Next Level Pros - #63: Employee #30 at Facebook to Founder of AppSumo: Noah Kagan's Journey

Episode Date: January 2, 2024

In this episode of The Founder Podcast, host Chris Lee interviews Noah Kagan, the founder and CEO of AppSumo. Kagan shares the story of how he built AppSumo from a side project launched in 2010 to a company now doing nine figures in annual revenue. Kagan discusses his early career working at companies like Facebook and what he learned from being fired from both roles. He talks about starting AppSumo as a way to capitalize on opportunities in the Facebook platform and iPhone app markets. Kagan also shares tactics like using elite advisors to accelerate his learning. Listeners will learn about Kagan's philosophy on work, including his belief that everyone should aim to become an entrepreneur. He discusses principles like getting started now rather than worrying about how something will work. Kagan also talks about overcoming the two biggest fears holding most people back - starting and asking. The episode provides valuable insights for entrepreneurs, including Kagan's view that ordinary people can achieve extraordinary success through consistent application of the right principles. It offers a behind-the-scenes look at Kagan's journey to build AppSumo into a nine-figure business through relentless experimentation and getting outside his comfort zone. Highlights: "Most innovation does not come from experts." "I would argue that everyone wants to be rich and have the ability to be rich." "What do you wanna work on for free? And how do you make that your career." Timestamps: 00:00: Introduction 04:35: Mark Zuckerberg's Leadership 11:23: Time Managment 18:50: Overcoming Fear 24:56: Asking For Sucess 29:24: Consitent Effort 38:12: Your Purpose 48:48: Mindset 55:00: Personal Growth Live Links: 🚀 Join my community - Founder Acceleration https://www.founderacceleration.com 🤯 Apply for our next Mastermind https://www.thefoundermastermind.com ⛳️ Golf with Chris https://www.golfwithchris.com 🎤 Watch my latest Podcast Apple - https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-founder-podcast/id1687030281 Spotify - https://open.spotify.com/show/1e0cL2vI1JAtQrojSOA7D2?si=dc252f8540ee4b05 YouTube - https://www.youtube.com/@thefounderspodcast

Hey, Founder Nation, I am super excited to bring to you Noah Kagan, founder of AppSumo. You've probably seen this guy all over YouTube. He has over a million subscribers. This guy is absolutely phenomenal. He interviews all different kinds of people, finding out how they live in their homes or doing all these uncomfortable things that get him out of his comfort zone. I am so excited to share this episode with you. Go ahead and dive on in. Let's go.

Yo, yo, yo, yo. Welcome to another episode of the Founder Podcast. Today, I am joined by Mr. Noah Kagan. This guy is the builder of empires. He is the founder of AppSumo.com. They're currently doing nine figures in revenue, blowing the lid off. He's got a new book coming out January 2024 that we're super excited to talk to him about. Welcome to the show, Mr. Noah. Damn, Chris Lee, you bring the energy. I can't wait to listen to this podcast just to hear your enthusiasm again. AppSuite was not at nine figures. We're almost there, which is still unbelievable to me over the past 13 years, bootstrapped to get to that level of revenue and business. That's crazy. So you started this thing 13 years ago. What did it look like when you got it rolling?

Yeah, man. So I grew up Bay Area. I've been involved in tech. So I just got to share a little bit of that background. I got fired. I worked at Intel. I've been involved in tech. So I just got to share a little bit of that background. Like I got fired at, I worked at Intel. I quit when I was number 30 at Facebook, got fired. I helped start mint.com, which got bought for 200 million, got fired there. And then I just had to figure out my own way. And so tried a bunch of different things, got funding from Naval, all this stuff. And eventually, and that's a lot of what led me to what Million Dollar Weekend, the book is about my process and realizing how others can do it. I was in a basement in San

Francisco, consulting for a dating website, doing their product management. And I was like, man, I love tech. I love deals. And I love marketing. How can I do something that people really need? You know, you start a solar business, you know, it's like, when you're trying to sell something, you got to find the thing that people are like, Oh my, let me, I'm excited to give you money. Like, please. And, uh, so I was like, if I can figure out how to do deals on software, which I thought was going to be a huge tidal wave market, that's what most people miss out on. They do these markets that are dying or they're just little puddles. And so by doing that, uh, I started 2010. I was in a basement in San Francisco. I built it in a weekend for $50. And I promoted it on Reddit.

And I worked backwards from where my customers were. I sold 200 of our first software, Imgur, on Reddit. And it was off to the races. And then that was 13 years later, over 100 people on the team, almost a nine-figure business. I'm blessed to make millions of dollars a year personally in cash. And, uh, it's been a ride. Happy to share exactly how I did it too. Dude, that's so awesome. So let's, let's rewind and talk a little bit about, so you had, you had time at Facebook and you had time at mint.com. You got fired from both of those locations and you were early, early stage employee. Like how did that go down? How was that? How did that

set a foundation for the rest of your career? Yeah. One of the things that, that I've noticed and that I've seen from the most successful entrepreneurs, the ones that I admire and the one that my friends who have been successful in the eight and nine figures level, they do a lot of experiments. They're always doing experiments. And I could, I could bet a lot of money on you, Chris, that you've done a lot of businesses that didn't work a lot, many, a lot. And most people, and this is one of the things I talk about in the book, it's like now, not how it's like, how do you just get going now, get your experiments going. And eventually you will get to that place where it's working. So for me in college, and then after college, I was just trying things. I was in the arena swinging.

And these are either basic businesses. You can sell stuff on eBay. What I was doing is I did a discount card business called Come Get Used. ComeGetUsed.com. I don't even know if it's still around. I did a discount. That was discount books. I did discount cards called NinjaCard.com.

Nice. I did a lot of experiments. And then when I was working a day job at Intel as a cubicle monkey, I was living at my mom's house. I was putting on events because I wanted to meet other people. And so I just asked my smartest friends, can you recommend one person that you think I should meet? And so I got to meet a lot of smart people. Ramit Sethi, Claire O'Shea, who's now a CEO at Salesforce or COO at Salesforce. It's crazy.

And I started putting on events and that led me when I applied for a job and you asked how I got involved in these companies. I didn't know anyone. I didn't have any hookups. I didn't have any advantages that no one else couldn't get. I came to them and said, Hey, I've been building things. I know what you guys need. And I brought mock-ups to my interview and I just showed them, Hey, here's the things you are doing on Facebook. Here's where I think you should be doing. And I built it for you. I showed it to them, I didn't tell them. And that gave him the offer. And it was off to the races really about that job, which I worked there for almost a year. And it felt like I worked like 100 years of work and 100

years of learning, you know, working directly for for Mark. And, and the same thing at mint.com, I went to that company didn't want to hire me. A friend knew them and he's like, Hey, you should try to know it. They don't want to hire me for director of marketing because I've never done marketing before. And so I said, I'm going to go work for a week for free. I'm going to bring you back a marketing plan. And if you like it, you can pay me as a consultant. And if I do what I promise you I'll do in three months, you can pay me a hundred thousand000 and 1% of your company. And I worked for a week.

I became the mint marketing plan, which became pretty famous. You can get it for free online. I think it'll be available at milliondollarweekend.com as well. And I gave him the plan. He accepted the plan, did it, got my $100,000 for six-figure salary. And within 12 months, we had a million users. And within three years, we sold it for $200 million. So how did that work out? Did you get 1% of the company?

I did. I did, but I quit. Aaron says he fired me. I'll take it as a fire. I'm 0 for 2 on that. And it taught me a lot of lessons. And I got to be around a lot of 10,000-hour people. I got to be around a lot of elite people in those experiences.

And that led me to, to learn a lot to be able to use in my own businesses. So let's talk about Facebook. I didn't get the equity. Let's talk about working with Mark Zuckerberg. So your employee number 30, obviously Mark is an interesting dude. Like tell,

tell me, tell us some things that we don't know about Mark and how he operates. Things that I've learned for AppSumo.com and things that I've put into Million Dollar Weekend that I've learned directly from Mark, I would say first off was his vision. And this is a 25-year-old. I remember the day he came to the office and he said, Yahoo just offered me a billion dollars for this company. And I said, no. Wow. I was like, you're stupid. That was the stupidest thing you've ever done.

And the point, though, that I thought was really fascinating, and I'll tell you the second part in just a second, which is just as interesting, was that Mark had such a belief of his future that was inspiring. And it's really impacted me in this book, Million Dollar Weekend at AppSumo.com and the things I participate in to be like, how far can you really go? And what he said, and this is leading into the second part, was his vision was gigantic. And he said, my goal is at least a billion users. And this is at a time I joined when there's 10 million wild, you know, and he said, we're only focusing on getting to a billion users. Nothing else matters. I don't care about money. I don't care about any other things except connecting the internet and having

a billion users. And those are just some from a 24 year old, you know, just really interesting to have a great vision, really interesting to have a very singular focus. Most people have what I've noticed and what I've the way I've recommended for my business and other entrepreneurs is you have one goal, one time frame. Most people have no goal, no time frame. Right. And that's like driving with no destination. Yep. And so there's just so many different stories of being around him and how he observed things that I think have really impacted. And I was very fortunate to be able to learn directly from him at a very, I think, massive learning moment for both of us.

Yeah. I mean, you bring up a strong point. So I recently developed out a document for founders on how to develop out culture. And one of the things that is important to developing culture is having not only a mission statement, but a vision statement, which the vision statement has a timeframe with like actual measurable results that are like big and out there and, and everything else. And so the fact that like, I mean, Mark was, was going in and going after a billion users and seeing far beyond what everybody else thought that thing was capable of i freaking love that so that was that was amazing man yeah and he had he had a lot of things i think one thing

that i've seen at app sumo.com and i was like saying the docker uh that i found really powerful scorecards people ask like how do i you know run people how do i run teams and you know you've run large teams as well just create scorecards just have three things you know, run people? How do I run teams? And, you know, you've run large teams as well. Just create scorecards. Just have three things. You know, it all ties to your main one goal of the company. But what are the three things that are objectively measuring of success of your individuals? And just be on the same page with that. And as long as you have that, you have a really good process to lead you to your main goal that I think Mark, you know, was key in instilling in.

Awesome. So with those scorecards initially that Mark had, like how did you guys track those in the early days of Facebook? Oh, he didn't, dude, it was just a wild west. There was none of this sophistication. But one of the things that he did, that's how we got to scorecards, was he brought on advisors.

And I remember he would be meeting, you know, think about this, we're 24 years old, we're cocky, you know, the site's. We're 24 years old. We're cocky. You know, the site's doing well. And we're like, we just got funding from Peter Thiel. And we have all these people wanting to give money to the company. Just turn in a billion dollars. And I remember he had this old woman sitting with him at the desk.

And I'm like, dude, who is that old lady? What is she doing here? And later, Mark was like, oh, it's my uh ceo coach i was like what do you mean you're a ceo you know what to do and i didn't you know wisdom comes with age right you know that yep it doesn't come for free and it doesn't come without time and so at that moment i didn't get it but now as run AppSumo, that's one of our cheat codes. One of our cheat codes is elite advisors. So we have elite advisors for every single person on our leadership team from the best

companies in the world. And it's actually much more affordable than people realize. So we have the CMO of Zapier and Glassdoor advising me in marketing. We have the CRO from Microsoft and MindBody Online and ClassPass and our CRO plus Outdoorsy for our revenue officer. We have the CFO for MailChimp. And it's not as expensive as people expect because you can pay these people $1,000 an hour and get 10,000 hours for very affordable. And the scorecards came from these types of meetings with our advisors that I saw Mark doing. And I was like, what are you doing, man? But he was smart and very smart to be able to do that at a young age that I've

been able to replicate at AppSumo, getting these elite advisors. And all you do is look at the companies that are your admirer and look in those roles and offer to pay these people money. I love that. And you would be surprised what you can get for $1,000 an hour. I think so you bring up like the most solid point, the fact that wisdom comes with time, with experience and everything else. And you can either one invest the time, which is the most valuable resource takes forever, right? You can go and live 30, 40 years of experience running a business or whatnot, and eventually you'll get there or you can buy the

time. And, and so if you can buy the time, buy the experience, like that is the cheat code. And time is really, like I said, the, the most important resource. You know, one of my, one of my good friends, Myron Golden, he talks about, so he'll speak in front of a stage of 5,000 people and he'll ask people, hey, if I give you a million dollars, are you excited? And everyone's like, yeah, I'm excited about a million dollars. All right. But if I gave you a million dollars over 20 years, would you be excited? No. Why wouldn't you be excited? Like it's the same amount of money, right? A million dollars is a million dollars, whether it's today or over 20 years. And the reason why, you know, people aren't excited about is time. And so like the goal is how we, it's not the amount of money. It's how do we shrink the time? How do we fast forward, buy more time, buy more experience?

And so I just love that you learned this early on from Zuckerberg. And clearly you've, you've applied this with AppSumo. It just took 20 years. That's it. That's it. And I would say that the being rich is awesome and everyone should do it. Yes. It's oh, freaking it's freaking great. Like I, I, I didn't get rich till maybe around, I was real, really rich, like 35, like multi millions a year coming in and right. Everyone should do it and then see if they like it or not. And the, the beauty of entrepreneurship is that the, the return on entrepreneurship is

unlimited, right? And most people are, you know, having a day job, which is great. I think that's great. Do a side hustle while you have your day job and you have this unlimited investment opportunity. That's all under your control. And you have weekends. That's why the book is a million dollar weekend to be able to do it, which is bonkers. And being rich gives you so much time and it gives you so much options of how you choose to spend your time. You want to fly first class. You want to buy whatever you want in the grocery store. It's nice. And maybe you don't want millions. Maybe

you just want grocery money. And that ability is within each person, which I love. It's so awesome. So you said Naval is one of your investors. So I practice what I preach. When I worked at Mint.com, I saw an opportunity, a tidal wave market, and how to spot them is really interesting. And we can talk about that later. I saw these tidal waves of the Facebook game platform, Facebook platform and iPhone platform opening. And so just like I preach in the mornings, nights, weekends, holidays, I was building

Facebook games. So I became the number one Facebook game developer. And I just thought it's such an opportunity. Since I became a developer, Naval reached out and then offered to fund that company. And that was a wild experience. Yeah, blowing up on Facebook, I met all the, you know, celebrities, Mark Pincus of Zynga, and a lot of these kind of people who become friends with over the years and ended up moving the company to Argentina and hanging with Tim Ferriss, drinking wine, doing learning tango, horrible at Spanish. But that was, that was my dream at 20, 26 years old to be able to work remote. So I was able to do it. How old are you now, Noah? 41. 41, still young, still,

still vibrant, got the energy. So it's interesting. So Naval actually has one of my favorite quotes and, uh, you know, I agree with you that everybody should get rich and it's, it's phenomenal. There, there's so many benefits, but there, there is a quote by Naval that I also agree with that, uh, that he says, he says the best thing that you could potentially do is get rich as fast as humanly possible. For then you will realize that that's what life is not about. And, and, and the reason in great, I know, I know you're, I know you're rolling your eyes. I know you're rolling your eyes. Like the, the fact that a lot of times like riches, yes, they provide us all these incredible things. But, you know, there is an emptiness to riches because it's really there's opportunities around you, right?

Like more than money. Money is simply value creation. And as we create value, that's what really life is about. Where a lot of times people that are chasing the almighty dollar as an employee or whatnot right they're just working working they're slaving their life away not really creating a whole lot of value and and so i would love love to hear what your thoughts are on that i i believed you were going to say get rich early so that you can figure out what you want to do. No, I support that.

Well, and that's along the sides of – along with it, right? Because when you do get rich early, your whole mind opens up and you realize that there's so much more to life, right? That I have many opportunities where most people slave away until they're 70 and never even get an opportunity to live, right? That I have many opportunities where most people slave away until they're 70 and never even get an opportunity to live, right? Never get an opportunity to experience relationships, to fly first class, do any of these types of things. And so, you know, that's, I know it's a little contradictory to what you were saying, but I'd love to hear your opinion on it. Good. It's okay to have tension. That's right. It's okay. There's a guy, Jake, who is in tech sales out in Denton, Texas, up in the North. And I'm working with him on becoming rich. He's going through the million dollar weekend. And he said something to me that stuck out with me. And he's already on his path to experimenting

and swinging and taking his 52 chances, creating a business that could be seven figures and beyond. But he said, Noah, I don't want to live a what if life. I don't want to live what if. And it's not just to be a millionaire, but if it's grocery money, if it's creativity, if it's passion. And everyone should be an entrepreneur. And the reality when you become an entrepreneur is that you realize that you can have power to change things in this world. You have the ability to create something. And then you realize in a lot more areas of your life, you don't have to be a victim, you have power to

change situations. And then just being an entrepreneur, then you start thinking about all these things in your life. I don't like where I live. I don't like my health. I can do something about it. I can empower myself. Right. And that's not to say you can't have a day job. There's, we have people at AppSumo.com.

There's a lady named Amy. She has a floral business and she just bought a hair studio. Nick, who runs our, he's our head of marketing. He has a dental whitening practice. Oman's wife has a lot of beauty stuff. Oman's wife has a like, facials. And he helps her with that. And so the reality, though, is that sometimes it's nice to be an employee, but doing the side hustle, empowering yourself to have these options, and having a good time with it is what I'm encouraging everyone to do.

Yeah. So what I always refer to those type of people is what we, what we call intrapreneurs, right? Uh, they, they may not go out and do it completely on their own, but they find their own level of risk within an organization. They spread their wings, they take ownership. They're essentially founders within their own department or whatever else. They run the side hustles. They buy businesses. They invest. You know, some of my most successful friends were actually very successful entrepreneurs. Like I had a buddy that worked at a company called Vivint. He worked for them for like 13 or 14 years. And when he left, he left with a portfolio of $37 million and then has parlayed that

up to now between two and 250,000 at the age of 40. Right. All all without ever founding his his own business. Right. But but he he understood the fact that, like, we've all got to be creative. We all got to be investing. And, you know, Tony Robbins talks about that no matter what your income is, if you're just an employee and you don't, you're not a owner of some type, whether an investor in apartment complexes or, or whatever it is like you are nothing but a dancing bear. Every morning you have to get up, you have to dance in order to whether you're making 10 bucks an hour or a thousand dollars an hour right like and there's no worse feeling than being a slave even at a thousand bucks an hour and so like it's this release of of servitude where where you you start being able to

partake of the fruits that you that you've created what what do you so i i have i have the answer and i'm curious your take because you've you know you teach a lot of people and a lot of people look to you i would argue that everyone wants to be rich and have the ability to be rich everybody dreams of always flying first class if they can or getting organic or grass-fed level eight or double you know supersizing their food, whatever people get. Now, the question though is what's holding people back from that dream?

What's holding? I mean, I think it's enough times being beat down and told over and over again, right? Consistently giving into their fears. And so I think they become satisfied with where they're at or convinced that this isn't for me. That's only for a certain elite or a certain, you know, people that have a privilege that were born into it or got lucky or, you know, they, they start justifying the reasons why they weren't successful.

And in turn, it makes them feel good about their current situation of like, I have no control over this. I am a, I'm a consumer rather than a producer. Yeah. There's the, there's a belief. And, and, and, uh, I think a lot of fiction business marketers or fiction business writers or fiction YouTubers who try to teach you stuff, what they do is they create a gap of where you are and where you want to be.

Right. Or who you are and who you actually think you can be. Right. And they make you believe that they have some knowledge that people don't. And what I truly believe is that everyone is much closer to who they can be than they realize, right? They have to realize that. And that's the hard part because they think it's external and it's internal.

I know for myself, my, my father was a copier salesman and my mom's a nurse. And I thought I was destined for, you know, middle class level, right? I was like, okay, this Intel job is it. And just knowing there's other levels in this game that you can play on, just knowing it's there is empowering. Just knowing you can have a multimillion dollar house. You can have whatever, if you like tennis rackets, you can have the Babelot of a golden racket. And if you want to have a horse, you can have a horse, you can have whatever you want. You just have to want it right now. The question that I've found through million dollar weekend through my businesses, through helping tens of thousands of people through all this stuff is that there's two specific fears that they have to overcome and have fun overcoming it, not just be afraid of it. And the two biggest fears are big, but they're not, there's not a gap that people can't solve with them. And the two, two fears, the first one is starting. Just like you said, you gotta, you gotta start now, not how, right. You know, I'm so grateful. I started AppSumo 13 years ago

in a basement and I just got started by myself, no funding, no advantages that others couldn't have. I just started though. And that's the difference. And you keep experimenting and have an experiment mindset and starting now, and then don't worry how it, how, how it works, just get going. And then the second giant fear that as well over it's achievable is the fear of asking, right? It's the fear of asking. And, you know, you know, as a salesperson and running a company, that is one of, if, as if you can become better at asking the every it's unlimited, the upside. I asked him one of my YouTube videos, if I could go on someone's private jet, I just

stood outside the airport. I just stood outside the airport. And I just asked people that drove into their private airport and you can see it on YouTube. No Kagan. And I just said, can I have a tour of your jet? And they said, yeah. And then I was like, can I fly with you wherever you're flying? He said, yeah.

And I got to go on, you know, a $50,000 plus ride, multimillion dollar private jet and meet a billionaire just by one ask. So, and so I've taught, you know, that was insane. And so I teach people the coffee challenge. And that's where you ask for 10% off next time you buy coffee or anytime you go to the next place. And you just commit before you go. And I've seen people like Dieter. Because he did the Coffee Challenge, he got a raise because he felt good asking.

And that's what the Coffee Challenge teaches you. It's simple. It's accessible, free. It's universal. And it's the best tool I've ever seen to just practice asking. And the more you practice it, the more you're like, I could ask for a raise. I could ask for Chris to be my customer. I could ask to come on Chris' show. I could ask, you know, Chris for a recommendation. You know,

you can start asking different things. And if, you know, the more that you practice it, just like a muscle and you realize it's, it's not as big as you think. Yeah. I mean, dude, I couldn't agree with you more just from the, from the standpoint of that. Most, most people are just want to stay in their comfort zone. Asking and doing these things, right? It makes them uncomfortable. But the reality is, if you don't ask, you're already in the position of being rejected, right?

So like the worst thing that can happen when you ask is get a no. And so if you don't ask, you're already at that no level. And that's something that I've always taught my salespeople, right? It's just like the worst case scenario is already taking place. So what do you have to lose? And so the power of asking, asking for that raise, asking to go on the jet or whatnot. And you know, this is something that I learned because my background, my original 10 years of my career was in the door to door space. Right. And so like going door to door, knocking on people's home, asking them to buy a product that I was selling. And I

was phenomenal at it, right? Like, like I could go and make a hundred thousand dollars in two to three weeks by knocking on people's doors and selling them product. But the thing that it taught me that is parlayed into the rest of my career is exactly what you're talking about. The ability to ask, to get out of my comfort zone, to push beyond. And so I love the coffee challenge. And what are some other best practices do you think that can consistently get people out of their comfort zone? The regular old Joe. What are the things?

I love the idea. I don't know if you've thought about this. What are some other things you can think of? I've thought about it a lot. Yeah. And I've seen people do it. And I saw someone today. There's this guy, Felipe, who is a reader of million dollar

weekend. He did, he went out and asked for the coffee challenge, did it. And he's like, and then now he's building, uh, he built a Chrome extension and he's got sponsors on his extension for her LinkedIn thing. And I was like, good on you. So other challenges. And there's definitely a lot of challenges in the book that are just like this. One of the ones, you know, I'll even give you a simple one. I'm going to give you a light because the thing you realize is people think, oh, well, no one Chris or experience. They're better than me. And the reality is, no, I'm still afraid. You know, when I do these YouTube videos, I'm like, oh, my God, the anxiety that comes up, the fear.

I know they're going to reject me. I did a video where I asked first class passengers. They're all going to hate me. And they're actually excited to talk to me. So here's an easy one. Just go compliment someone. This is a very simple one. You compliment someone on their clothing.

I really like your hat, Chris. Where did you get it from? And it's a very simple act. You're complimenting. So they already feel good. Right. And then you ask them where you do it. And the key thing here with the coffee challenge, which everyone should do. And this, um, you know, I would say compliment challenge. This is something I still do this day. You have to be mindful of the three second rule. And, and the three second rule is that moment you negotiate with yourself.

And so two days ago I was miniature golfing and with my nephew and a guy had a great jacket and I did not want to ask. And you do that. You know what I'm saying? You're like, well, you know, do I, I don't want to bother him. I don't even care about that jacket. It's not even a nice Jack. You know, you just start getting these, these scripts in our head as a, our buddy Tony Robbins would say, Tony, and you just can't go beyond the three seconds. You say, no, I'm going to do it. And I went up to him and said, I really like your jacket. He's like, thanks, man. He was actually smiling. So where'd you get it from? I love to, I love to get it. He's like, I got it from urban outfitters. And he's like, do you want to buy it off me?

I was like, nah, it's a little weird right now. I don't, I don't really want to buy yours. But then I asked him and you know, I was proud of myself. And I, that is a thing with this asking, right? The rejection is not about you. And the actual fact that you did it is good for yourself. And then the upside of what you can find out and you do it on these really small things. Cause at the end of the day, business is all asking, right? It is entirely asking someone else like to buy your solar or to come on a show or to buy your services or an app, suma.com, please buy one of our software

deals for solopreneurs or come do a deal on AppSumo.com. That is our sales team asking all the time. And the more you get better at asking, they realize everything is an ask. And the more you can get skilled at it through practice on low stakes things, the things that have a little more stakes to it, you can get higher results and higher rewards. I love that. I love that. You know, and it's, it's interesting. I love the point that you brought up earlier. The fact that people are a lot closer to their goals than they realize. And really it's, it's the compound effect of doing these type of things over and over and over again, which can compound very quickly and return results very quickly. It's, it's consistently getting out of your comfort zone. It's consistently asking for the 10% discount.

It's consistently in like, you know, for example, I launched my podcast, uh, in, in April of this year. And prior to launching my pod, uh, launching my podcast, I had a great network, you know, Grant Cardone and several different guys that I was able to like immediately put onto my podcast, I had a great network, you know, Grant Cardone and several different guys that I was able to like immediately put on in my podcast. But then like, as I started going down the, the rabbit hole of connections, it's just like, boom, like my network went from like pretty big to like ginormous in, in a, in a matter of like five months. right? And it was just a consistent like asking. And, you know, the interesting thing about the compound effect is it happens faster than you think and takes more work than you realize. And so, you know, and the other thing that you brought up,

which I absolutely love, is like you never get over the fear. Right. You never you will always have the fear. You always have those feelings of what happens if I get rejected or what happens if this that or the other. Like those those feelings will always exist as a human being. The difference is that when you consistently do it, you become comfortable being in that position of fear. It doesn't change. It doesn't change the fact that you're going to feel fear. It just, you know, that if I just push through this fear, I'm going to see results because I've consistently done it enough that every time I do, there's a great upside. And so anyways, I just love the fact that you brought that up.

Yeah. Ordinary people can get rich. And they're doing it every single day. Absolutely. And there's a much easier way to overcome the fears and get the business going than people realize. And the phrase I like to say is no ask, no get. So no ask, no get. So no ask, no get. So you want to get something, you just got to ask for it.

One of the things I've always said is that like I've seen many stupid, non-talented people get rich, right? Like so many dumb people get rich. And why? Because they just apply correct principles, right? Like, like so, so many dumb people get rich and why? Because they just apply correct principles, right? Like getting rich is simply doing the right things consistently over and over again. And in fact, I think a lot of times dumb people get richer because they don't overthink it, right? Like they're, they're just like, well, they told me to do this. They told me to go and ask for the discount. So I did, and I did it over and over again. Or they told me to go and ask the billionaire to fly on his jet.

So I did. And they like, they don't pay attention to their feelings. They don't pay attention to like how stupid make them feel. And so like, so often I see like these super smart people that are just like stuck in this phase of like, I can't do it. I can't whatever. Versus like this dumb person's like, I'm, I just got lucky. You know, I just, I just worked hard. And I mean, I'm sure you, you probably empathize with that. You probably feel just like me that we're just a couple idiots that got rich um most

innovation does not come from experts amen i love that most innovation comes from someone that doesn't know what they can't do and even a few weeks ago i interviewed this guy larry janeski he is a billionaire or close to it or if not beyond it from basements. Basements. Just remodeling basements. I don't even know what a basement is. I live in Texas. I've never seen a basement.

And I grew up in California. We don't have basements. But he found basements. And you can look them up, LarryGineski.com. And I think it's fascinating and especially from the YouTube channel and being a part of AppSumo and all these experiences in seeing it within the million dollar week and all the students who've read the book and are practicing it, how many different ways you can get rich. And it, it's accessible to everyone, everybody. And that's so cool. You want to basements still don't know what a basement is. I think it's like on this crawl thing you like do stuff in down there i don't know we call it a ground floor out in the rest of the west coast

south you know or in the dirty deep south where i live dirty south um but yeah it's it's fascinating and i think it's it's exciting i love when i ask people on the streets which we've done these videos or knock on people's doors and i asked them what they did it for a living. And there's just so many varieties. It's right. You meet a doctor. I'm like, oh yeah, that's an obvious one. Then you'll meet, met a guy who did oil ships. He's like, yeah, I've done oil ships. That's kind of great. One guy has pickleball courts. Wow. Just such a variety of ways based on what you're excited to spend your time on. And you know, in the book, I share this thing around the freedom number, which is how do you get to a number that helps you do the freedom

and the activities that help you get either rich or at least you have the freedom to live the life you want to live. And that's so inspiring for me to see people follow that. You know, and I think most people aren't successful for two reasons and really two reasons only. One, they give up. They give up before they allow themselves to find success. They don't stick with basements long enough. It sounds like a boring profession and may have not been very lucrative the first year or two.

Or two, they get distracted and they're just consistently only trying something new instead of diving in and doing one thing consistently for a long time. And because I've just seen, to your point, so many boring things produce great results. And it's like that person got uberly obsessed with that one thing and finding success and being the best in, in class at that. And,

and, and the way that that compound effect works is, is phenomenal. So I was, I was looking at, I made a post the other day on my Facebook and it, it dived in to year, year, year of my career. So like from, you know, my 18th birthday until now I'm 39 years old. And it was like, what happened every single year?

And, and, you know, it's interesting because you look at it like 2020, we made as a business $2.4 million. Good. Not great. I'll take it if you don't want it. I mean, you'll take it, right? But here's the thing. Most people would have been satisfied, either given up or got distracted at that point. Like, hey, I made it. Now let's

look at the, what's the next thing or whatever. 2021, we did 19 and a half million dollars net. Okay. So 2.4 to 19 and a half. And then 2022, it was just shy of 40 million in EBITDA, right? And so like, and, and leading up to the 2.4 million bucks, right? We're just like these incremental increases. And, and I just constantly think about like, what would have happened if I would have got distracted, right? What would have happened if I would have not dug in deeper or whatever else? And so, and frankly, I'm a dumb dude, right? Like I become smart because of experience, but like I'm not any special person. I just was too stupid to give up and just kept going and pushed on the thing that I knew.

And even though it was, you know, producing okay results, it wasn't until like those very end. I mean, you look at Warren Buffett's net worth, anybody else, it's always in that last section that like things skyrocket. Yeah. There's everyone can remember a time they gave up too soon. Everyone. There's that moment where if I would have stuck with piano as a kid or this business idea, and I would have kept trying, doesn't mean stick with it, but keep trying around it. And we can all relate to that. And then the question is, what's the framework or way to think differently? And so what I found for me and what I've seen work for a lot of other people is what I call the law of 100. And it's committing to a number, which for me is the 100, which I found is the sweet spot.

So whatever you're working on, at least get to the 100 and then quit. So specifically, YouTube videos, post 100 videos, do 100 podcasts. If you're in sales, make 100 emails, do 100 calls, ask 100 guys or girls out if you're dating, do it for 100 days. And then at that point, as long as over that period, as long as you're trying and you're improving, at the end of that, you can then make that kind of decision. And having that as the benchmark is what I've seen tremendous amount of people finding out that they can persevere and be consistent and follow through a lot more than they realize just having that target. So Law of 100, I think, has been a game changer from what I've seen a lot of people accomplish in life, but specifically really in business.

Man, that's that's a great rule, you know, and and to go along with that rule, like one of the things that that I've found is like life is a series of equations, right? Like there's equations for success. Like if I take this amount of risk and do this, I'll get this result. If I wake up every morning at 5.30, exercise for an hour and a half, limit my calories to 2000 calories a day and, you know, eat good food and everything else. The equation is I will get this, I will get X result. And so the thing that I've found that goes along with that is like, once you know the equation, you have to take whatever the output is, the, the, uh, the final like result that you're looking for, whether it's losing weight or perfect body or certain amount of money in your bank account, you've got to like about that and then just fall in love with that equation. And you got to just keep going over and over and over again. And regardless of what the results, because like too often there's exterior factors that impact the results that we have no control over. And we think that, oh, whatever I'm doing just

doesn't work. And so then we give up and we don't hit the hundred or whatever else. And so I think the rule of a hundred is really this same thing. It's like, I'm not going to worry about the results. I'm just going to do this equation a hundred different times. And ultimately at that point, you will see a result. It may not be after 10, may not be after 50, but equation a hundred different times. And ultimately at that point, you will see a result. It may not be after 10, may not be after 50, but after a hundred, you will. Yeah. The law of 100, it works. I love it. I love it, dude. So you've done some really cool things. Like what, what gets you out of bed right now? What will get you excited? Obviously got your book released. Um, yeah, you got a little family you're working on like what what's pushing i am by the

time this podcast yeah what gets me out of bed well right now it's my pregnant girlfriend that gets me out of bed she's like hey i don't feel good i'm like oh i got you and that's a that's my priority so taking care of her and making sure she's good and that's it's exciting it's a new a new business, a new project, a new thing. I like to think, and I've struggled, like most people have struggled to find what is it that I find purpose in? What's my meaning? How do I do work that makes me feel good about myself? A lot of us struggle with that. And it takes time and some patience and potentially an accountability buddy or someone who could provide you an honest mirror. And it takes time and some patience and potentially an accountability buddy or someone who could provide you an honest mirror. And so I like to think of if I had $10 million in my account,

which I do, which is cool, which is super cool. I can't believe I have it. But imagine you do, or if you don't, whatever, imagine that and or imagine you're you you can work for free and so either you have 10 million counter you work for free what do you want to do today right and so people ask me do i want to sell app sumo you know sell for a few hundred million dollars it's like okay well i wake up and what do i get to do do you get to make videos do i get to do podcasts hang out with you put out a book that i think is really unique and there's nothing else like it. I've been working on this for years. I've been practicing it and teaching it.

Do I get to help lead a team where we, you know, a lot of challenges we did, we did profit sharing. I thought you just do profit sharing, but it's like, no, there's all these different instances where different people should maybe get more or less based on how they're comped. And so, you know, I spent half the year in Spain. So really what I like for people to think about is what do you want to work on for free? And how do you make that your career? And if it's games, if it's chess, for me, it's promotion. I wake up to promote, promote myself, promote my company, promote other people. If you, you know, go to noahkagan.com and

I promote every week, different people's stuff, like there's books and tools and, uh, you know, million dollar weekend is me promoting a book that I think helps people do it for themselves, be a promoter. And that that's been my thread across all these different businesses and all the things all along. I just find things I love and I do whatever possible to make sure the people I think need to know about it, know about it. And that gets me out of bed because I don't, you know, I can stay in bed all day and it's, it's pretty boring, you know, and that's just not, it's not something that, you know, you want to feel good about yourself. And I do think two things make you feel good about yourself. One, something that you believe in.

So something you're like, I like promoting these things. Even if it was free, I'd still keep doing it. So find that. And the second part, this is the counterintuitive part that I wasn't expecting. Because I got rich and I retired for three years. You have to really work on something hard. And I was like, no, dude, just let me be rich and chill. And you don't feel good about yourself. No. And people are like, well, then give me your money and I'll feel good. It's like, okay, you, just let me be rich and chill. And you don't feel good about yourself.

No. And people are like, well, then give me your money and I'll feel good. It's like, okay, you'll feel good for like a month. You'll feel good for a month or two. But really, I unexpectedly, I was biking across America and the CEO of my company quit. So I came back to work and I tried to find a replacement. And we all have our hero's journey. I have Joseph Campbell's book, uh, the hero of a thousand faces. And it's, it's, it talks about the story of the hero's journey where we need guides,

but ultimately we need to face hard problems. And most of the answers of our life are hard answers. Like we just don't want to do them and doing them though, will really make you feel proud of yourself. Ultimately, whether it gives you a lot of riches or all the things you can dream of. It may not. It may. But it'll make you feel proud of yourself. And so those are the areas about what do I get up for? I get up and I work my ass off.

I don't even have to. And I love it. I'm like shocked how much I love it. My girlfriend's like, all you do is work. And I'm like, this is awesome. I can't believe this is my life. And that's available for everyone. It's not whether you buy my book or not, or you go buy stuff from AppSumo or not. It's a belief that these lives that we can live are achievable.

Yeah. I mean, dude, to double down on that, like, first of all, I can't believe you lasted three years in retirement. Dude, it was like, I was a lot of therapy, a can't believe you lasted three years in retirement. Dude, it was like, I was a lot of therapy, a lot of, you know, broken engagement. It was, it was a rough time. Yeah. So I, I tried that. I tried that this April. I stepped down as the CEO of my business and I was like, you know, cause I got five kids and I got a wife and you know, everything else.

I got some really cool hobbies, right? I got a 23 acre hobby farm and, and, uh, just things I love to do, be out on the boat at the lake and all that good stuff. But like, man, dude, it was like, I did it for like six to eight weeks. And I'm just like, this is the most depressed I've been in my life. Right? Like I have, I have the most depressed I've been in my life, right? Like I have the money. I have everything.

I have anything I could want financially, but just not having a purpose. And this kind of goes back to what I was bringing up about Naval, right? It's just like, because like when you get rich and it's only about riches, you're just like, but then you realize like I'm actually motivated by working hard. I'm actually motivated by building things. I'm, I'm motivated by surrounding myself with great people and doing awesome, amazing challenges and getting out of my comfort zone and, and everything else. And so like, luckily, man, I, I got right back into the race is as soon as, as soon as possible. That's one of the reasons I launched this podcast was to get back and be in build mode.

And I would say for anybody that's a founder, there is nothing more exhilarating than building and just doing cool things. So obviously, so you're doing... Go ahead. The Naval quote about getting, I just got to push back one tiny bit. It's better to be rich and have the option than not be rich and then try to figure it out. Oh, absolutely. And once again, to his point, he said, the best thing that you can do is get rich as fast as possible.

That, right. And so there is an emphasis of like, dude, get rich fast, get it, get it. And then, and then figure out what really pushes and motivates you. Otherwise, you're going to get stuck chasing the dollar, you know, your whole life to only be empty at the age of 70 on this retirement thing. And you slaved away doing something that you hated for, for 30 to 40 years rather than something that you loved. And so – Agreed. And I get – it's semantics, but I think we're saying the same thing. Yeah. It's available to everyone. The biggest holdup besides asking is just starting right now, starting today. Like, okay, I can put

out a video. I can ask a neighbor to do their mowing their lawn. I can reach out to Chris to maybe sell Chris something. I can, you know, maybe go take someone out to lunch that seems like they have something interesting that I can learn from them. Right. And that's just doing it right now. Like get on your phone, get on the computer, whatever it is, get on whatever DM and just do one thing. And you start realizing like oh i can't get going and what will your 10-year future self thank you for right my 13-year ago self i'm thank you man thank you for sticking with it thank you for you know at least trying when you had a job and you could have just stuck with that and i think that that's in you know it's great for everyone to

okay what will in the next 10 years i'll thank think for myself for right now. Yeah. And I can get going right now. And to your point, you know, one of my favorite quotes is just do it and figure out how later. And, uh, and I, that was a quote. So I had a picture of myself. It was like, it was kind of a little egotistical, but I had a picture of myself with that quote that hang hung in our conference room when we first started our business. Right. And because that was like that was our mantra that that we that we that we built our business off of is like, hey, we don't necessarily know exactly what we're doing, but we're going to just do it. And then we'll figure out the how afterwards. And it goes right along with what you're talking about. And so- It's good to have confidence.

It's good to, you know, there's a line between confidence and arrogance. And in our society, we're not encouraged to have enough confidence and enough kindness and generosity to ourselves. It's like, oh, I got to take it down or I can't do that or I can't do that. And the more that you start things,

the more you ask for things, the more you build up that self-confidence. It's good to have a photo of yourself. It's like, yeah, I'm proud of myself. I watch a lot of my own YouTube videos. That's like probably one of my top channels I do watch because I like what we put out and I do think it's helpful to the underdogs. That's the audience that we call them out. And it's good to be proud of ourselves. Yeah. I agree a hundred percent with you. So dude, you got, you got a baby coming.

How's that going to change life? Candidly. One shout out to all the moms of the world, because we have moms working that up sumo. And I do not know how they do that. They're pregnant or, you know, post-pregnancy, how they can do that and have a day job sometimes. That is very impressive. I'm so impressed because of seeing what my girlfriend's going through physically. I'm like, wow, you're tough. And my first thoughts, this is, you know, a mindset for all of us to think

about, which is my first thoughts was all the things I was losing. I'm not going to be able to do my YouTube videos. It's going to be harder to do work. I'm not going to be able to do my across America bike trip, which I would do every year. I'm not going to, and my girlfriend, she's amazing. I love her. She's really great. I'm very lucky to have a baby with her. And that partner selection is a whole thing. Y'all like that is almost as important as all the business stuff, which is who's your partner. And she's like, well, what are all the things you're getting? And who says you have to lose anything? And that's the entrepreneur mindset. That's the founder mindset. That's that there's going to be a solution here. And so I don't know if life will necessarily change.

It will change. That's going to happen. Life's going to change no matter what for all of us. I'm excited for all the new things that are going to come up. It is interesting because we live half in Spain, half in America. So there's those kind of questions. The one thing I have noticed, and this is probably the biggest thing, you know, the pregnancy hack. I'll give this hack away for free to everyone when you're when you have kids and shout out for five and shout out to your wife when you have kids your time is extremely limited

like actually limited if you if you want to be a good parent and you want to show up and i want to show up a priority is the thing you actually do, not what you talk about. And I did realize, especially, you know, this week as she's now pregnant, the pregnancy hack is if your wife is pregnant or girlfriend or partner or husband, whoever, you really have to be selective how you spend your time. But I think in terms of where the biggest changes, the pregnancy hack is if I'm only going to be working this many hours because I want to dedicate it to her and our family, what really matters, right? And then you become a lot this many hours because I want to dedicate it to her and our family, what really matters? And then you become a lot more ruthless about what you want to do.

Do I want to have lunch with this person? My friend has a restaurant opening on Friday. I'm like, I don't care to go. I'm going to have quality time with my partner. And so thinking about maybe how can I do that when I don't have it will help you be at a good place ultimately doing those things. And so when you even do have it, you're already prepared. And I've seen the most successful people have a lot of free time, because they're very selective what they do. And they're actually just focused on the things that really matter. Right? So how it'll change, you know, those are

the mindset of all the things we do get. And then being the pregnancy hack of when I am doing this work, really focusing on the things that I think have high leverage. And that gives me not necessarily just energy, but I truly want to be doing. So awesome. Dude, thank you so much. First of all, you're right. Like time is the most valuable asset. And I appreciate the time that you've spent here on the podcast. And I would just invite any of the listeners that have stayed with us thus far to drop in the comments, any good nuggets or anything that you've gathered from Mr. Noah, because Noah has been dropping them and doing a fantastic job. Speaking of which, tell us a little bit more about your book launch. So you're launching this book,

you showed us a little bit. about your book launch. So you're launching this book. You showed us a little bit. What are the main premise behind it? And tell us a little bit. Yeah. By the way, this book, this cover I just printed, it's just I had to do something now because the book is not, we don't have the physical printing yet.

It's just, this is actually on a different book. It's on, I don't want to talk about it. It's about male depression that I'm reading. And so I needed a cover. So I made something now, not how, you know, just got to get it done. A man that lives his principles. I get going, I get going. And when 15 years ago, I was biking New York with my buddy, Adam Gilbert from my body tutor.com. And I said, I wish there was a book that really could help me, or I could pass it along to friends.

I could get business going. And why is it that there's so many business gurus? There's so much YouTube. There's so much Udemy. There's so much stuff, books, business, all this stuff. But there's not a book that actually does it. And what is it that is really holding people back from doing it? And how do we make it a fun thing to make that happen?

And so it took me 20 do we make it a fun thing to make that happen? And so it took me 20 years to figure it out and feel ready to actually be able to put that out in the world. And so the book really focuses on, okay, what if, if there's businesses, if there's so much stuff out there, why isn't it working? And so we solve that, which is the two fears I talked about starting and asking, and most people don't realize they even have those fears. And then how without spending money and without spending time, can you actually get a seven figure company and beyond going within a weekend, which everyone has a weekend to change their life.

And it was realizing that this is a viral article was the original idea on Tim Ferriss's blog that went viral. Millions of millions of people read it and implement it and got results. That gave me confidence to be like, holy, I can actually, I can put this together in a book that's taken three years to put together. Writing a book is a lot harder than I expected. It is a lot of work. Yeah. Anyone can write a book, but to actually have a book that people want to read and then change their lives on is tremendously hard. And so the one of the things that I think about is how do you reduce hope in business? I don't like hope. I like hope for

birthdays and celebrations, but not in business. I want it guaranteed. And what I like to think, what I like to encourage people is how do you stack the deck in your favor? So when you're starting a business, how do you stack the deck? And when putting this book together, how to stack the deck? And so I believe that I stack the deck as much as possible and I can control the inputs. There's a, there's a great book as well. Uh, Bill Walsh is the score will take care of itself. And I think in this book, I've stacked the deck and everything possible to make it as successful for people that are consuming it, that if they want to change their life, whether it's grocery money, whether it's changing jobs, whether it's a hobby they want to do, or whether it's their

own business and seven figures and freedom, uh, they will be able to do that within this book and within a weekend. And so stacking the deck for me was, you know, I hired James Clear's proposal writer myself. I don't know anyone else who's worked for Zuckerberg and help start mint.com and done over seven different seven figure businesses that you can see. There's a lot of people who talk about it, but you can't actually see their businesses. Right. Or when you see their businesses, they're like, there's no way this is actually the business. And then I've helped 10,000 plus people go through this material. And this book specifically, we've had a thousand person beta launch team go through every single word. Then I hired Tal Ross who wrote never eat alone and never split Difference, which was two of the best selling business books in the past decade. He helped me write it.

And then I hired Charlie Hohen who worked for Tucker Max, Tim Ferriss, Ramit Sethi as an editor. And then, you know, this, this book is highly, highly tested so that if someone's ordinary or extraordinary, they can get this book and in 50, you know, within a weekend, which we all have 52 of them, they can change their life. And that's, it's been insane to see the results. I was nervous, candidly. I know I'm supposed to come out and be like, I'm 100% confident, but I was like,

holy, is this going to work? Real talk. And so through this thousand beta testers and through every weekend, we have cohorts going through the book every single weekend for months. They go through this book exactly. And I'm seeing the results. That's awesome. And I'm seeing the lives changed. I'm seeing that the Felipe guy who I mentioned to you before, there's a guy named Shaggy who's gone through the book and he's like, Oh, I want to do

a conference business. There's a guy, Oliver, who sells ice cream at schools. It's not just tech. I come from the tech world, right? Uh, this this book is applicable whether it's going to be cookies like yeah jennifer jones ice cream uh like this guy oliver there's people pat gosick who's actually featured in the back of the book he's got a youtube consultancy and the important thing is they got started and that will lead them to these places but pat he was doing customer service in poland and now in Poland, which is really affordable, he's making almost $10,000 USD. And he just got going with this book maybe two months ago. So awesome. So it's been insane to see that and the confidence for me and where I'm like,

we talk about selling and that's a big thing for you. To me, it's not selling. I'm like, I see this work. And so my job is educating and sharing, promoting what I believe will be the only book I've ever seen that can do this. If people want to be an entrepreneur, which I think everyone should be. Man, that's a, that's exciting. We are super stoked for the launch of it. And, you know, depending on when this podcast is released, hopefully it is available. So for those that would like a copy, it's called the Million Dollar Weekend by Noah Kagan.

And man, we'd love to support you and get a lot of copies sold. So man, where's the best place to follow you on YouTube, Instagram? Where's the best spot there? Go to milliondollarweekend.com. We have a lot of things I talked about in terms of how we do marketing and resources and templates. Totally free at milliondollarweekend.com. And all my stuff is going to be inside of there as well, just at milliondollarweekend.com. Awesome. Awesome.

Noah, thank you so much for your time. Thank you so much for the knowledge dropped. We wish you success in fatherhood, in the eventual sale of your business or whatever you pursue, man. You got a lot of really cool things. Thank you for dropping the knowledge. Until next time.