The Nick Bare Podcast - Archive - Noah Kagan | Facebook’s 30th Employee On Getting Fired and Losing $1 Billion

Episode Date: May 9, 2022

If you lost a billion dollar opportunity, how would that affect your life? For Noah Kagan, it certainly was not easy. But he didn’t let it stop him from becoming successful. Noah is the founder/CEO of AppSumo, a daily deals website for digitally distributed goods and online services based in Austin, TX. Before founding AppSumo, he was employee #30 at Facebook, working directly under Mark Zuckerberg. After a 9 month tenure, Noah was fired, losing out on nearly a billion dollars in stock. He was also employee #4 at Mint.com before deciding that he wanted to be his own boss, and founding AppSumo. In today’s episode, Noah sits down with Nick to talk about how getting fired from Facebook was just the beginning of his story, and share some great insight into what it truly means to be successful. More Resources: BPN website: www.bpnsupps.com Nick’s website: www.nickbare.com Nick’s Instagram: www.instagram.com/nickbarefitness Nick’s Youtube: www.youtube.com/user/barelifenutrition Follow Us On Social Media! Instagram: @thebareperformancepodcast Facebook: The Bare Performance Podcast Twitter: @BarePerformPod

In this episode of the Bear Performance Podcast, everyone has a superpower. Everybody. Everyone has a superpower. Like, period. Everyone has, if you don't know it, ask your friend right now. Like, text somebody, be like, hey, what do you think my superpowers? And mine historically has just been starting.

Like, I'm, I'm, I just go. Like, I'm, it's like, I think being naive is a superpower in business. Like, I don't know what the fuck I can't do. Like, most of the greatest things have happened are not because it's been an expert. It's been someone who's like, I'm a tinkerer. I'm going to try to figure this out and they create some crazy shit. And so for me, you know, one of my friends labeled, it. He says, now, not how.

He says, just do it. Now, not how. Or we've been calling him spark. It's like, just fucking spark it. Just go fucking do it. You know, one more. Like, just go get going. Welcome back to another powerful episode of the podcast. I'm your host, Nick Baer, founder and CEO of Bear Performance Nutrition. Every week, we bring you insightful stories, knowledge, and inspiration to help you reach your full potential in life, fitness, and business. If you enjoy the message we're promoting in this podcast, we would greatly appreciate it if you would leave a rating and review on the platform you're listening to.

Make sure to subscribe so you don't miss out on future episodes that embody the Go One More Mindset. All right, ladies and gentlemen, today we have CEO of App Sumo here in Austin, Texas, Noah Kagan. What up, talk. What's up, man? And YouTube superstar. You are. Dude, I've been seeing your YouTube content pop up like no other recently. Dude, it's just for you.

I make it for you. I hope Nick Bear watches this. Super strategic. It's intentional. It's a lot of work. Yeah, I mean, you know, it goes, but it's a lot of work. There's a lot of thought. We have like hundreds of ideas.

We pick one video. We spend one week to make one video. And then we hope it does well. I mean, I think the last time you were visiting BP and HKE was like five years ago. And you did a video on us. It was like how Nick Bear makes $100,000 a month for his business. I mean, a lot of stuff. changed since then. Yeah, for both of us. I mean, that was my biggest video for like two years.

So I'm just trying to, I'm just like, trying to ride Nick Bear. I'm like, Nick Bear is a superstar, man. It was great. That was an awesome video, dude. It was so cool. That was a great video. It was just me, Preston and Joe at that point. Yeah. So I do want to, you know, I want to dive into this episode and talk about your story in the software tech space. Yeah. But, you know, before we dive into that, I was, I was wrapping up a book on the way into the office this morning. and it's called 15 commitments of conscious leadership. Really good book. I highly recommend it.

And the last, like, chapter reminded me of kind of the things you've done in your life in terms of business. Like, from an outsider looking in something you've done a really good job at. And that last chapter was called the change formula. I'm going to break down this change formula. Essentially, it is dissatisfaction times vision. plus first steps has to be greater than the cost of change or resistance that holds us back. So essentially, like, if we are willing or want to make a change in our life and our business,

there's two things that really drive that. It's one, you have to have a vision for, like, where you want to be, what you want to be doing, how much money you want to make, what success looks like for you. And then you used to be extremely unsatisfied with what you're currently doing. and if you have that vision and unsatisfication, then all you have to do is take your first step. And if those are greater than the actual resistance that's holding back, then yeah, make the change.

And it seems like in your life you've made a lot of changes and you've been pretty flexible with changes in terms of work, business, startups, like moving around. Would you agree with that? Yeah, man. Yeah, we were talking about how I became CEO of Absumo. Like I've owned the company and I started 12 years ago. and last year I was biking across America

and I get a phone call which was amazing that was my dream I read Donald Miller's book Million Miles in a thousand years which is one of my favorite books all time and he wrote across America so I was like I want to do that and I started doing it after all this planning

and I got a call three weeks in and it was like I know I quit as the CEO of my company and he was like oh shit that's not what that's not part of the plan so that yeah I definitely think that's true I think one thing that's interesting about that formula is what happens when you're not dissatisfied anymore.

Do you have to find a new dissatisfaction? So for me, I was actually reflecting it recently. I was so angry getting fired at Facebook and being Silicon Valley and like everyone's getting rich and all these Harvard and Stanford people are making all this money and they think I suck. And I think that really, that was my chip for like 10 years. I was like, oh, fuck those people. Right?

I always felt like an underdog. I always felt like they're doubting me. They don't think I can do it. And then what happens when you finally start making some money and that you start doing it? Right. So I do think you have to then adjust your vision or adjust your dissatisfaction. And be like, all right, well, what's the thing I actually want to excited to be creating now? What's the problems that I'm not just dissatisfied on, but I'm like excited.

So sometimes you have to think about how does your chip evolve? Like I do like this quote, though. Like if you have a chip on your shoulder, you can have chip in your pockets. You can have chips in your pocket. I kind of like that one. But for me now, it's like, not trying to prove them wrong anymore. It's like, hey, what are the things like for me with Absumo? I'm just excited.

I'm excited to promote things, but I'm excited just like, how do you deal with business? I'm actually been really fascinated with all the problems we have. But I think the formula is good. I think people should just fucking start something today at the end of the day. Like find something that sucks in your life, find a problem you don't like, and just get going right now. Do you think that most people overcomplicate the process of like trying to first identify your purpose or your why and then identify like what fits into that? And then before you know, it's like this 12-step program to find out what you're supposed to do in life? I think we, including myself, we read these books and I'm like, this one book's finally going to answer it for me.

This book is going to have it. That person's going to have it. I'm finally going to get it. And I have found that through action is where I've found meaning, right, through the levels of action. And frankly, I think that you can make meaning out of fucking anything. Like you can pick strawberries and find that that give you meaning. And for me, it was just getting going. And there's time for reflection.

I think that's definitely a balance of that. But from making things happen, getting going. Like I like thinking of it. It's like, are you a player or are you a sideliner? you're in the game? Because when you're in, like you can never surf a wave by being on the beach.

And I think just being in the ocean, being in the beach, being in the game, like we'll end up leading you to find the place. But I do think eventually you have to get off the ass and make things happen.

I mean, I think social media is a clear example of you see a lot of people that have read the books and theorized and have the playbook, but they've never actually done it. And when I've met people

that have actually done it, they're like, yeah, no, there's no blueprint. there's no playbook. It's just you pivot, you adapt, you grow, you implement, you're solving problems. Yeah, I mean, I do think there's something with Jewish people where we're like cynical, like part of our culture is like to question things. Like in the Torah, I'm not very religious, but it's like, why did they do this? Right? Like, you know, the Jews do that. And so I think that leads

to dissatisfaction, you know, these things where you're like, all right, well, I want to make things better. I think for, you know, coming back on it, it's just like, yo, get going right now. Like, are you, and for anyone out there, I think really an easy way to do this is like, how much your day are you consuming and how much your day you're producing? And so if you can even just start your day with like 30 minutes of writing or video or music or making anything physical products, like that will generally lead you to, one, feel better about yourself and then hopefully lead you to some more better place. Yeah, one of the things I've been saying recently is consume less, create more.

100% and huge for me. So let's take it back a little bit. And I'm curious, like you have obviously had, a career, quite a career and tech from Facebook to men.com through a lot of these side projects and websites, now app sumo. And I'm sure there's other million things you're working on. Getting into the tech space, was that because of where you were located at in California, was an opportunity? Did you foresee where tech was going in the future or did you just fall in right place, right time? Probably I got so lucky. I got so lucky. I feel very lucky that I had two parents.

I got very lucky that I was born in Cooper Tino, California, which was like two miles from Apple. I got lucky I went to Lemberg High School where my classmates sold a company to Cisco for a billion. My classmates are now VPs of Google. And it was just luck. My parents weren't intentional about going there. Now the school's like top. So to go live, there was very expensive. So I got lucky with that stuff.

And then with tech, it was just born into it. My stepdad's an engineer. My father is a copier salesman. So I'm kind of in the middle between those guys where it was like, oh, I like selling tech. And then I think with like AOL chat rooms, like I'm old school internet, right? Like I'm old school like DOS, dial up like BBS stuff. Like that's where what I got my fix in. But I do remember like I was in these AOL chat rooms got like a naked Pamela Anderson picture.

And I'm like, yo, the shit is dope. Right? I was like, I can't believe this is going to be the future. And I just remember being so excited about it. I didn't know how I was going to play a part of it. Did I think it was going to get to this level? It's way beyond where I thought it would be, which is awesome. Like I think that's cool in life.

Like things are better than your expectations. I think the only thing with tech that I find fascinating is I think, oh, is this the only way people get rich? And I was telling you, we did this video this weekend where we went and knocked on super dots. And it was so fascinating how people can create wealth. And that's not, that shouldn't be the only goal. I don't think that's people should be the only goal in life. But find the thing you actually just really want to spend your time on. Like, I've since 2000 been promoting stuff online.

Like, you can go to my OKdork.org.com. I've had my site out there. And I've been posting just like either photos of like, I used to do an import car website. I'd post photos of like, you know, girls and bikinis like on these like cool hondas. That was like what I was into. And I just been posting things, man. And I've always loved that. And I've always loved promoting.

And I've just been doing that like a, I've been doing that extremely long time. And so the thing with the super yacht guys was that you could also get rich doing a lot of other things. One guy, he creates machine stuff to do tree logging. He like builds equipment in North Carolina to help cut down trees. He doesn't cut down the tree itself. He just sells the equipment. One guy does reconstruction. So if you have a building fire, he does reconstruction.

one guy does hotels and I think that was just the part I really enjoyed that there's a lot of different paths for everyone out there figure out what other kind of life you want to live and then maybe it's tech

and maybe it's not and then go after that. That's why I think the video series you've been doing recently is really interesting like the video where you you drove around

I think it was like West Lake maybe the people like big houses and you knock on their door and ask what they do for living because I'll be driving through like cities or neighborhoods with massive houses

and I always lean over my wife and I say, what do you think that person that lives in that house does? And like, I want to know what the job title is, but I want to know the story of how they got there. Yeah. Because like, everyone looks at a big house and says, that guy, that girl, they must make a lot of money. But it wasn't made overnight. That was made over the last like 10, 20, 30, 40 years. And I like in, you know, you have that blog post. It's how to get rich for dummies. And you really identify the difference between like, like, being. rich and being wealthy and used Shaq.

Shaquille O'Neal, for example. And I thought that was very insightful. But I think the same thing, when I'm driving through these big neighborhoods, I want to know the story. I want to know how they got there. The Shaq story for people out there, I think it's a Chris Rock joke. It's like, Shaq is rich. The owner of the team is wealthy.

And someone said it on the yachts. They're like, the guy who drives the boat is rich. The guy who owns the yachts and rents out the yachts is wealthy. And I think there's just a few different things there that, One, go and ask people. Like, I'm already pretty well off. And so the fact that I just go and ask people and I don't really have to, it's not about that.

It's just like, now it opens up like so much more information, especially if you're young or if you're old and you're not at the place you want to be at, go talk to anybody who seems wealthy that has a nice car, that has a nice house. Hey, what did you do for a living? Hey, do you have any advice for me? Hey, how did you get started? Hey, can I work for you for free? Because for me, like, even going out and doing these yachts, I met this, this Mexican

Jewish family on the yacht. He's in textiles. I was like textiles. He's like, yes. and textiles, you know. It is interesting. Just by the power of asking just in general, that's all business is. Like, when you have BPN, you put out videos, but you're like, I am asking you to trust me that I'm making this great product and for you to buy it to better your life. And so I think practicing asking is a superpower. I've talked about like coffee challenge,

which is like, we got to talk about that. I know of the coffee challenge you've been like talking about asking for like 10% off. Yeah. So you go to a coffee store. Anytime you buy anything, don't do it for BPN or at absuma.com. But you go to the store and you do it, do a do it in person and you say, hey, can I have 10% off? And then you just kind of see what happens. And then they say no or they say yes. It doesn't really matter. But you realize it's okay. And then you can keep moving forward with other things. But it's a superpower that as you're trying to create content, if you're trying to create a business, if you're trying to find a partner, you can just get better at asking for things and realize the rejection is the downside of rejection

is zero. The upside of what they can give you is unlimited. Ask for more things. The other thing with these rich people that are knocking on doors and stuff, it's going to be fucking work either way. It's work either way. You know how it goes, right? It's either going to be work on YouTube content, it's work on software business. Whatever it is to get rich,

it's just going to be a shit ton of work. So I think it's fine the thing you want to work on for 10 years. Find the area. And that might take time. 10 years feels like it's overnight too sometimes. I think it takes 10 years to become a millionaire. It's been what I've based on the friends that I know

and the people that are millionaires in my life. I'm like, all right, it's about 10 years of something. It's just like you have to find a thing you want to do for 10 years. Well, I mean, you mentioned rejection. So let's take it back to 2005 at Facebook. And I think this is a, and I know you told this story

on multiple different platforms many times, but I think it's a really powerful story to kind of lead into what you're doing today. And I think the story of how you got started at Facebook is really interesting because you saw the job, you know, posting.

And you went and essentially printed out your websites you were creating. It was like, here's my pitch check. Here's my portfolio. Yeah. Do you want me? Yeah. What was that like joining the Facebook team back in 2005?

Yeah, so I think the thing that you said, which is a great call out, is if you want a job, like you want to work at BPN or you want to work at my company, absumo.com, a lot of people just send in the fucking resume. And I'm like, yo, how are it? Like, that's good. That's what everybody else is doing? And like, what are you doing to make it a no-brainer for someone to hire you? What are you doing as a no-brainer to make someone buy something for me?

What is you doing that's a no-brainer? And so, one, I was already building a lot of college businesses. And then so when I went there in person, I brought all of my college websites. I'm like, here's all the business I've done. here's your website, like Facebook, and here's a mock-up of what I think we should be doing. I think it was like around events, events or maps. I was like, here's what I think Facebook needs.

So when you come to them, they're like, holy shit, I need this guy to come here and do this work. And it was cold. I didn't have any network, and I got the job there. So it's not, people do say, oh, you have this network. It's like, no, everyone starts in the same. Most people start in the same. I heard you say that where you presented opportunities for optimization on the website.

Yeah. Although it was genius because not of resumes we get on a weekly basis. is incredible. But if one person would just show up and saying, here's some problems I have identified in your business, here's the solution. Yes. I would say,

how fast can I hire you? Yes. I need you. And I thought that was incredible. You were number 30. 30 employee at Facebook. Dude, the bar is so fucking low for success.

Like, people are like, I want to make money. It's like, you just have to do a little bit. That's it. It doesn't even require anything nowadays. because like the game is so much, the bar so it's lowered.

So for people that apply for jobs at Absumo, it's like some people will make a website. Like, hey, here's a website why you should hire me. I'm like, oh my God, somebody did something. And those are a lot of the people we've hired. Like Jeremy, who's a producer for our YouTube channel, he did our Instagram and presented a whole thing where he was like, I'm going to do this Instagram.

And he executed our Instagram for like two weeks for free. And then now he's making hell of good money, running a channel living. I know where he's living. I think he's here, but he's going to France or somewhere. Right? Because he put in a little bit more. So, yeah, the Facebook thing when I got there, it was fucking wild, man.

It was like the Wild West. I did think it would be big. It's definitely bigger than I thought, but it was, I think when people are looking, you know, what can people learn from my experience is that find something that you're already using. Like, I was using it for recruiting. I was using it to meet, meet women. I was using it to connect with friends. And so it was like, why not go work on the thing you already like?

I think people do get misled, though. It's like, it is going to be work. It's not like you go there and we're just like drinking and part in it. It's like you're there and eight hours. You sit a fucking computer. And then, yeah, you party at night and go out. But find the thing that you're actually already using is a great way to go find a company to work at. When you first started working there, was that like true startup where, I mean, what I envision is you walk into this office and there's like, there's shit everywhere.

There's shit everywhere. There's like pizza boxes. There's people just like coding all day. Is that what it was like? Yeah. Yeah. It was the first day, which is funny. It's amazing like that.

It's been a long time ago. And now I think it's like a half time. billion dollar business. I mean, it's a gigantic top hundred company. And I walked in the first day. They're like, they fired my boss. So he walks out as I walk in. And I was like, he's like, yeah, I got fired. I was like, okay. They gave me a laptop and they're like, all right, go find somewhere to work. And so I just found the corner. I think it was Isaac, I think was a guy. And I just found the corner of his desk. And I was like, can I just work? He was like, sure. So that was, that was day one. And it was just like figure out shit to go work on the website. And eventually things got a little more

organized, but yeah, it's fucking, it's chaotic. And I, I enjoyed that at the time. I don't know if I went now, if I'd be like, oh, I need this to be more organized. What was it, what was the culture like, like with Zuckerberg there and everything going on? The culture that's interesting is, like, how are you surround? It was definitely the highest force power of intelligence I've ever seen in my life. I've never been around that many smart people. And how you know you're around a lot of smart people is you feel very uncomfortable. And at the same time, though, that's also somewhere where I had the most growth in my life. A lot of my professional abilities were developed in that like nine-month frame.

So if you think about it, you have Sean Parker, you know, Napster and Spotify. You have Peter Thiel. You have Mark Zuckerberg. You have Dustin Moskowitz, who did Asana. You have Charlie Cheever, Adam DeAngelo, who did Cora. You have this guy, Ezra Callahan. He built some hotels in Austin. He owns a hotel now in Austin.

I think it's called Arrived. And you just had Naomi. There's just like the amount of talent around was just like unreal. And so to be in that environment and to hear deeper thinkers was just amazing. It was inspiring. It was like, oh, wow, this is like the next level. At that point, how long was Facebook a business? I think it's been around about a year at that point.

And it was just like exploding. I just, you have people coming in and out. We had people, I was telling the guys, the founders of YouTube chat and Steve came in and pitched us. We're like, no, no, we're good. Like they wanted to put YouTube on Facebook. Nah, we're going to probably be bigger than you. We'll do video. And it was cool to be at a place that had so much attention.

And like I look at, if you look at, I was looking at my, some old emails, just being in a hot spot geographically or maybe even being at BPN, like if you can come work at BPN for your or work at apps, you and I'll come for your come for your. Just being in that spot, you start meeting just like the amount of people I got to meet was awesome, right? The amount of I got to learn. The amount I got to meet. It really set me up for for my career. How did such like high profile people? It was in one year of starting this startup, software company. How did they acquire or attract such high profile? talent. At the time it wasn't. I mean, these are all just friends of his from Harvard, right? So I think for anyone out there, like, especially, it doesn't matter your age. It's like, I think there's two things. How are you being a magnet attracting people to you? So, Nick, you've been putting yourself out there for, how long, eight years? Eight years. Is that how long you've been on YouTube? Yeah, eight years. And it's like, yeah, you've been putting yourself out there. And now, like, you have Matthew McConaughey come in. You have these guys from

bar stools. You have no Kagan, you know, D-list. You know, you just have a variety of people come to you because you're a magnet. But I think on the other side of that is like, how much are you actually going out and reaching out to people? How much are you. going out and being like, this girl's doing something kind of interesting. I need to ask her what's up. And I still do that, right? Like, I'm still hitting up different people. I told you I hit up Stan's fam on YouTube because I'm like, this guy's creating some content in the fishing space that I just think is interesting. And so I think Mark was very good about surrounding himself. He had Mark Andreessen really early. He had this business coach. And I remember him being 24 having

a business coach. I'm like, what do you have business coach for? What is this old person? No. They don't know shit. But he was smart. I mean, and the business coach actually was really able to help him to be a great CEO. And so I think he did a great job having people around in that environment, like looking for the talent and also building advisors around him. You started at Intel before Facebook, right? Yeah. Yeah, I was a desk.

I was a cubicle monkey. What was that cultural shift like going from more corporate to startup? And is that when you fell in love with like the startup community? Yeah, man. I mean, I wanted to be rich. And one thing I got to tell anyone out there is like, if you're thinking about your career, and your life and your lifestyle. What I definitely recommend is, like, figure out actually how much money you need.

Like, lately I'm curious how much, I'm like, I'm curious how much people need to retire. How much they actually need versus how much they think they need. They're like, oh, I probably need like $10 million. You probably can retire on a million. And so if you need to only retire in a million, you may not have to work as hard. Or you may be able to work on the thing you're actually like and make less money to be able to get the amount you want and live the lifestyle you want. Like there's a book, Die Was Zero.

You read this book? No, I haven't. Dude, definitely recommend. It's one of these books. I was like, I thought the title. gave it away, but it's really just like, how do you want to live your life and end it with no money, right? And it'll shift to kind of how you live. And so for me, I was like, I just wanted to make a few thousand, I wanted to get rich, but I was just like, I don't know how that's going to happen. I don't

know how that's supposed to happen. And I didn't tell it was, I just wanted to be in tech. So I was like, at least I'm in the game. It's not the game I want to be playing, but I'm in it. And it fucking sucked. It sucked. Like, you know, you have to wear these suits every day or these uniforms of sorts. Like there's no, you know, the walls are all gray. They have, bullshit culture on the wall, like integrity, respect, partnership. I'm like, fuck this stuff. It's not all fake. And, you know, the thing that was surprising about Intel, the most surprising thing was,

and I do appreciate they give me a job. There's actually a lot of gifted people there. But they're afraid. They're afraid. They're afraid of, hey, what if I did the thing I really wanted to do? And so they would just like, well, this is the safe play. And a lot. And I was actually shocked because there's people I'd be in meetings with it.

I'm like, you're much better than me. but I was more willing to go for it at that time. And I don't know now. Maybe also just had a low cost of living. Like I was living at my mom's house. And I did that for many years, just keeping a really low cost of living. So it enabled me to take more risks and be able finally around 30

to find my place, which was Absumo. But I was willing to say like, all right, at least want to go for it. Because going to Facebook at that time was risky. Like I know now it's like it's a top job. It's like working at Google or some of these companies.

And so when I was like when I applied for the job, got the job. actually got a pay raise and I told my mom and my grandmother, it's like, yeah, I got this job of Facebook. They're like, I don't know if you should do it. Right? Like, Intel's so known. Intel's very safe.

Like, you know, they got health insurance. Like, you get like, what, some 401k shit. And, uh, I don't know. I just was like, I knew I wanted to go after the thing that I really cared about and work on something that mattered to me. And the irony in the situation is like a month later, Intel laid off 10,000 people. So that was, uh, and then once I got to Facebook and as a part of something,

I was just faster. And I felt like the marginal income. impact I could make was bigger. I was like, there's no fucking way. I'm going to go back to be in meetings all day. And like, I, you know, at Intel, I slept at my desk. I literally brought a sleeping bag and I brought a pillow and I would like position my chair in the entrance of the cubicle. And I would just pretty much sleep half the day. So when you got the Facebook then as a project project manager. Yeah. How much flexibility were you given? Was it like just go create something, go go go think of ideas? Is it full flexibility? The beginning was awesome. And I actually did really

well, I thrived in the chaos. I thrived in uncertainty. I think there's something to that. Like, whoever can handle the most uncertainty likely can win the most. And I've thinking about that now where like if things are uncertain, I'm like, can I handle this? And I think the more that you're able to increase your capacity of that. And that's something I'm still working on. Like, all right, what's unknown here? What's discomfort here? And can I handle more discomfort? If I can handle more, there's probably going to be a higher upside. And at Facebook, it was like, go build Facebook ads, which is now like how they make all their money. It was go build Facebook mobile. And then I came up with Facebook status.

You know, like what Twitter became is one of the things I created at Facebook, which was like, all right, now you could post your updates for what's going on in your life. And so it was just like, yo, go do, there wasn't really directive. It was like, where did you see problems that you wanted to solve? And it was also exciting. I mean, think about for BPN, you're like, you know, I'm doing these long runs or I'm doing this thing. What kind of thing would help me here? All right, let me go fucking make it.

And that's what I was able to do at Facebook. Have you applied that now to hiring people for APSMO where this piece of uncertainty where employees come in and they want their left and right limits? They want this is what I do on a daily basis. This is my responsibilities, my duties. Anything outside of that is uncomfortable. And then they're kind of just like paralyzed by that. Do you experience that issue?

Yeah. I mean, I was funny. The first thought I had is like we have people now. It's new general. Like look, I'm 40. So I'm like right in the middle. And, you know, we have some people. where they have great salaries and they're like, I do this work and then they, they,

they, we ask them to do other work. They're like, oh, I don't, am I going to get paid extra for that? And I was like, oh, that's a new mentality versus there's people who are like, yeah, I'm just happy to be working. I'm happy to be a part of this experience. The thing I'd like to take a step back on in terms of how to operate is like, it's probably for your personal life, but for the company is like, you know, can I give them guidelines, not rules or policies, but can I give them guidelines of how to behave successful at our company? So we, we have two separate things. We have a culture playbook, which is like, what's the culture, here that we're going to be encouraging. And then we have an operating principles playbook,

which is like, how do you operate at absuma? So like for an instance, like how do you operate is you test and invest. That's one of our things. So before you do, if you're like, hey, I want to start a YouTube channel. I want to start a podcast. Hey, I think we should try cart upsells or I think we should try a new SEO. Instead of investing like a shit ton of money, is there a way we can test it super quick and super cheap. And if it works, do more of it. Another opportunity principle, double down. Anything that's working in our business, can we do 10 times more of it, right? Our ads working. Is this like LTDs on Appsuma.com working? And so I don't, I think we do hire for a specific type of people,

kind of like the immigrant mentality is what I call it. Like we hire these people who are just hungry that have come to like prove themselves, that want a chance, that want more. They want more, not forever more, but like, yeah, I want to keep growing. And I think giving them kind of the boundaries and then letting them play their own game is how we've done, you know, well for the past 12 years. So then obviously, you know, at Facebook, You were there like nine months and you were fired from Facebook.

But you had vesting shares in Facebook that would have if you still had those. And it was like 0.01% be equivalent to a billion dollars right now. 0.1%. Whatever Facebook is times up by 0.1. Yeah. And that's equivalent to about a billion dollars. Yeah, they went down in stock. So now it's only half a billion.

It's a lot of nice chunk of cash though. Let me ask you, if you had 100,000, million dollars in your account. Like the companies, whatever, you had $100 million today. What would you be doing? It's the exact same thing. I think that's the thing that people need to get to. So if you had all this money, a lot of people out there are like, hey, I want to be creating, I want to do these things. It's like, okay, you have all the money. What do you want to really do today? Like, do you want to sit in your ass? Do you want to play video games? Do you want to be working? Whatever that is, just do that. And that's probably how you're going to end up making maybe not a hundred million, but maybe at least

a million, if not beyond. And so it was traumatic for me, though, man. At that at that moment, it was traumatic. And for me now, I'm like, I get to make videos. I get to talk to you and hang out with people like you. I get to work on a company which I really enjoy the people. I enjoy the problems. I'm working on a book. Like, I love what I get to do.

I can't believe it. I'm like, I get paid for this. And I want everyone to have that. I will say with the Facebook moment when I got fired, I think everyone should get fired. I think everyone should get fired. It's just like a great thing.

Go get fired today. Like, you know, maybe not at Absuma.com or BPNR companies. But like, go get, you know, and don't do anything intentionally. But getting fired was a rude awakening. It was like, this thing can be taken from you. My self-identity sounds like you with BPN. Like if VPN went away, like you'd be probably a little, I don't know if you feel. I would feel embarrassed if Absumo failed.

I mean, I don't know. I've identified with BPN for at this point, almost like majority of my life. I don't know what I would identify with at that point. Yeah, and there's like a boot. I'm sure there's some Buddhist shit. Like let it go, Nick, can see what happens. But I'm like, no, I fucking love Absumo. Like I've been working on promoting software products for a long time.

But yeah, getting it taken away, getting my identity taken away, my self-worth. I had friends that were there. Everyone knew I worked at Facebook. It was like, the scarlet letter was really embarrassing. But it also put that chip on my shoulder. And I was like, oh, fuck these people. Fuck Mark. Fuck all these Harvard elite people that doubted me and fuck Silicon Valley a little bit. And I definitely motivated me to eventually then be able to find my spot. But I think getting fired also was like, I want to be in control of this. I don't want someone else to be able to control me. And that definitely led me on the right path. So what was the next move after Facebook?

Fucking depression. Yeah, dude, I was really sad. I was really sad. I was like living on a friend's couch, Johnny Lamb. And I was like just embarrassed and sad for about six months. Because for those nine months, you like fully submerged in the culture, the job, the vision, everything. It was life. I mean, at that time, Facebook now, it's like they hire a lot of losers there.

And at the time, though, it was like the people that were there were fucking elite. And I lived with people that were there. So yeah, it was traumatic in that like, damn, this is all gone. And so what do I do now? And I just fucking just did a bunch of random shit for six months. I taught business in Korea. So I went to Jeju Island and like top business to like, fucking eight-year-olds. I did random contracts.

I think one of the things that was a, that saved me to some extent, was one, I was blogging the whole time. So I've always been blogging or putting out content. And that enabled me that when Facebook fired me to have. have like, hey, I can consult for people. I consulted for like a mobile scanning company, like able to scan receipts on your phone and shit like that. And then it led me to put on a conference. I did this conference called Community Next, which I just wanted to go to a conference. I've never been to a conference. I was like, when I invite like all my idols to a room, so I got

a free room at Stanford. I just asked some students, hey, can you give me a free room? I invited all these speakers that were just idols of mine, like Hot or Not, Suicide Girls, Max Lev Chin, Guy Kawasaki, all these people. I didn't know them. I just cold emailed them or got intros. I ended up making like $50,000 profit from that. I wasn't even trying to make money. I just wanted to go to that event. And yeah, so for six months, I flounder just trying to doing that and trying to try on those different things. Eventually, it led me to Mint.com. Do you ever get asked a question? You know, like, you make creating and building things and and asking and doing these things

look so seamless and easy. Like, how do you do it? Because it seems like, like, you get put in position and you identify something you want to do and it's one, two, three, do it,

or send the emails, ask the questions. Do you ever get to ask that question? Yeah. Not often. Not often. I think there's a, there's,

everyone has a superpower. Everybody. Everyone has a superpower. Like, period. Everyone has, if you don't know it, ask your friend right now. Like text somebody,

be like, And mine historically has just been starting. Like, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, it's like, I think being naive is a superpower in business. Like, I don't know what the fuck I can't do. Like, most of the greatest things have happened are not because it's been an expert. It's been someone who's like, I'm a tinkerer. I'm going to try to figure this out and they create some crazy shit. And so for me, you know, one of my friends labeled it.

He says, now, not how. He says, just do it. Now, not how. Or we've been calling them sparks. Like, just fucking spark it. Just go fucking do it. You know, one more. Like, just go get going.

And I think the way I try to think about it, which is maybe helpful for others, is like, what is the least amount of time, right? Because I think if you limit that time, it'll increase your creativity to accomplish the thing you want to do. Specifically around the business stuff, we call it a million dollar weekend. Just like, how do you, without a lot of money, zero, 48 hours, try to get three customers or 100 bucks. And by having those limitations, I'm like, oh, shit, well, I'm going to go do, I have to do things

differently than if I could just take as long as I wanted. I think one of the balance that I'm trying to get better at it, though, is that I do think success comes through consistency. I 100% believe that. Yeah, it's fucking, it's great to start. Anyone can start. I always joke because my mom does the watermelon diet. And she'll do it for like a month. And hopefully she's not doing it as much.

But she'll eat watermelon just for a month. And she loses a bunch of weight. I'm like, mom, you're going to do this? You can do watermelon for a long time? Probably not. So I think one of the things I'm working on and the people I hire for at my company or through our YouTube channel is how do I sustain? Like that's now a little bit more of what I'm trying to develop as a muscle in me. We're like, how do I do YouTube for 10 years?

Because the reason that Absumo is now, you know, it's over a hundred million dollar company, which is insane to me, is that we hired Aeman, who was very good at the basics. He wasn't trying to do new shit all the time. And so I, and so find the thing you're fucking good at, go do that. And then find the people who are good at the things you're not good at and let them fucking do their thing. There's AIM and Alona and these other people at Absumo that were like, finding software deals, promoting software deals on Absum. We're just going to keep doing that and keep improving it over and over versus like, all right, I need some new shiny shit all the time. And I do think that's a huge part of our success.

Yeah. In that same book, 15 commitments of conscious leadership. One of the things they talk about is staying in your lane of genius and too many people try to operate in their lane of incompetence and things that they're curious about. And we do that. I mean, you're like spreading yourself thin. You're like dabbling. If you stay in your lane of genius or you hire people for a lane of. of genius, that's how you go deep. Yeah. That's where we've seen a lot of power. I mean, I think my superpower, if someone asked me, like, Nick, what's your superpower? Yeah. I would say it's consistency. I'm good at getting started.

I'm very deliberate with what I start with. I will select what I'm starting with, with a lot of thought. But once I get started, I will go until something either cuts my legs off or forces me to stop. And, like, for 10 years, I have no problem going for 10, 15, 20, 20 years. And that's like my superpower. Dude, hell yeah. It's also one thing, I like that, that's also what you're telling yourself. I can tell as you say it, you're like, as you're running, as you're working, as you're doing things, you're like, I'm a consistent person. Like, that's a

healthy mindset that it's like, what are things you're good at? Like, I'm good at starting. All right. Just keep kind of repeating some of the things that, uh, that you're strong at. Yeah. And I used to get really down on myself for not being a subject matter expert on all these things in business. I'm like, man, I'm a, I'm a fucking idiot. Like, how do, how do, how do I, not know this? Well, I've never experienced it before. I've never been taught it or I've never, tried to learn about it. Why would I know if I've never actually searched for the answers? And it's really easy to get really downing yourself thinking, fuck, all these people out here are smaller than me. But it's like, where's my area of genius that I've, I thrive in?

Yeah. I think people can ask others too, right? Like one thing that I did recently is like, we do T3B3s. So within the company, it's like every six months, you get a performance route. And it's like, what are the top three things you're doing? What are the bottom three things you're doing? And for me in that moment, it was actually, it led to realize, like, what do I think added the most value to the company as the CEO? Like, what did I do the add of the most value? And a lot of what add the most value is me being out and creating content. And then specifically hiring certain people. And so it's like, huh, like a CEO's job really is three things. It's like vision, boundaries, players. And for me in like the past month, it was like, all right, be out there, get the brand out there, which is one of my things. that was really helpful and then figure out which players to play.

For us, it's been the biggest return on investment is finding the right people, putting the right players in the right spots, and letting them just execute. What I found is the right players aren't always asking how to do things. You literally just give them a long leash and say, go attack. Yeah. And they'll attack until you tell them to stop. Yeah.

So after Facebook then, you know, going to mint.com, what I find interesting about mint.com is that you, quitment.com and you had, you had equity. Yeah. In the company. And say, for example, Mint would have sold for 200 million, you would have got, I think you had 1% equity. Yeah, 1%. You would have got paid like $2 million. Yeah. But then you calculated it. I think you had it in one of your blog articles that you calculated it that after taxes and after being split for like four years, you're getting paid, you know, quarter million dollars a year. And then that financial a model compared to what you could have built on a business outside of that made more sense.

Yeah. I thought that was very, like, very intuitive way to look at it because for most people, they might do a job that they don't enjoy. They're somewhere they don't enjoy. They get percentages in the company. They get equity that vests. They think this big $2 million payout is going to last in my lifetime. And they realize, oh, wait, I can make more money doing my own thing.

Yeah. How did that come about? I think more people should be using spreadsheets, man, for your dating, for your work. I mean, you guys now have the CFO and the VP of Finance at BPN. It's like, yo, go have people that are thinking about those numbers. I think there's two components there. So, yeah, being able to compare apples to apples. It was like, all right, if I stay here after four years of vesting, after we get bought,

if we get bought, it'll be this amount. Like, can I make that amount of money myself? So I think that just made it easier to compare about this opportunity. I think the second thing that was happening all along, and this is something I've been mindful of is like, how do you document where you're at? So for everyone out there, like wherever you're at in life, if you're like 15, 50, 100, whatever age, like document where you're at and how you're thinking about things. Like, so the past few days I haven't been really feeling good.

Like mentally I've been feeling off and I'm like about dating and some stuff. So I just wrote it all down because I want to be like in two weeks come back and be like, okay, that's how you're feeling then. You're actually feeling better now, but you can't realize it. And so for me, looking at my documentation from that time period, my dream was always to run my own show. Like Mark sat me down when he's like, it's the Mark show. It's not Noah's show.

And then at Mint, it was like, it was Aaron Patser, he's the founder. And he was like, Aaron's like, this is the Mint at Aaron show. It's like, fuck, I want my own show. I want him on show. And so I think the math didn't make sense. And I think I was also willing to make less money if I knew I could do the thing I really wanted to do and do it my way. And again, something I would encourage for anyone out there is that I lived cheapest shit, dude.

For that year, I worked at Mint. I made $100,000. That was my salary. I lived on people's floors just because I was cheap and I wanted to save money. And I thought it would be kind of cool to meet friends. but no, it was really, it wasn't a great year, but it was easy because then like when I needed to quit to go start my own company, I didn't have to really make that much. Did you learn close to, I don't want to say equal, but close to as much as you learned at Facebook at mint.com?

Wow, good question. No, not at all. I think I learned different pieces. I think it was different pieces. So at Facebook, it was just, one, the power of like smart people around you. I think Mint's and how to build a product and how to find something people want and seeing what hypergrowth is really like. like most people don't get experienced hyper growth in their life ever. And so being able to have it at Facebook was just like, whoa, what the fuck is happening?

And then it's like, this is the norm. And so I think that's kind of true what you said about unbelievable earlier in our chat, which is like just knowing what's possible. Like meeting a woman, you're like, oh, that's the kind of, I can actually meet a woman like that. Or I can build a business like that. Or I can have a job like that. Or I can have a house like that. Like I never had a nice house.

And then when COVID hit, I rented a $20,000 Malibu pad on the beach. I was like, yo, this shit is cool. Like, these are, that's nice to live rich. I didn't know that was really possible. And so it was nice to be able to see that from a business in. So how do you get to see these windows? So at mint.com, though, I think specifically what I learned is marketing. I was not a marketer, but it was like, how do you actually find the people that really have this problem?

And so it was just going deep on that. So that was the big takeaway from it, was just like, how do you quantify, it was more quantifiable, which is just like, how do you have specific marketing goal? Like, for us it was 100,000 users. And then how do you work backwards for? from that and make that should happen. And that was like probably the number one takeaway from it. What's interesting about growth and what I've experienced is a lot of people like the concept of growth. Like talking about growth like this year we're going to grow 200 percent. It's going to be

awesome. It's going to be epic. And then, you know, day one of starting that growth plan, a lot of people say, I don't like the way growth feels anymore. A lot of people like like the concept of it and thought, but like not the way it actually feels. Have you experienced that yourself where you pitch this growth plan to your team or a business, and they're all on board. And then it finally happens. Like, what's this bullshit?

This is what growth feels like. It's not fun sometimes. Yeah, my buddy Adam Gilbert from my body tutor is one of my best friends. We have this phrase, discomfort is your compass. And that's something that we both talk about a lot, where the growth comes through suffering.

So sometimes when you're feeling suffering, it's also trying to tell yourself like, this is that moment. This is that moment. I'm growing. You know, like, I've been suffering with some, like, chick shit lately. And it's just been a weird moment. But it's like, all right, well, this is that moment.

And so you do have to remind yourself of that, that the stuff doesn't happen. Like, you know, it's in the gym. Like, you live the same wage. You don't grow. But you also have to know it doesn't feel good. So maybe having either being able to tell yourself with that. And if you can't do it yourself, find someone outside of you, it's like, yo, you're suffering, but it's in the right direction.

Yeah. So as soon as you left mint.com then, is that when you started apps email? No, no. Mint.com was actually, it was wild. I did, I guess all along I've always been hustling. Even now, like, what is it? Like, during COVID, I started flipping oculuses. I just was like, I thought it was interesting.

It was fun. It was a game. But at mint.com, I saw the, you know, after Facebook fire me, I stopped using it. But I saw that they opened up so you can put apps on Facebook. And I saw a few people launch apps and I was like, oh, that's cool. Like, there's a lot, there's something interesting with that where if you can launch an app and get people to click on like affiliate ads to Amazon, I could make a lot of money. So I started building at night Facebook games. Like I just found a guy in the Philippines

and I copied the most popular game and I made it a different. He was soccer. It was basically put a soccer logo on your profile and I did it for hockey. I was like, put your favorite hockey team. I don't know what I fuck. I don't like hockey.

But you could put it on your profile and it like exploded when I launched it. You make a lot of money off that? Yeah. Yeah. So it was a fucking wild time. I mean, I had a day job at Mint. And one of the things that I've always done well

is my superpower was just like figuring, the ideas, but I've always done well professionally finding kind of a little bit more of the detailed person. So like at Absumo, there's this woman alone. It's much more detailed. With our YouTube channel, there's Jeremy, who's our producer, much more detailed and mint. This guy named Viet, much more detailed. So he would do a lot of the actual day-to-day grind of it. But do it mornings, nights, weekends, vacation. I was working on these apps. And then so in terms of the money, my goal, I think everyone should figure out the number. And the number is the number you actually need to live. I think people are in fucking la-la-la-land most of the time.

but it's like, how much is your living, how much is your enjoyment, and how much is your savings? That's it. And my number was 3K. And so I started building these apps and I was like, if I can get 3K, I'm going to quit and then just go work on this. And so I eventually got, I hit that, quit. And then I was like, all right, cool. I'm going to go do my own thing. That applies to a lot of things, whether you're a business center or not, in terms of building a budget out and being realistic with what numbers you want, whether that's, this is how much money I want to make this year. This is how much money I want to retire with.

is how much money I want the business to make. I was telling you earlier, like it's, it's, it's easy to say, we're going to make $100 million this year. It's easy to say that. But then it's sitting down with the CFO and saying,

can we purchase enough inventory to make $100 million? Do we have enough budget based off of our, uh, cat cost on, on paid ads to acquire this many customers to drive this much traffic? Is it actually realistic and feasible? And if it's not, maybe you need to adjust your expectations of what you're trying to achieve. Yeah.

Yeah, I think just having a target, like having somewhere you're going to. Like, you most of us drive with the destination. Like, I drove, no, I was coming to your warehouse. But I think a lot of times in life, it's good to drive and just be like, well, let's just see how the journey takes us. I think that's great. But I think there's all the times of business and in life to be very specific about the outcome we're looking for. So when you started Absumo, you started Absumo in Austin, right?

I started in San Francisco. I was in a basement living in Hate Ashbury with a girlfriend. We were like, I knew, I think what happened though for me was just like, what's the problem I want to solve for myself? I think that's how you do business in my life. It's like, I want to just work on things that help. If I can help me and I think it can help others, like, why not work on that versus shit I don't give a shit about? Like, I don't have a kid, so I don't really want to work on baby stuff. I don't care about certain areas, so I don't do it.

But I always, I saw that people, everyone wanted more customers. I really liked marketing and I liked software. And so I was like, why don't I just do that? like promoting software tools and trying to get a deal for myself. And so I did the first deal in a basement in San Francisco, moved to Europe. I basically just walked around Europe for three months with the girl while I was doing Absimo at night. And what was the goal?

What was the solution of the first launch of Absimo? Yeah, the first launch, the idea, you know, for your validation, a million dollar weekend, which is what it became. I did it. I started in a weekend. It was me and this guy, Muhammad. I knew I had the problem. And I was like, is this a problem that other people have?

So I worked backwards from where are my customers. So I'm a Redditor. Do you Reddit at all? No. Really? Oh, Reddit's awesome, man. I know it's huge, but I never got into it. Ah, they just have so much good stuff.

There's, like, so many different, like, I'm into gravel cycling, and I'm into flying, and there's squash. Like, they just have so many. In Austin has a great subreddit. There's so much out there. So if you're interested in something, go to the subredits and get deep on it. So I knew Redditors, like, I, Imger. So I was like, if I can get an Imger deal, I know I can, there's customers on Reddit who will

for it. So I just cold emailed everyone. Like I called emailed Alan from Imger. I was like, yo man, can I promote your software at a deal? And I'll give you $7 for everyone.

And then I hit up the CEO, a CTO of Reddit, this guy, Chris Lowe. And I took him out to breakfast and I was like, hey, can you give me free ad space on Reddit? And he's like, sure. And I put up a site for less than 50 bucks

with a PayPal button. People would buy it. And then I would just email them manually. I just emailed them the code. Like, all right, here's your Imger Pro for $12. And then I sold, I think about 200 of them over two weeks.

I was like, oh, maybe there's something here with that. I mean, it goes back to, were you surprised when you just ask people for, hey, can I, can I promote this? Hey, can I ask some free ad space? Were you surprised when the answer was oftentimes? Yeah, sure. Yeah, I was shocked. I mean, the funny part was like, I asked him a month later when I did my next deal. He's like, yeah, that'll be $5,000.

Which was fine. And we spent money on Reddit. But it was like, oh, shit, that was cool just to ask her. I told you this weekend, I'm knocking on super yachts. Like, we literally went up to these yachts. they're eating lunch or doing the fuck they're doing on their yachts. And I was like, excuse me, what do you do for living? Oh, can we come on your yacht? Can you give advice for young people? And I think it's amazing how friendly and open people are if you just ask.

And so for me, it's not that I try not to ask where I think it's just selfish. I'm like, hey, Alan, I think I can promote your thing. Like what's in it for Allen? These super yachts, I'm like, do you mind sharing your wisdom with young people? Like, I think that would be really beneficial or do you have something that I can promote of yours? So I think that it's not just, I think when people think of asking it's a one way like I'm taking. It's like, how do you do something where it's a two-way beneficial? And so, yeah, I did that and it was, I do think I've tried a lot of businesses that did not work. And so it's been, it was like 10 years to finally get to that one where I put it out.

I was like, holy shit, this is happening. How many businesses would you say you started that didn't work? That didn't work, probably around 20. And then a lot of them are just ones I've tried that are like I thought of and didn't do shit. Like, a lot of times you're on the sideline. Like, again, I think we talked about earlier, like, are you a sideliner or are you a player? and by playing the game, by being in the ocean, by being getting going, that'll lead you to the place. So when you started gaining some momentum with Apsimo, how soon did you realize this is one I need to keep pursuing and it's not just another dud?

Yeah. I mean, the thing before Apsum I was going to do was like put fish bowls and restaurants, like literal fishbowl and people would put their business card and then I would digitize those business cards and give restaurant owners email lists. And if you ever worked for like, if you ever worked with small business, they're, they're great people, but they're sucky business operators. So I don't want to do that shit. I've done it before with this thing called Ninja Card, which is a discount card I started. And I didn't actually take it very seriously for the first year. It was just really a hobby. And I think a lot of the, if you look at some of the biggest companies in the world, like they were hobbies, like Dell computers.

He was in a fucking dorm. He was like, oh, this would be fun to do that. Bill Gates, Zuckerberg. It wasn't like, I'm out here to create billion dollar business. They were out there being like, hey, I want to build DOS, or I want to build basic is what I think at the first thing. Or Zuckerberg, it was like, I'm going to build these different things for school. Like, he actually built something for Facebook before that was profiles.

And then he did Wirehog. And then he did Facebook. And I was like, oh, this is interesting. So it was just fun. It was like, yo, what are the coolest tools online that I can get a deal on and meet the founders? And only after a year of just doing it about once a month did my buddy Andrew Chen. I was like, hey, why don't we put a model together? Let's put a spreadsheet.

And like, you're doing these deals. like, it was a lot of, it was like, I'd do about one bundle of deals a month and I'd make 5K. This is fucking great. I get to live in the world. I get to live wherever in the world. I eventually moved to Austin. And, but he showed me the model. He's like, if you just take these bundles and do, make them daily deals, like you can probably forks the business. And so South by Southwest Southwest happened. And then from year one, we did 300,000. Year two, we did 3.5 million. Wow. So that was a fucking like, oh, okay, when you just do daily deals and then

then we started doing some ads back in the day and it fucking exploded. When you're doing 3.5 million, how many employees did you have? It was small at a time, dude. That was probably just a few of us. Probably like four people. It was very small. A lot of it, I mean, in the beginning, and I think everyone

that starts any company should do all of it in the beginning. Like I did the coding, I did the sales, I did the marketing, I did the support, some of the design. And then over time, you figure out the lane that you want to spend in. Or you figure out like, okay, what's the bottleneck? So by that, the second year, maybe there's more than maybe five people,

but had a developer who was a college kid, this guy named Nick, and had a sales guy Matt, and then we had a support person. I don't remember who was at the time. So it was definitely a small team. I mean, it's a very, like, familiar story with a lot of startups is

there's one person, maybe two or three, that are all doing like multiple things, wearing multiple hats. I mean, I even look at BPN today where we have 27 full-time on staff and if you have a job title, you're still wearing multiple hats.

That job title doesn't necessarily have a left and right limit. It has guidelines. Like you said, there's this guy, this vision, but you're allowed to and you're expected to step outside of that lane and operate to help take the business

wherever it needs to go. And I think it's the hardest part for people who realize is people want to start a business and they think, well, how do I pay salaries for all these people? Well, you don't. You just do it all. And then you get to a point where you finally can hire people. Yeah.

I mean, we've made, you know, I didn't get paid for two years. Right. And it's easy now. Like, oh, man, you have money. You have the house. All you have nice stuff. It's like, yeah, but I also didn't have anything for a very long time. And if I just had my day job, I probably would have done pretty well. It's like state of Intel or Facebook or Mint.

And even to this day, almost all of our profits can reinvest in the business. Probably very similar to you guys. Like, if you look at our net income, I think our net income last year was negative 180,000, right? Because we spent everything to grow the business for this year. And then this year, we're going to the same thing for next year. What has, I mean, because right now you guys are valued over 200 million. Is that correct?

We haven't taken outside funding yet, but basically at our revenue times like other multiples of companies like HubSpot or other public ones, it's probably a lot higher than that. Okay. What are some of the issues you've experienced in terms of scalability? And I'm curious, I recently read this article, it was talked about giving up your Legos in terms of scaling your business. And one of the hardest parts is like as you add more members onto the team, you have to be

willing to scale appropriately, give up some of your Legos so people can operate in their lane of genius. What's been like scaling and because you guys have a really fun culture. I think so. And like when I, when I visited your guys office in HQ, there's always like, it's fun, right? Like, yeah. Big emphasis on tacos and like, stuff. having a good time. What's it been like scaling, adding members of the team trying to hit certain

revenue marks and maintaining culture through that process? Challenging. Same challenges you guys face. I think the question is like, how do you create consistency in that? Like, how do you consist of hiring? And then how do you scale the business? Like, I think what I would encourage you for everyone out there is like practice delegating. Like business, as you know as well. It's like at the end of the day, you're just finding other people to help you do things, right? Like eventually, that's how you scale a company. Like you get someone to do this work and you find someone to do that work and you move on to something you think is higher leverage or you want to relax more. And so for me, I think everyone should practice hiring someone

on TaskRavit. Hire someone on Craigslist. Hire someone to clean your house. Hire someone to drop off something for you. It's like right now I have a few, I've hired people that like take my packages for me or I have someone who cooks food for me on Mondays and Wednesdays. Or I have, you know, and it's a practice though. I started hiring people to help me with things about, maybe when I started absenteen about 2010. Even before that, I started hiring people, like the guy who helped me build Facebook games. So I just think that's a great skill. Like, how do you delegate?

And I love delegate. I'm, like, more than happy to give up my Legos. I don't want any Legos. I think it's finding the areas I want to spend my time in it and being more in that. And then figuring out what are the things I can really help with. In terms of scaling, I think what I try to figure out is like, how do you filter in the upfront? Because you can't, people are motivated or not motivated.

Like, you just hire people fucking motivated. And so we have a few tests, which is like, one, are they a bar raiser? this is an Amazon question? So like, is this person going to make the company better, same or worse? Like, I interviewed this guy for QA as an engineer. I was like, oh, so how do you improve? Like, what do you like to do to improve yourself? Like, you know, I read LinkedIn posts.

Fuck? Fuck out of here, dude. I like, no shade on him, but I was like, this is just not for us. Like, go work at, you know, go work at Intel. There's a Helsinki test, which is, do we actually want to be around this person? Because you have to spend a fucking lot. I mean, with 27 people, there's a lot of time here with these people. So do you want to be around them?

And then if they went to a competitor, would we be disappointed? Or would be jealous, we'd be excited. And so there's a guy, Christopher, who's joining us this week. And it's like all three of those, he was like off the charts. Like he studies all the time. He's really, really interesting, good guy. And then I was like, if he went to anywhere else, like, he got a job off from Amazon versus absumo.

And it was like, whatever it takes, let's get this guy. In terms of scaling, there's a, I think what's challenging now, which I'm enjoying, I'm just enjoying the problems is it's all people. And I think about this phrase business forward. I think about this as part of our culture. It's like business forward, business forward, business forward. And so much of our day is bullshit. It's just like bullshit stuff.

Like someone I told you, put in their resignation because they wanted more money in which you already gave them more money for their role, which if you want more money, either make more money for the company or find a role that pays a lot more. Go into sales. Go into computers, programming. But if you're in a certain role, like there's a limit in that most of time. but they put in their resignation yesterday and then now they want to come back today.

And it's just like different problems like that all day long. Career laddering. Do you guys have career laddering issues? No. This is like shit like I never knew, but I'm honestly enjoying learning about it and experiencing it and I have coaches that support me. I think everyone should try to find coaches

in all areas of their life. What is career laddering? This is shit I never, like when I, when I, I'm my 20s, it was just like, get a fucking job and then you go do other jobs. But people in career, and you know, you have to give your team and take care of them what they need.

So people in our company, want to know what their career path is going to be. I think people should choose their own fucking career path. I don't think a company should tell you. But if you're an engineer and you're a junior engineer, you want to know what engineering one is, and then engineering two, and then an engineering staff or senior,

and then it's a staff, and then it's a senior staff, and then it's a fellow. And so some people want that. Before they get started. Before they get started, as after they join the company, like they really want it.

And so my job is to look out for the team. We call it one of the thing, Absumo team first. And so I was like, all right, some people in the company won, and so we need to provide it for him. And so there's literally stuff like that, like all day long that we're experiencing.

And it's, it's challenging. But at the end of day, it's all people problems. Like actually the making sure our customer, like, so when we come back to like business Ford, I'm like, who's our, how are we promoting great products? Our customers getting products they need. And like, that's what, that's what our business does at the end of the day. At all point, it's funny, you know, a few months ago, someone came in to talk to me. And they were on a tech business here in Austin.

and they said, man, I wish we were back to the size you guys were at with 30 employees. You still know everyone's name because I miss those problems. And at what point in Absumo's growth did it, if it has like shifted or changed yet, where you were once focused on like business growth and vision and projects, and then it flipped to now focusing more on people and solving people problems. Was there a clear shift or was it a gradual? That guy sounds like somebody's like, man, I miss my high school days. He's like Al Bundy's like four touchdowns, one game.

He was very salty. Yeah, it's like, dude, well, then go fucking back to it. It's like, I don't know, I don't want to go back and wear my high school clothes. Like, I like the new clothes. Yeah. I like the evolution. I like the new problems. It's not always easy, but it's just like, it's not to say that we can't do the thing that we like doing.

Like, I do a lot of things I like doing. I'm just, I enjoy these challenges now. It's just like, it's honestly just my mentality about. it'd be very easy. You can look at it either way. I can look at it shitty or look at a positive. I'm like, well, it's just fucking challenges. They're going to be challenges either way. I also think no matter what size of company you're at, if you're an individual or you're the owner of the company, make an effort to meet everyone. Go spend more fucking time. It's your people at the end of the day make all the difference.

Like BPN, you were saying, like, I remember it back in the day because you had like dust didn't work for you, but now you have like higher level professionals. And you've seen the delta that they bring to the business. So in terms of the company, yeah, there was a time where we had to fire everyone because we weren't making enough money from 20 people down to four. And yeah, that was really enjoyable because it was like brotherhood. It was challenged. It was very connected. But I still feel pretty good now. I feel great actually now, just like with the different people, things we have. I don't really want to, I don't miss when we're like, oh, we're going to make our salaries. They're going to have payroll,

stuff like that. I don't miss that. I've found that I enjoy adding more people on the team. because like you realize at a certain point, maybe from the beginning, that a business or a brand or a company, it is the sum of the people involved in it. 100%. So it's like every person we bring on to the team is an opportunity to grow, it's an investment in, and there could be a massive return. So like, I really don't take that lightly when we bring new team members on because I know what that could do, good or bad. 100%. To growth, to revenue, to culture. to relationships.

It could also do the opposite, right? Like, you have one, we've had a few people that are toxic, and people you hear about it, and they poison the fucking well. Right, like, they just poison the well. And they're like,

oh, the absumo, they don't pay this, they don't do this, they don't do this. And it's like, it's not necessarily true. Or maybe it's true and we should change.

But if it's not, they're just literally infecting other people. So getting them the fuck out. The other thing with new people, I've like, we have this guy named Stephen, there's got Tamir. There's just these people in the company.

I like working with, new blood. There's basically people with new eyes. They come in and they're like they're fucking hyped right. They're just hyped and it gets you hyped like Jeremy who helps with the YouTube channel. He's like, yo, we can do this video and we should do this video. I'm like, yo, let's fucking go. Because you know, you get older. You definitely get more comfortable. So it is nice to have new perspectives that come into the company. Yeah. I mean, I look back at when I first started BPN and I was doing all the graphic design work. I was doing YouTube videos, was editing the website.

And one of our most recent hires this past year, like I was telling you, Alex Rodriguez, he's our brand directory, came from Adidas, senior graphic designer Adidas. And I used to think that I was good with design. I thought I understood design. And then Alex came in and I was like, you get humbled very quickly. Okay, I see your return on what you're working on instantly. Like elevates the brand immediately. And now we're going to hire these new positions.

I'm trying to find more of the Alexes. Or it's like you come in and you make, you return instantly. And I need you of part of the brand. I can't lose you. You have to be here forever with me. Because I don't want to go back to making thumbnails and Photoshop and design. But you realize the power of people in a business. Amen.

For everything in lively, who are the friends that you hang out with? Like are they inspiring your ass? Like, I'm sure you have friends around you that are like, yo, the guy's hustling or not only just to do more in life, but they're like, oh, that was an interesting thing. Let me get that. Yeah, the people at Absumo, I'm like, oh, these people are fucking great. I feel very lucky. I feel very lucky that every day, I'm like, wow, you're impressive. So what are some of the things you're working on right now to actively grow the company that you're being challenged by?

A lot of challenges. I mean, I think in terms of absumo.com, it's a software marketplace. So we go find the best tools online and we promote it. And right now, last year, we really, like, we fixated deep on just can we get, products on the store. And then we thought getting more products would just magically bring customers. That doesn't happen. I thought it would. So we're fixated on how do we get liquidity or a certain amount of customers. So we want to get $225,000 to the store this year. And so we basically right now have three major products. One is like SEO. So we've never done SEO.

It's like I think people use Google. It's pretty big. Another one is category expansion. So a lot of our products are marketing. How do we end software, but is there crypto products? products for content creators and YouTubers. So can we get those products and can we bring on a new audience size? And lastly, we're getting my brand out there. So how do I get on do TikTok? How do I get our YouTube channel bigger? But I don't actually, I think you've done an excellent job of this. And I'm, we're improving. It's like how do we connect the person, me, to App Sumo? So like, hey, if you guys like me and you want tools, you want online business stuff, go check out appsumo.com. And I've been out there, but I don't think I've done a good job of running out. So those are kind of like

the three categories that we're pushing to get more audience to the company. I mean, I've seen your YouTube content popping up like no other. Thank you, brother. I think the biggest takeaway from a lot of your content is if there's something you want or you want to learn from, just go ask. And that 10% Starbucks coffee is a great way to get started. Because it is, it's uncomfortable. Like I think of my time walking into Starbucks and getting my coffee and saying,

hey, can I get 10% off? And getting that response and that look of, are you serious? How did you do it? I haven't done it now. Do you go to coffee? I get coffee. Where from? Starbucks, but I have mobile order.

Next time you go, try to do it in, would you try to do in person? Yeah, I would try to do in person. Yeah? Yeah, just because I think it's one of those things that, once you do something like that, enough of times, you become comfortable with asking. It's not, it's not the principle of getting 10% off. It doesn't matter. It's learning how to ask for help.

Like, hey, can I, can you, can you work with Apple? Sumo, these first couple deals. Can I get free ad space? Can you connect with me? Can we work together? Once you start asking people, you're going to get turned down a lot, but you're also going to get one or two yeses

that will really help you out. Yeah, it was a good reminder of this whole knocking on yachts or I'd knocked on doors. It's just a numbers game. It's just a numbers game. If you ask enough women out, if you ask enough men out, if you ask enough, like, come work for me.

You have those people to buy your stuff. Eventually, with probability, there's a possibility. It's awesome. Noah, I appreciate it. Thanks to time, man. Awesome. Thanks for tuning in to another episode of the Bear Performance Podcast.

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