met the, like, with the guy that looks like, like, he's wearing like bearskin around, he looks like a Native American, the white dude, but he's like, I actually don't know where he is. And there's another guy who was in the caves of Missouri. There's a bunch of weird-ass people in there, but dude, it's epic.

So I definitely would recommend alone. So I like all the survival stuff from that. I watch a lot of, dude, this is the weirdest one. I watch a lot of squash videos. I probably watch like, like it's on right now. Watch this. While you're talking to me, Sam, I have it on in the background. Like hydraulic.

hydraulic press? No, squash, like the game. Like the British game. Why are you watching that? I just leave it on. It's just like white noise I put on the background. So I watch a lot of that on YouTube. That's kind of a lot of, that's the main thing.

It's like outdoor survival, architecture. Of course, Neville. And, yeah, that's about it. All right. Well, Ben, what do we think? What other books? What are you going to say? Well, I'll tell you some, I'll tell you another good book I read, man.

I'll tell a weird one that people have. Dude, I've been reading all crime books. So like, like the real murder mystery? Well, yeah, I like that. But like I just like one on 9-11. Another one. Favorite book this year? Favorite book this year.

Okay, you're going to like this one because you do this. It's called Travels with Charlie in Search of America. John Steinbeck wrote it in 1930. And John Seidbeck, you know, famous author. And he was like, you know, I live in Cape Cod and I'm rich now. I'm in my 60s. I've been writing writing about Middle America. for the past 50 years, and I'm so out of touch right now,

and he just drives his pickup truck around America and just talks to people and writes about it. And it's amazing. Do you know who Lieutenant Dan is in Forrest Gump? Yeah, yeah. He's the narrator of the audiobook. So that's a good one. And then Empire the Summer Moon.

You'd like that one. It's about the Comanche Indians. And they're just nutty. Like the Texans were evil and the Indians were evil to each other. the Indians and the Texans were just like, it's about how they just destroy each other. And then finally, the operator, which is basically the guy who killed bin Laden.

And he tells the story of finding bin Laden. And that was really good. Some of these military books were kind of weak. No, man, that one was pretty spectacular. Yeah, I mean, he talks about like finding, he goes in depth about hunting down bin Laden and shooting him in the head. Like, it's intense.

All right, a few questions here. Do you get books from the library at all? No, but either you or Neville have been bragging about how amazing it is. I'm a huge library guy. There's a Chrome extension called library. It's called library extension that'll show you if you can get digital or audio books for free. And it shows you when you go to Amazon. So you just put in Austin Library.

Dude, I use it all the time. How did they make money? I just donate. I don't know how they actually make money. Okay. But I book more. Thank you for those books, dude. Yeah, library extension.

You just add the Austin Library. One book I read recently, dude, that is so good. I think you really enjoy it. It's called Free Country. It's two guys in Europe who backpack, who try to go from the bottom of UK to the top of UK biking, and they just start in their underwear.

That's all they start with. Is it amazing? Wow. What? Yeah, so they start at the bottom of the UK in their underwear. That's it. And they have to get to the top of UK on bike in three weeks.

It's really good. It got like crazy good reviews. Audio book or download? Or audio book or normal. I think the audiobook is good, dude. All right. I think I got it at the library for free. Oh, and it's on Kindle Unlimited.

It's free on Kindle. Dude, hell yeah. All right. I'm going to do that. Any other ones? That one was awesome. I really enjoyed that. I didn't know if you wanted more.

Yeah. Dude, we're reading the same travel stuff. So I'll give you another one then. Little Golden America in the 1930s, two Russian journalists from the USSR were welcomed into America. and they just traveled for four months or all over America. And they're like, you know, it's pretty crazy.

In America, and they just like, you just explain from their perspective what America's about. They're like, in America, everyone's so optimistic, for example. We met these guys. It's cool. And no one knows about it in America,

but it's one of the most popular books in Russia. In Russia, your book read you. What else? Oh, do there's some other good ones? Did you read about the... Dude, you know Ryan Holiday's... book list is really good. His email list?

His email list. He just recommends books. I don't know how he could. He consumes so much. I don't know, dude. He's like audio books. It's like 10 a month. There's no way.

He does an audio book. No, I think he reads. He's probably, it has to be paper. And if it's not this like certain density of organic paper, I won't read it. He once said, if you're not taking notes, then you're not reading effectively.

I think that's true. Yeah, but that's like a, I mean, I'm not going to take notes on like killing up bin Laden. I don't think, but most of the books on Kindle or physical, I either highlight and then I'll reread them. Yeah, but dude, if I'm just listening to, like, a book, like, about these guys walking around their underwear trying to, like, get from place to place, I'm not going to, like, you know, or like Fight Club. I'm not going to, like, write notes. Any other ones?

Dude, Trevor Noah's book, I was like, I don't care about that guy. Everyone talks about that book. It's just a really well-written book. Is that good? Well, it's like David Goggins' book. I'm like, all right, David. you're going to yell at me. You're really hardcore. I get it. You could do pushups or pull-ups. That's great. His book, if you haven't read David, it's like everyone talked about it. It's honestly a phenomenal. One,

it's very well written. And two, it's just a great story. The audiobook is cool, too. Yeah, him, the Wright brothers. I got that. Do you read the Wright brothers? Oh, I read that one recently amazing. That was awesome. I drove to Dayton, Ohio, after I read it because it was so good. Oh, that's good. Did you read Million Little Pieces? No, what's that one? I actually think you'll like that one. It's about drug addiction. No, but it's a true story. That's the crazy part. Okay.

I really enjoyed that. These are just ones from this year. All right. I'm going to read. Wait, I think this guy James Frey, million little pieces, didn't he, isn't he famous for a bunch of stuff?

Yeah, he actually wrote a few other books, and then there's some, like, drama about him. Oh, they say that he lied about his book. My, my, yeah, Apparently he it's made up. There's debate about that. So it seems like for the most part, a lot of it is not made up. And there's just a few pieces that are.

Yeah, I remember this because he went on Oprah years and years ago. And there was this big controversy. Well, so she talks shit on him. And then she actually apologized, I believe. Because I got you, after you read the book, you're like, Is this real or not real? I can't believe it. That's how crazy it is.

Yeah. All right. I'm going to read it. This is good. This is the best part. I'm going to read all these things. I mean, I could, I try to walk a lot. So I listen to all these audiobooks.

So I'm going to, I'm going to download this one. A million little pieces. I'm going to get the guys doing their underwear thing. And I already installed the library extension. Bro, game over. Hold on, this little golden America, did they have an audiobook or it's just paperback? You can do a paperback or you can, there's free PDFs online. Did you see the description of it?

It's interesting. There's like no reviews of it. But in the first page, they go, we translated this into Russia. and yet no one, or into English, and yet no one in America knows about this. However, in Russia, everyone reads this book in schools, like, this is like the kids summer reading for schools. It's like very, very, very popular.

Do you see it? Yeah, how did you hear about this? Goodreads recommended it to me. When I was reading the In Search of America, the John Steinbeck book, I love that. That was one of the best, like, I got addicted to that. It randomly popped up on things recommended, and it had five out of five reviews.

Five out of five stars on Goodreads and it had like 3,000 reviews. But when I Google it, I couldn't find a thing about it. So I was like, this is kind of intriguing. Did you look at it on Goodreads? I did not look at any good reads. It's so funny. Goodreads. I saw someone talk about this and maybe it was you.

It was like the site that hasn't been updated from like 1960, but it's still dope. It's still like a good. It's just like there's nothing better yet. It's badass. The guy who started it spoke at Houselcon. His name's Otis Chandler and his grandpa started the LA Times. And Otis sold. to Amazon for like a billion dollars, I think.

Either I think it was a billion or a hundred million, but he sold it to him like 10 years ago or something like that. So we just knocked it out the park. Do you ever, you ever blown away by like how much awesome books are out there that we don't even know of? Like this book existed. I never even fucking heard of it.

And it's got it under reviews. And I didn't know that. Yeah. And I've always thought I want to read all this. But then, you know, I started thinking one time I listened to like thinking real rich on audiobook. book and I love the narrator and I was like I want to remember those narrators or the the audio guy I want to remember his voice because he's so good and I looked at what else he had done and he's read

like a thousand self-help books and I'm like wait a minute you've read all these and you're still fucking making 50 bucks an hour read these damn books what the hell man this is not effective and so after that I almost quit reading business book or self-development books entirely it's just boring I'd rather read like biographies or like I'm reading this book this running book right now out of thin air you're the best right i just started it's really interesting i'm like i guess outdoor activity books so well out of thin air that's not that's a different one wait out of thin air oh you're thinking of um the one about the guy in alaska who what's out of thin air oh it's about kenya yeah this guy like goes and runs with kenyans i think you're thinking into thin air the john

cracker one which is also awesome but okay someone gifted me this out of thin air book and i wasn't sure if it was that good. Is it amazing? So far pretty interesting. I mean, go read free country. That one is like, I didn't want to read it because I didn't want it to be over. All right. I'll read it. All right. I got to rock. This was good.