The Tim Ferriss Show - #717: Noah Kagan — How to Launch a Million-Dollar Business This Weekend

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Starting point is 00:04:00 Our last rodeo, from an audio perspective was ages ago number 75 on the podcast now close to 700 episodes wow yeah and at that time it was how facebook's number 30 employee quickly built four businesses and gained 40 pounds with weight training i feel like my headlines have deteriorated over time they become very sort of pedantic and pedestrian and descriptive. That is better copy. So I need to work on that copy. Maybe you drafted that copy yourself, actually. For all I know, that could have been the case. We have a lot to talk about. But for people who don't have any context, could you give a little self-intro? Great to see you, first off.

Starting point is 00:04:42 Yeah, great to see you, too. Great to see you. Now we're at $8 million businesses, which is pretty amazing. I was number 30 at Facebook, number four at Mint.com. I was a cubicle monkey at Intel for a very brief moment, which sucked, which led me to this entrepreneurship journey. And then I've started so many different businesses that failed. Some worked, and now I help run AppSuma.com, number one site online for software deals. We do about $80 million a year, which is unreal.

Starting point is 00:05:03 It started bootstrapped in a weekend. I couldn't believe it when I saw that. I can't believe it. I remember day one of AppSumo, effectively, back in the day. It's been crazy, and you were a big help with it. You're a super big help with getting it going, so thank you. You're welcome. YouTube channel has done pretty well, a million subs, got a book, Million Dollar Weekend,

Starting point is 00:05:21 coming out to help people. Very similar complimentary for our work week. And we're here today. So let's do a little trip down memory lane. Because ages ago, 2011. So this is going back a ways. We've known each other a long time. I remember we first met, I want to say at a coffee shop in Mountain View, California.

Starting point is 00:05:42 Yes. On Castro. I remember that. And a lot has transpired since. We're going to cover quite a bit of it and get into a lot of tactics in this conversation. Noah always is able to deliver specifics, concrete, recommended actions, scripts, you name it. So we're going to get into all that juicy stuff. But you had a guest blog post on my blog in 2011. And it's easy for me to forget. It's easy for some people to forget or just not realize that the blog for me was really the connective tissue that permitted everything else, including the first book, because the blog came out before the book.

Starting point is 00:06:21 And what was that blog post that you put together? How to Create a Million Dollar Business in a Weekend, featuring chihuahuas. And that started this book. That started a lot of me sharing my approach. And that was wild. And it resonated incredibly well. Funny sidebar also, if you're curious about some of the ingredients in the cocktail that contributed to Ryan Holiday becoming the face of modern stoicism way back in the day, I think it was called Stoicism 101 on the blog. So people can take a look at Tim Dahl blog for that. But let's start with a completely oblique question, which is a geographic question. So we're sitting here in Austin, Texas. And before we started recording, you said something along the lines of Barcelona is the new Austin. Can you expand on this?

Starting point is 00:07:18 You know, in our last show, which was, you were talking like, hey, you're in Austin. I'm living, you were living in San Francisco. You know, tell me about it. And you're like, yeah, I thought about it. And now we're here living in Austin. Now we're here. And I do think of my life, I've been able to pick things a little early. Facebook a little early, Mint a little early, social games a little early,

Starting point is 00:07:34 Groupon kind of, AppSumo.com early, SaaS businesses early. And so even choosing Austin early. Super early. When did you get to Austin? 14 years ago. 14. Yeah, which people were like,

Starting point is 00:07:44 what are you doing out there? And I was like, I don't even know where it is in Texas, but it's great. And, uh, you know, for me, six years ago, my buddies, Dan and Ian from tropical MBA, they're like, come out to Barcelona for a month. And I got there and I was like, that's okay. And I was like, it's very hot here in Austin. So I was like, all right, I'll go out there. And after a few weeks, I'm really into cycling. I'm into the spandex. But really, the cycling out there was just, it's world class. It's where Lance Armstrong got famous. It's what he made famous, actually, in a city called Girona. And so I got out there and we started training, started drinking at night, started eating. The prices are amazing. There's a beach right there. It's basically California without all

Starting point is 00:08:21 the bullshit and a lot cheaper. That's a good sales pitch. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. People are like, you want to go to California? I'm like, no, thank you. I do love California. It's definitely one of my homes. And so I just started going there every single summer.

Starting point is 00:08:34 And now this year I spent 143 days. And it's just amazing. And then what's even wild is my girlfriend who I met there, and now she's pregnant, which is insane. She was saying that the life expectancy of Spaniards is actually higher than Americans. I believe that. I was talking to her about this, and that's kind of interesting. It's like, well, wouldn't you want to live where people live longer? It's like, yeah. So you have fresher food. Everything is walkable. So you're going downstairs. You're like, well, I'm going to go get a tomato,

Starting point is 00:08:57 and there's a vegetable store. And then there's a meat store and a cheese store. You have community there. We're here where she comes. She lives in my house here. We live out in the West. She's like, do you see anyone ever? Do you ever talk to anyone? She's like, where is everyone? And so all these factors combined, plus the cost of living is cheaper. It's just been where now we're spending at least half a year out there. A lot more social fabric too, I would imagine, right? I haven't experienced Barcelona much. I've spent a little bit of time there. Great tango scene for people who may be interested. But in Madrid, where I spent a bit more time, people are out. They're socializing. Groups of friends,

Starting point is 00:09:30 families. You just see more cohesion. And at least it seems maybe technology has changed this and people are more ready. Player one now in Spain. It's possible. It's true most places. But less self-imposed isolation than i observe in the u.s normally less isolation better looking people straight up it's got a higher density of really gorgeous people yeah i mean austin's a pretty attractive town it's okay depends on what you're looking for it depends yeah but it's just you know for cycling it's world class that all the i like men with man buns and like tattoos that's austin okay you're in the right place if you're but like just everything about it has been uh it's been such a

Starting point is 00:10:09 blessing to be able to find that and be able to live my life there and here you can do both so we're gonna move on to other things but before we do barcelona let's start with a contrast so austin for a host of different reasons has become a nexus for a few things that I think we could have expected. Looking back from, say, five years ago, we could have expected tech, right? Tech was already here from a taxation perspective, et cetera. It made a lot of sense.

Starting point is 00:10:37 COVID accelerated all of that. So you've seen an explosion of tech. I mean, within striking distance of where we're sitting, there is an entire skyscraper, who knows how many floors, 40, 50 floors, that is going to be exclusively Google, which has not yet been opened, commercially speaking.

Starting point is 00:10:53 There are a few retail shops at the bottom. That, I think, is somewhat predictable. The things I couldn't have predicted or wouldn't have predicted, Austin has become the mecca of Brazilian jiu-jitsu in the world, not just in the United States. It is, if not already,

Starting point is 00:11:11 certainly becoming an epicenter for comedy, stand-up comedy, in many ways, thanks to Joe Rogan and his club that he has opened here. What do you think, if anything, you were like, you know what, next five to 10 years, I bet Barcelona could be hot for X. Is there anything that comes to mind? Because I always looked at Austin as this highly diversified town that was not dominated by a single industry. That's part of what appealed to me compared to say SF Bay Area, right? Now, right now hasn't quite worked out as i anticipated but certain dominant communities and industries are becoming clear now in austin any thoughts on yeah barcelona i would say with austin i'd also

Starting point is 00:11:56 add content creators there's a lot of pretty sizable youtube podcasts that have become in austin and holiday me you yep definitely a lot of other people that have become in Austin, right? Holiday, me, you. Yep. Definitely a lot of other people that have moved out here. I would say for Barcelona, for me specifically, I can see it being the remote working capital of the world, right? Where, yes, the hours are a little off,

Starting point is 00:12:14 so maybe you'd want to go South America, but potentially, just for having a metropolitan city, especially in Austin, it's hot here. Four months a year. Yeah. And to be clear,

Starting point is 00:12:21 what we mean by hot, sorry, centigrade folks, I don't know how to convert this, but we're talking like 110 to 120 it's like a lot of the time 38 to 40 celsius your dog cannot walk outside my dog's feet will literally turn into omelets well you were showing me your floor is literally burnt in your place from the sun from the sun yeah the previous owner the previous owner left the solar shades up and the entire floor was bleached by the sun. But yeah, you go to Barcelona, I get a co-working spot and go to one co-work, but there's so many out there. 500 bucks a month, you get an awesome desk. You get really,

Starting point is 00:12:54 really fast wifi everywhere. You can use ukaio.com, U-K-I-O.com. It's like Airbnb, but even cheaper. Super sick apartments. Don't use it yet because I need to book my place. Good luck. Then you can go to all these amazing cities in a weekend so you got like puchada which is like better than lake tahoe bigger mountains not as crowded you've got costa brava which is california coast but even better it's like european style you have naked beaches both genders so whatever you want we were going to the wrong beach depending how you look at it for a long time in my buddy's list. Let's go down the beach.

Starting point is 00:13:28 All these varietal things that really make it a nice summer. And I like the balance of having both where there's the intimacy of being here in Austin, where you can go to Uchi, you have people like you and me, and there's a lot of interesting people here. But then also when it's hot in summer, wow, now with entrepreneurship,

Starting point is 00:13:39 now with remote work, Barcelona is a great second home for the rest of the year. Tactical question for people listening, and I know this exists in some European countries, is there the equivalent of a digital nomad visa, or is it something that's more complicated? It's way more complicated than people sound. So I literally got off the phone with an immigration lawyer for US and Europe yesterday. I talked to both of them. And this ties into our entire conversation, and I'll make that connection in a minute,

Starting point is 00:14:06 but please continue. So you got off the phone. It's not as easy as it seems. There's basically, there's a Nomad Visa for Spain, right? And to be clear, it's taken me 18 months and I still don't have it. Wow. And I have a pretty sizable company.

Starting point is 00:14:18 I have a pretty sizable bank account. I went to a college, which you have to do. And I've used a law firm to follow all these papers and I'm still not there. So sometimes when you're dealing with other countries, even in America, there's a lot of bureaucracy. So that's one way to do it. That could take a lot of time. Second one is the golden visa. So you spend half a million in Spain on a property, and then you can be able to get a visa there. The other one that we're going to be approaching the way I'm going to do it is called

Starting point is 00:14:38 a pareja de hecho. So if you can meet someone who is actually a citizen, you don't have to actually be married. You just have to live with them and be with them. You can get your residency there. So that's what I'm doing with my girlfriend. So that is one approach. Getting your green card. To be able to get my green card. I'm coming through the border legally over there. But otherwise, it's a three-month tourist visa. I think the Nomad visa, it sounds great. It's just literally 18 months and I don't know, 1,500 bucks, still nothing. Yeah. That's a lift. I think the Nomad visa, it sounds great. It's just literally 18 months and I don't know, 1500 bucks, still nothing. Yeah. That's a lift. I mean, in terms of energy commitment. And the reason I wanted to cover this and the reason it ties into everything is that

Starting point is 00:15:13 I enjoy our conversations in part because I learn a lot about the latest and greatest, whatever you've experimented with personally and professionally. And the personal part is not a small thing, right? Because you can create a business that is a monster of your own making, a jail of your own making. It's very easy. It's very easy to do. That is the default, I would say.

Starting point is 00:15:34 And you can also design a business that allows you to do the type of thing that you're describing. And those are fundamentally different approaches. They seldom happen by accident. So why don't we hop into the million dollar weekend? I can do one more bonus visa thing that everyone can consider. Great.

Starting point is 00:15:53 This is like a little secret thing that it's actually kind of interesting. A lot of countries, if you can find your genealogy, use 23andMe or talk to your grandparents, you can actually get your citizenship through that. So my great-grandfather is from Poland. So that's been one avenue I've been considering, where if you can actually find documents, which we've been able to find some, I can get Poland citizenship, which is then part of the EU citizenship.

Starting point is 00:16:14 So that is another way of getting in if I didn't have a girlfriend. So for people out there, go look up your ancestry and see if that country will be able to give you a citizenship. Yeah. And different countries have different degrees of leniency slash acceptance depending on how far back you go my buddy dan andrews always says he's like be mindful of marrying the passport because my girlfriend is venezuelan but lives in portugal that we were in spain so it's just a lot of things now to get her in america has been a nightmare get her super challenging real i'm like ridiculously challenging the people are trying to get across the border down south. I'm like, if that's easier, maybe we'll just do that.

Starting point is 00:16:47 I'll put you on my back and carry you. Yeah. Side note, if we look at, this is a whole separate conversation, but if we look at the plummeting birth rates, right? We are not meeting replacement rates for population growth, which is then correlated to GDP growth and so on. In so many industrialized countries, the one advantage the US has really is immigration, attracting talent globally. So making it easy or easier is really mission critical to the economic and national security

Starting point is 00:17:18 future of the United States. 100%. It's also not as easy as people realize. I was talking with the lawyer to get her into America, the other visa lawyer. And you know, in 90 Day Fiance, that show, it's like, okay, you get a fiance, boom, boom, boom. No, it's not like that. You have to wait a lot of time. You have to spend a lot of money. You can't leave the country.

Starting point is 00:17:35 Either if you do it in America, she can't leave for months. Or if we do it in Spain, she can't come into America for years. Yeah. It's incredibly tricky, incredibly complicated. So let's zoom out for a second. And we're going to talk about starting. We're going to talk about the initial stages and process for building a business or concepting a business in a very short period of time. So we are going to get to that. And we are going to have a challenge slash competition offer from Noah later that you're not going to want to miss. So stick around for that. I absolve all responsibility. Noah has verbally committed to all the indemnities in the world for me. So this is Noah's thing. But I want to talk about running AppSumo because prior to doing the homework for this conversation,

Starting point is 00:18:26 I had no idea that it had grown so much. It was wild, right? I mean, sell 80 million a year business. That's bananas. And what I'm curious about is being the CEO of such a company. Could you give us an idea of what the company looks like, first of all? Just in terms of basic org chart. How many full-time employees? How you think about structuring the company? It's been interesting. One thing, especially for Million Dollar Weekend,

Starting point is 00:18:56 which is the playbook I used, and it started with just me in a basement in Haight-Ashbury for $48. That's what's crazy to them. Okay, everyone doesn't have to have a lot of money or time to be able to get to this point. And so that is kind of wild. There are playbooks for starting low cost, starting low risk,

Starting point is 00:19:17 incrementally building something that can become the type of business that you're describing, or larger, or not, depending on your priorities, right? Exactly. And for me, it's being able to... That's why I left SF. I wanted to live. I'm not here just to describing or larger. Yeah. Or not, depending on your priorities, right? Exactly. And for me, it's being able to, that's why I left SF. I wanted to live. I'm not here just to work all day. Yeah. And that's why I'm in Barcelona.

Starting point is 00:19:30 It's like, I want to have a good balance of enjoying life and making money the way I want. And so AppSumo.com today, we have about 75 full-time teammates. I think the word employee is just kind of archaic. And then maybe 25 full-time contractors. And so that's broken out about six different departments. So we have product engineering department, sales, business development department, and then maybe 25 full-time contractors. And so that's broken out about six different departments. So we have product engineering department, sales, business development department,

Starting point is 00:19:50 marketing department, operations. So we go get the best deals on the planet at AppSumo, negotiate and see prices, and then we have to get it on the website. So there's a team that helps do that, customer support team, people team, and then a finance and business intelligence team. And are those employees distributed? Do they have locations? I think they're real. I guess they all have locations, but they could be real offices.

Starting point is 00:20:12 We've gone back and forth over the years, man. I started in a basement. I made every move to Austin, and then we got an office here. Now we're remote, and we're doing stipends for co-working spots for some of the teammates as an experiment to see if we can actually help them either get their home office set up or co-working set up we've tried the office it didn't seem like people actually go we have one now i don't know if people go i literally have no clue but we've definitely downsized from about 50 000 a month i think our office now is 3 500 bucks a month i was going to ask you about ceo frameworks that you use on an ongoing basis. So we're going to come back to that. But since you talked about downsizing and I want to give somebody

Starting point is 00:20:48 who's listening something tactical right away, because we want to front load some of those scooby snacks to keep everybody listening. You are a very proactive negotiator and that can range from asking for a discount on coffee, which I think we should revisit briefly, to the 35 plan, I believe, that you had for COVID. I think it was maybe dropping sales goals, assuming a 5% profit margin, something like that. Yeah. And I'd like to know how you negotiate things down like what are some of the key approaches

Starting point is 00:21:27 so let's say somebody's looking at lease of a space for an office it's not really being used or they're looking at their credit card statement and they're trying to tighten the belt because they want to take some swings and entrepreneurship but they want to feel a margin of safety right how do you approach this what are some of the keys to that? Because this is something I know you have a lot of practice with. Okay, I'm not going to do Jewish jokes, but I love a good deal. Absuba.com is all me. No, it is Jewish, to be clear.

Starting point is 00:21:57 Okay, a few things of how I like to approach negotiating and getting better prices on things. First off, this is going to be counterintuitive, but I always say I'm really bad at negotiating. That's my first line. You say that to the person you're negotiating against? Right. Every time. And the idea here is one, I am bad because what I'm interested in is like, I don't really want to spend a lot of time. I want to understand what you want. And if I know that what you want, you're happy with what you get and it's within my circle, that's it. I don't want to spend so much time actually negotiating. And I think that lowers people's defenses as well where i'm just not really good at negotiating i want to make sure you get what you want and then you're like oh great so that's number one second thing no one really wants to be guilted i have a jewish mother i know about guilt

Starting point is 00:22:34 right that there's a reason jewish chocolate's called guilt right like it's not a coincidence but the second thing is no one will be guilted into being excited to work with you. And the internet is a small place. The world is a small place. Me and you, how long have we been together? You started what? Your book, 2007? Yeah, the book came out in 2007. Started writing in 2005.

Starting point is 00:22:53 So we met 2007, 2008. 2006? Maybe earlier. It was before. 2006. It comes around. Yeah. So when people try to dick you over, people kind of grind you, you're like, okay, I know.

Starting point is 00:23:03 I'll see you again. Yeah. Right. And so for me, it's like, how do i have a positive experience where do you want to do another deal with noah do you want to do another discount with noah and then lastly i think a lot of times pricing so one be positive have a good experience because you're probably going to do this again then i say lastly what's the actual value you're negotiating around i think a lot of times it's like well i want five versus ten? So have clarity about why you think it's that price. Like, hey, here's comps, here's something that you can actually base this on. So have something where you're like, okay, I'm paying,

Starting point is 00:23:33 what we do at AppSumo.com is we do a biannual review over every single contractor and every single software subscription. We don't use software, we literally just have a list on spreadsheets. So twice a year you go through the list. Every single thing. Of your sort of recurring costs. Yeah. So our server costs and electronic costs a month, give or take, is $250,000. Contractor teammate costs is somewhere around $1.5 million a month. So you add that up over a year, it's a lot. So every biannual, Anna, who leads our people team, which is amazing, goes over that.

Starting point is 00:24:00 And then we basically have two columns, which is price of it. And then we have the return on investment or how valuable we think it is to the company, low, medium, high. And then they literally go through every single one and see if they can contact anything that says low and then just get it canceled. Either get it canceled or get it negotiated down. Anything that's high, we still ask for a discount as well. But we more or less leave those alone. Last tip I'll give for negotiating prices. And again, I recommend everyone doing a biannual review personally or professionally. When you give the numbers, shut the hell up. I don't know if you've heard this, but this is one of my favorite. I do this all the time. I literally did it two days ago. And when you say when you give the number, that's effectively what you're

Starting point is 00:24:32 asking for? Yeah. So, you know, million dollar weekend and you're going to have a similar outcome in life in general. Everything is an ask. And so how I like to do it, I bought a sauna and they didn't deliver it for six months. And I was a little frustrated. So I did a chargeback. People in Europe don't know about chargebacks. You know this? Americans are like, I'll charge you back. Europeans are like, what's happening here? So I charge back and they contacted me. You define a chargeback. That's basically you're asking your credit card company to reverse a charge.

Starting point is 00:24:58 Yes, which everyone should do. Not all the time. And it happens at AppSumo and we do our best to rectify what customer thing is wrong. But it's a really nice way of getting a company's attention because they get charged for it. They get $35 bill and they get notified like, hey, here's a chargeback. You need to solve this. And so I wouldn't do it all the time. I mean, that's not something I've done rightly, but if someone, I try to return something or they didn't deliver for six months, I did a chargeback. Now I'll talk to you in the negotiating part. So the owner of the company, three months later after he notices it, is like, hey, I got a chargeback, man. What the hell? And I was like, on my integrity, I'm going to pay for your sauna. But let me just tell you my

Starting point is 00:25:31 experience. We have a chat. This is literally three days ago. And he's like, all right, man, he's country, actually. He's like, all right, man, I got you. I'm going to hook you up a little discount there, Noah. I was like, all right there, Craig. He's like, I'm going to give you 10%. I was like, okay, Craig. I was like, Craig, let me just's like i'm gonna give you 10 i was like okay craig i was like craig you know let me just i think what times when you're negotiating people do like they go back and forth emotionally and it's like get off the emotion and get to the solution you get the result yeah get the result instead of being right instead of 100 you're like well craig you know instead of being righteous exactly 100 and so with craig he said 10%. And I said, all right, you know, well, Craig, let me just, let me just walk through what

Starting point is 00:26:07 happened. You guys charged me $13,500 for my sauna, which I love. It didn't come for six months. You lied to me every week. I think what's the reason, they lied to me that it was coming every week. I'd ask every week and they're like, oh yeah, it's coming this week for six months. Five minutes took it for those people who've seen Snatch. What is it?

Starting point is 00:26:24 It's a movie reference. It's people who getatch. What is it? It's a movie reference. It's people who get it. Doesn't matter. It's a movie reference. People who get it will get it. So the last negotiating technique, and this is a million dollar weekend. We can talk about how to sell better. And there's a very simple framework everyone can copy.

Starting point is 00:26:36 But with Craig, I said, all right, Craig, let's do 20%. This is the power move. You say your ask or your number and you shut up. That's it. I don't know if people already do this or know about this, but that is the power move. So the final let the silence to the just be like 20%. And Craig is like, all right, no, you got a deal. Let's get done. And so then we got 20%. I was able to get an extra thousand bucks off the sauna. I'm happy. He's happy. We can move forward. So that is a lot of how I like to negotiate.

Starting point is 00:27:02 And if you flashback to earlier days, smaller company, maybe it's when you're solo. Maybe it's what you did before starting AppSumo. This is not a new habit. This is a habit you've developed over a very long period of time. And I'm looking at a transcript of an interview from Mixergy. So I'll throw in, I know, going into the archives. And wanted to throw this out there just in case it's helpful to folks or for just jogging other techniques in terms of tightening the belt, which is something I did also before starting my very first company, the sports nutrition company. I went through my credit card statements.

Starting point is 00:27:39 I was like, okay, what can I cancel? What can I get rid of? So I feel like I have more of a buffer. My burn rate is as low as possible. Here's what we have in front of me. Fact check. Can't trust everything you read on the internet, but here's what we have. My most important thing is that when you're emailing someone, I think you've got to do a few things. First, tell them the exact price that you want. So you kind of alluded to that. Number two, say, hey, I can't afford this right now. Number

Starting point is 00:28:01 three, say, this is what I need for now. We can revisit it in six months if the economy recovers. This is a great way to keep me as a long-term customer. That's a pretty good line, right? Any other thoughts on negotiating prices down? Yeah. Or out, right? Just deciding what to cut. I think the bigger concept that I reflect on

Starting point is 00:28:20 for everyone out there is that you can actually ask for discounts and I don't think people realize that. Yeah. I think that's actually the bigger one of the bigger things not the only biggest thing which is i went to you know ali abdul i do yeah i don't know him personally but i've had a little bit of contact oh he's awesome he's like a beautiful person i love this guy and i went to hang out with him in la two weeks ago it seems like he's done a very good job on a whole

Starting point is 00:28:41 bunch of different levels and he's yeah and he's kind about it which i really admire and i go to his hotel room like dude sick hotel room really sick hotel room it's like literally corner santa monica facing the beach me and isaac the videographer were sharing like a tiny one bedroom like cuddling on a bed like poor people i was like dude not not poor people but like i call it small rich that's the new poor that's my new term small rich because it means you know there's still a chance to get rich soon or yet. So anyways, I asked Ali, I was like, how much is this room, man? This must be like $1,000 a night. He's like, you know what, mate?

Starting point is 00:29:12 He's in London. He's like, you know what, mate? I just emailed him and said, I'm doing videos and stuff in the room. Do you think you can give me a little discount on the room? They gave him the room for free. Yeah. They gave him the room for free just by asking. Doesn't hurt to ask.

Starting point is 00:29:24 And so i think the bigger thing is not necessarily how to grind other people and i don't think that's what we're encouraging at all it's just thinking like if you can't afford something if you want something how can you just ask for it and i think what tim said what you highlighted from what we were talking about is i like the phrase whiffed what's in it for them just think whiff like how can i tell them i'll be a long-term customer that's what you called out which is great or like hey i can't afford this but i can't afford this price so i a long-term customer? That's what you called out, which is great. Or like, hey, I can't afford this, but I can't afford this price.

Starting point is 00:29:46 So I could do something now. And thinking about how you make it in their interest, like maybe I'll leave you a review. And thinking more in that instance makes them more likely to do it. So let's give an example of an optional practice. And I know we've talked about this. And for any number of reasons, I'm just in love with it.

Starting point is 00:30:04 And that is the coffee discount. Because don't practice your first round on the important stuff. That's ridiculous. That's asking for all sorts of problems and all sorts of self-imposed PTSD if it goes sideways, and then you're not going to do it again. So practice on things that don't matter. It's kind of like if you were going to have a really important job interview

Starting point is 00:30:23 with your top pick, don't make that your first interview. 100%. Just go get a bunch of practice rounds with other companies where you don't care about the outcome. So in this case, what is the coffee discount? Yeah, the coffee discount, it ties all into starting a business, which people are like, really? I'm like, yeah, it is the thing. It's you go to anytime you buy coffee, tea, anytime you go to a store, even a restaurant, you can do it anywhere. You go up to the counter, you make your purchase and you say, can I please have 10% off? And then they look at you really strange and you say, well, Noah Kagan and Million Dollar Weekend, I'm doing this course. I'm trying out this book. They said I should do it. And they keep looking at you weird. They go, let me talk to my manager.

Starting point is 00:30:57 Okay, fine. You get 10% off. Or they come back and say no. And you get your coffee and you move on. And then I always love asking people, what did you learn about yourself? And everyone's always like, I was scared. I had courage because I faced my fear. And I realized I can do more things. And it's not as scary as it actually seemed. And now you can start applying that, frankly, in everything, in your jobs for raises, with your dating, asking someone for a date, and especially in business, which is, hey, will you come on my show? Hey, will you be my customer? Hey, will you give me feedback? Hey, can I interview you? That's all this whole life is, is asking people things. And if you ask, guess what? You can get. I don't know when I originally said this or wrote it, but it resonated so much that I was like,

Starting point is 00:31:36 huh, maybe I should think about this even more myself, which was this line. I can't believe I'm quoting myself for God's sake. Save me. This is what the internet does to you. I haven't started quoting myself with my name signed. I haven't started doing that yet. Let's do it. But the life punishes the vague wish and rewards the specific ask. And this ties into my earliest beginnings prior to the four-hour workweek. And I don't know if I've actually talked about this publicly, but when I was giving the guest lectures in high-tech entrepreneurship at Princeton twice a year from 2003 to 2013, I think, and I was invited by a professor. I didn't have any special credentials other than everyone else he invited in as a guest speaker was venture-backed and

Starting point is 00:32:20 traveled that route. They had some type of external financing. I was one of his students. We kept in touch. We got along really well. Ed Hsiao, I've had him on the podcast. And he wanted me to come back to share my experiences on the front lines because I was a recent grad. Also, I wasn't decades out.

Starting point is 00:32:36 Bootstrapping, right? So I went back. And the crux of my presentation every time, and it modified, you know, grew and it evolved. And the notes for that ended up becoming the backbone of the four-hour workweek as I ran all these experiments. But the opener was effectively, who here wants to be a salesperson? And no hands would go up. Nobody would raise their hand, right? Especially because this is Princeton, right?

Starting point is 00:33:02 And they're like, sales, like makes my skin crawl skin crawl you know so you had people who were maybe going into entrepreneurship more likely investment banking or management consulting probably but a lot of them had aspirations to be an entrepreneur and i said okay whether or not you want to be a salesperson is irrelevant and if you don't like that label that's fine but you have to become a really good deal maker you have to become a good deal maker love that and a become a good deal maker. I love that. And a lot of those presentations focused on the kind of stuff that we're talking about. Asking for what you want, deciding how to position it, deciding how to really determine what the

Starting point is 00:33:36 other person wants, because maybe you are causing a fuss over something that is just an indicator of what they actually want. And there are books that help with this. Getting Past No is one of my favorites. There are many others. And that is why we're spending what they actually want. And there are books that help with this. Getting Past No is one of my favorites. There are many others. And that is why we're spending some time on this. Are there other, let's just call them comfort challenges, let's say, besides the asking for a discount on a cup of coffee?

Starting point is 00:33:55 And I want to make one modification to what you said, which is when you first, maybe the first time you do this, we'll make it softball, fine. So you can ask for the discount and then you can mention you're doing it as an exercise for a book or something else. But then when you've tried that once or twice, now you can't say that. Make it more uncomfortable. Are there other small challenges like that where people can build their tolerance to discomfort in a similar way?

Starting point is 00:34:19 Yeah. And let me give you two, one you could do right now. And so this is something from the book about, and it's the only book I think that you actually make money in the first few pages. And it's something that literally everyone can do right now. Ask one friend to invest a dollar in you right now. Literally get on your phone, Venmo, PayPal, crypto, whatever it is, and just message someone on WhatsApp, whatever it is, and say, hey, I've got this idea for a business or I want to start a business, but I'm looking for one person to be on my board of advisors or my investor. Will you Venmo me? $1. And I did this with for a business or I want to start a business, but I'm looking for one person to be on my board of advisors or my investor. Will you Venmo me?

Starting point is 00:34:45 $1. And I did this with a guy named Jake about a month and a half ago and his hand was trembling. He's like, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah. And then you want to make it harder, call the person. Don't just text message them, call them. And it's silly, right?

Starting point is 00:34:59 And I think business should be fun. I don't think we should have these day jobs that we hate all day. That seems horrible. But this is a fun thing that you can do. Just a little dollar, one tiny little dollar. And guess what? Every billion dollar company started with the dollar. And so building up that practice where you just kind of asked for the dollar and then you get it, you're like, oh shit, that's the beginning.

Starting point is 00:35:26 This is going to be such a mundane, procedural, stupid question I'm going to ask anyway. If they're like, what am I getting for my dollar as an investor? What do you say? Exactly. So the line I like to use is, I love your support as I'm starting my business. And I'd love for you to be on my board of advisors so I can keep you informed as I'm working on my business. And it's a way to have people that care about you are just a part of your journey. And I think people are surprised how much people want them to succeed.

Starting point is 00:35:44 And so Jake called his brother, Jake called his other friend, Tom, and they're both like- Who's Jake? Jake is a guy who read Million Dollar Weekend and lived at my house for 48 hours. I wanted to see if the book worked. So he read basically a prototype galley,

Starting point is 00:35:59 something like that. Yeah, and so he called these two people. He said, hey, Tom, I'd really love for you to support me. Can you send me a dollar right now? And he was shaking. Tom sent a dollar live. We saw it on Venmo. And Jake was like, and everyone can do that right now. Especially if you want to start a business and you want to get going. Or guess what? If you have a business, do it to one friend, do it to a colleague, do it to your significant other. So that's one I highly recommend. The other one that, this is stuff I still do to this day. They're silly, right? And business should be fun. And guess what?

Starting point is 00:36:27 As you called it out really well, practice on the small stuff. So when you get to bigger stuff, it's not as big a deal. Like I'm going to people's houses and knocking on doors. That's pretty scary. Most of my videos on YouTube are me going up someone's door. I don't know them. And I ask them, what do you do for a living? That's a very big ask to a stranger.

Starting point is 00:36:42 Imagine me knocking on your door here. You'd be like, get the hell out of here. So the other one that I'd recommend, and this is, again, these are universal. You don't need money. It doesn't matter your gender. It doesn't matter how rich or poor you are. You can practice these and build your skills up

Starting point is 00:36:54 and your confidence up to be successful in business. Because as you said, sales is the basis of billionaires. A lot of billionaires were really good at sales. Just footnote, don't lose track. Yeah, I got you. If you're not selling customers, you're selling people on your ideas. You're selling people on why

Starting point is 00:37:10 they should use your design specs instead of something else. You're selling them on why you deserve, or at the very least, it's okay that you take a week of paid time off. You are persuading. You are going to be in the persuasion business, even if you are the most antisocial of coders, at some point you have to interact with these

Starting point is 00:37:31 bags of flesh called humans. And this is part of the game. It is. The other one that's universal, and I did it last week, it was actually pretty fun, is the compliment challenge. The compliment challenge, it's what it sounds sounds like and so specifically what i like to compliment people on is clothing i've never been a good dresser you grew up in california mervins i grew up on east coast but yeah you you know you moved to the bay area like you know mervins remember that story mervins vaguely no man it was bad that's the only place my mom bought his clothes from and it was rough most of my life as i got older i was like i don't want to dress well and so the compliment challenge is anytime you see anyone with something nice that you're

Starting point is 00:38:07 like that's kind of a cool hat cool jacket cool shoes so two weeks ago i was at the best western and as i like to call it it's the okay western hotel it's definitely not the best to rebrand it this lady had shoes on i was like and then the way i like to think about it specifically with these challenges is you have a three second rule for me personally is i won is I won't negotiate with terrorists. I will not negotiate with myself. So within three seconds, I have to make the decision to do it. Just go do it. Don't even think about it. And then by the time you do it, you're like, that was never so scary. And I still have the fear. It's not like at points it goes away. It just gets a little bit easier over time. So this lady was sitting having breakfast with her husband and I'm like,

Starting point is 00:38:41 I'm bothering her. I'm definitely bothering her. And that's actually a really misconception in big sales. We're like, we're bothering the other people because it's fascinating go up to her like i'm really sorry to bother you guys but i love your shoes she's like thank you so much i was like do you mind tell me where you got them from it's like yeah i got them from jc pennies i was like awesome i think my girlfriend might like this have a great day and she's like thank you so much that was really nice of you i was like okay went back to my chair and so that's that's one of the misconceptions in sales is that we're actually harassing or bothering people when maybe it's actually a good thing and people need to maybe reconsider their perception of what a sale is

Starting point is 00:39:11 quick pause if the book title keeps coming up we're gonna have to cut it no no did i say it again you're good we can mention it but if there's too much density we'll have to thin it out a little bit no worries so back to the story by the way great feedback thank you that's like a superpower i mean that alone is is great i don't know if you want to include that in your content we could include it actually i mean shit if you're okay with it yeah i think this is like like one of my superpowers at app sumo we could say is not just my superpower one of our values is feedback is a gift that is also on walls it the artist formerly known as facebook right feedback is a gift is that what they said in there yeah oh wow that's the thing but it is and this is fun okay yeah if we can if we can keep it in that'd be great because when i was as an example right when i was early on preparing for

Starting point is 00:39:56 the four-hour work week i went to media training i'd never done real media before and they were like you must say as in my book right right? In my book, mention the title. And I did it. I got really good at it. And what I would say to folks, if you're on morning television and you have 45 seconds and they're going to mispronounce your name and get your book title wrong, yes, it's a good idea to get it in. With longer format, you have the time to work with nuance. And I will tell people right now, look, I'll keep it simple. Just go buy the fucking book. Because I've seen what the blog post has done.

Starting point is 00:40:36 I've spent enough time with you. I've seen you in action. We've collaborated way back in the day on the Tim Ferriss experiment, the TV show. Got to see a lot of this stuff live. Got to practice a lot of it live. So you know what you're talking about. Just a quick thanks to one of our sponsors and we'll be right back to the show. This episode is brought to you by LinkedIn Jobs. Every small business owner I know, and that includes me, is asking themselves the same question. What is the one key move,

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Starting point is 00:41:46 That is also why small businesses rate LinkedIn jobs number one in delivering quality hires versus leading competitors. LinkedIn also knows that small business owners, that's you, me, maybe, are wearing so many hats, so many goddamn hats, that they might not feel they have the time or resources to hire well, to really dig in, take the process seriously from start to finish, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. Thankfully with LinkedIn, the process is intuitive, fast, and easy. Post your job for free at linkedin.com slash Tim. Why not try it out? You can go to linkedin.com slash Tim to post your job for free. Terms and conditions do apply. So coming back to the sales, I will say, don't assume that complimenting someone or approaching someone is going to be bothersome or harass them.

Starting point is 00:42:40 However, there are times when that can be the case in the sense that I remember in Silicon Valley, man, this is part of the reason why I was like, I need to take a break from this place geographically. I would be at dinners, dinners, sometimes with my girlfriend, maybe on a date. And a dude, it was always a dude. It was always a dude. Some dude in his like mid-twenties would come over and be like, hi, Tim, and pull up a chair and just sit down and pitch me on his startup. And I remember on multiple occasions, there were times when I was not as delicate about it, but I would just be like, John, is your name John? You didn't even mention your name. John, I'll just call you John. I mean, I think, John, it does not matter how good your pitch is right

Starting point is 00:43:20 now. It could be the best pitch in the world. The timing is not good. And I'll just share one more that I thought was amusing, which is a counterpoint. Although I will say, oftentimes the, it's going to bother someone, it's going to be rude, it's going to be fill in the blank negative label is an excuse for us to avoid doing the thing that is uncomfortable. However, one counterexample, we're sitting here in Austin. I was here at South by Southwest. So that is a huge festival here in Austin. Great fun. And I was on an escalator and I was exhausted because I'm an introvert, which people may not realize because I have one-on-one conversations and then broadcast it to millions of people, but very introverted. I get depleted when I go to events and I do things like book signings. I'm toast for two, three days. So I'm on the escalator and

Starting point is 00:44:09 literally putting my face, nuzzling into my girlfriend's neck because I'm trying to hide from the world. And she's above me in the escalator. A guy reaches over her shoulder and taps me on the shoulder to pitch me on a startup. So don't do that. So don't do that. Dude, I got a guy and I was in Barcelona. I was in spandex, just to be clear. I just finished a bike ride. And this guy pulls up a seat next to me and he's like, you're Noah Kagan, right?

Starting point is 00:44:33 I'm like, yeah, I'm Noah Kagan. He's like, dude, give me a hug. I was like, I don't know you. And then he's like, you got to come meet my friend. I was like, dude, I'm just getting a beer. Just let me get my Australia dam and chill out, dude. And yes, I'll come talk to you and your family. It was just a little bit too imposing. But just look, I don't want to turn this into a total kvetch marathon, but I will say that for me, this is very much an Austin thing too. If you meet anyone for

Starting point is 00:44:58 the first time, and perhaps I've spent too much time in Japan, who knows? But if I stick out my hand and you say, I'm a hugger. Oh, the worst, dude. Don't do that. And then they bear hug you. Those are always the bear huggers. Or they do like Will Ferrell comedy extended hug. Don't do that, guys.

Starting point is 00:45:18 Don't do that, guys. Do the fist bump, do the bow. Just about anything is fine. Please don't. That's so imposing. Like, I'm a hugger. It's like, all right, I'm a kicker. Doesn't mean I'm going to kick you, though so imposing like i'm a hugger it's like all right i'm a kicker doesn't mean i'm gonna kick you though yeah i'm a slapper yeah great so pro tips let me drop i'll drop one thing uh especially in sales we're talking about

Starting point is 00:45:36 challenges and by the way all these challenges do lead up and what i think has helped me be successful is asking and practicing and so for sales i have a little framework it works super well it's called lot listen Listen, Options, Transition. And this is the same thing in asking. Just listen to that person. So first off, I'm going to listen to Tim. Talk to him about their problems, especially if you're starting a business.

Starting point is 00:45:53 You're like, let me talk to you about your shirts. What do you like about your shirts? What do you not like about your shirts? Tell me more about your shirts. And just listen. Just think of you're doing a podcast interview and you're just interviewing them and getting feedback. Okay.

Starting point is 00:46:03 Then you present an option to your person. It like hey oh you like shirts what about this shirt at this price and they say yeah that actually solves my problem or if you can't you don't and then you transition them to all right pay me all right let's move on to a next step let's put in the calendar which i'm always a huge like lock it in the cow if you're trying to get sales always in the cow or how do you lock it in the cal in a case like this? What goes into the calendar? So what I'm doing, I'll give you an example. Yesterday, I was talking to this woman at a company that I want to work with. And it was like, all right, well, we'd like to do something together.

Starting point is 00:46:35 Cool, I'll follow up an email. And I'm like, let's just do it right now. And so my phrase is always this. I have my calendar open. How does this date work at this time? And that is such an easier decision for her to then make and say, actually, yeah, cool, let's placeholder it. It also saves so much bandwidth over time. 100%.

Starting point is 00:46:49 Right, like you add that up over as a process, right? If you're constantly doing follow-up emails. Yeah, and I want to make sure I have the next step. Now 10% of your life is dealing with those follow-up emails. So let's talk about what we left maybe 10, 15 minutes ago. Just because I like to bookmark practices at different stages because I do find that they inform a lot. And I'm also personally curious.

Starting point is 00:47:13 These conversations are ultimately always personal to me. So CEO frameworks. Yeah. Things that you do on a daily, weekly, or monthly basis. You mentioned the biannual, for lack of a better descriptor, recurring expense review, right? You mentioned that already. What are some other things? Because you've had quite a bit of practice now. Yeah, let me show you a few because I think it's kind of cooler when you get to see it. So every single day at AppSumo.com. Can I say the website? Or am I saying too much?

Starting point is 00:47:38 That's fine. Every single day at AppSumo.com. Beep.com. Yeah, we'll bleep it out you can check this out I think you can and you can talk through it I'm happy oh wow you can share these numbers

Starting point is 00:47:48 so every single day this is something Keith Raboy does okay so this is so every day we have a daily pulse that's what we call it and let's zoom out

Starting point is 00:47:55 for one sec have one singular goal that's what I learned from Zuckerberg and that's what I do at AppSumo.com and so with AppSumo.com this year

Starting point is 00:48:02 our one singular goal is 45 million dollars net revenue that's net gross sales is definitely around 77 to 80 million depending on how the year ends at AppSumo.com. And so with AppSumo.com this year, our one single goal is $45 million net revenue. That's net. Gross sales is definitely around $77 to $80 million depending on how the year ends. And then every single day,

Starting point is 00:48:11 there is this Slack bot that posts all of our key metrics that lead to our number one goal. And it's tied into automation. Yeah. So what are you using there? We're using Zapier and then we use Snowflake

Starting point is 00:48:24 when we have a two-person business intelligence team. But anyone could do this on a spreadsheet. Just every day, you have one goal. How are you doing? Can I say this for a second? Yeah, go out and talk out some of the numbers. It's pretty interesting.

Starting point is 00:48:34 So we have data updated through. This is a pull spot, so it's being automatically posted. You're not manually pulling this, but you could. Yeah, and you can also, by the way, if you're just starting out, just have a spreadsheet and check it every single day. Yeah. So you have month to date actual as compared to goal. So that's in and of itself meaningful, right? And so you got total gross sales, 4.3 million, let's call it versus 4.43, 8 million total net revenue, gross profit, AOV, which is average order value.

Starting point is 00:49:03 Yep. And new buyers, total buyers, plus members. Those are subscribers. Those are our VIP customers. VIP customers. Daily sales, which is broken out. New buyers, new buyer conversion rate, new versus existing buyer, gross sales month to date. That's an interesting one.

Starting point is 00:49:20 And then daily KPI report with monthly projections. So the KPI, key performance indicator. So this is quite a bit of stuff. And I'm wondering if you had to 80-20 this for your business right now, because I'm not sure how Keith Raboy does this or describes it. There are, I believe, examples at, say, Y Combinator of talking about the single weekly metric, right? Picking one or two weekly metrics that are tracked over time, and you're trying to get

Starting point is 00:49:48 that to compound at 10% a week or whatever the number might be. So what would you choose as your 80-20 priorities in that list right now? For everyone out there, it could be different, right? We're more of an e-commerce site with our business. There's three numbers that I would just look at. Three numbers add up. So again, start with one goal. What is your goal and what's your date for that goal? So our goal is from zero January one to the end of the year, how do we get 45 million

Starting point is 00:50:11 net revenue? And the three goals, the three KPIs that lead to that, it's basically just three for us. Traffic. So how many people are coming to the site? How many people actually buy, which is our conversion rate? And then how much do they spend, which is our average order value? That's it. That's all I would look at. Now that's the most simplest version of it. So if you have traffic times, so much people buy, how much they spend, which is our average order value. That's it. That's all I would look at. Now, that's the most simplest version of it. So if you have traffic times how much people buy, how much they spend, that gives you your revenue numbers. But then we have sub numbers. That's where it gets complicated. But if I had to do 80-20, it would be that.

Starting point is 00:50:35 Now, what other people need to be thinking about, though, is what are the things that impact those three KPIs? That's how you now get way more complicated. For sure. Just for fun. If you had to pick one of those three to optimize for 2024, which would it be? With AppSumo.com. Top of the funnel. So traffic, conversion, or average order volume. Yeah. If I only could pick one thing out of all of it, I would actually pick just number of deals for our business. Number of deals. Yeah. So every business has a core. So the number of products that you're offering, which should help with, I imagine,

Starting point is 00:51:06 the conversion and traffic. And so for every business out there, what's the core input that leads to your main outputs? Let's just take a lot of different examples. So YouTube. Lately, and this has been a big transformation for me, is I'm setting unambitious goals. Okay, tell me more. You know, I think it's Silicon Valley. If you're not 10Xing, and I was with our board a month ago, I was like, if you're not 10Xing, no, you're failing. And I was like, okay, I've read that book. And so- I got that t-shirt too, guys. I get it. 10X everything is written by people that haven't 10Xed a business. And the reality, and let's say

Starting point is 00:51:39 there's two parts there, but there's cores for everything. So the core for my YouTube channel is two videos a month. That's it, that's what I found gets me to the main metrics that I need. And there's supporting metrics around it, but that's my core there, AppSumo.com. As of now, it's give or take around, I'd have to ask Sean, he runs the high level, but it's about 35 deals a month.

Starting point is 00:51:57 If we can do 35 amazing software deals a month, we hit our targets, more or less. And so for your business, what's the core numbers? We talked about this in the past, but what's the core number you can really just like everything kind of works backwards off of? And so for us, it would be deals. Okay. So we're going to talk about other frameworks. And then we're going to, at some point we are going to come back to YouTube because I have questions around that. Sure. Top three, bottom three. What is that? You gave me feedback early

Starting point is 00:52:22 in the show, which is great. And that's awesome. That's how you improve. I don't know if people don't realize that. Like the only way you look at yourself is with a mirror. And that's the same thing when your relationships to ask your partner today, right now, Hey, what am I doing well? Or what do you want me to improve on? And we're going to come back to this, but how much money have you spent on coaches? Would you say in the last five to 10 years? Myself and the team easily over a million okay easily over a million so we'll get into that coach that yeah i like feedback that's how i can get better it doesn't mean i accept all the feedback but it means i can acknowledge all the feedback and make a decision

Starting point is 00:52:53 so t3b3 or something it's from travis actually at uber and so the idea there and andrew chen was one of my best friends and advisor brought it to me he's been on the show basically just like every quarter it's so light i just don't like sometimes feedback. Cause it's like these 18 pages that I'm like, I don't know what to do. You have 18 things to fucking do. It's so much. Just tell me the top three things.

Starting point is 00:53:11 I'm doing great here. Don't worry. We can guess. What are the top three things you love that I'm doing? So I know I can continue it. And what are the bottom three things I can improve on? Three things is definitely doable. If not three,

Starting point is 00:53:21 just even do one. You can do T1B1. And I just have it in my calendar. I think the more things you can just have automatic in your calendar, the better. So I just have my calendar. Ask team T3B3 every quarter. And so right now in your business,

Starting point is 00:53:32 if you're in the junior department, if you're the leader of the company, or even in relationships, whatever it is, just go ask your partner. Ask someone that you trust and respect. Hey, what is the top three things I'm doing? What are the bottom three? And do that regularly,

Starting point is 00:53:43 and you will be able to keep improving. Can you give any examples of real yeah so three b three so on my desk i print mine out because i want to see it what you're doing well you're probably going to continue but what you can improve is cool so the team gave me feedback that i'm uh they want more autonomy that i'm too much up in their ass that i'm like yeah and this is the funniest part everyone's like i'm not a micromanager. I'm like, dude, everyone who says that is. It's kind of like if you see on a dating app, anyone who says no drama, you're like, oh, you love drama. Huge red flag.

Starting point is 00:54:14 Huge red flag. So they wanted more autonomy. And then it asked for an example. Like, what's an example or what's a moment? Give me a solution that we make sure that as it comes to it. So for instance, with AppSumo.com, I love going through our credit card bill. Our credit card bills, sometimes like November, because Black Friday, it's about a million dollars, almost a million dollars. And normally it can vary between three and five. And that's on customer acquisition, like paid

Starting point is 00:54:36 acquisition? Facebook, our Amazon bill, 50K a month, a lot of different ads. Just so I understand, Amazon bill, you're talking about AWS? AWS, yeah. So I was going through every transaction and it'd be like a $9 transaction. I would love if your Amazon bill was just shit your employees are buying as gifts.

Starting point is 00:54:51 AWS. I mean, you know, there's, well, as you get bigger, you also have checks and balances. Someone actually tried to scam us for 30K a few weeks ago, which was super impressive.

Starting point is 00:54:58 But I was going through these credit card bills and we talk about coaches. We have a CFO coach for the VP of Finance. She's the CFO. She was the CFO of MailChimp. Pretty good job. Pretty cool company. And we're in a meeting and she's like, Noah, we talk about autonomy. We talk about trust. Do you think going through

Starting point is 00:55:13 the credit card transactions and messaging people about a $10 purchase is really autonomy and not trusting your VP of finance, Kevin, who can do this? And I was like, good point. I stopped looking at credit card bills. So that was one of them. The other B3 from this quarter was around longer term vision. I'm much more of a tactician and I like getting action. I like getting movement. And the team was like, you need to chill out and think longer for us and come back with some type of longer plan. And so the last six months of the year, I was really thinking about what do we want to do in the next three years? Because I've been so focused in business and generally about one year segments. So we spent so much time and now we have like a 2026 vision. I think this is also very common. It's not true for everyone, but very common for

Starting point is 00:55:53 people who've done a lot of bootstrapping. Yeah. More so than people who've raised a bunch of money. Yeah. Where a board understandably wants to know what the hell your long-term yeah what your long-term plans are because they want to realize their equity return yeah that was the feedback i got from the team they're like get out of the day-to-day let us do it we got it and just start moving the process forward so i was thinking about like talking to customers talking to partners thinking about ourselves like what do we like doing what are we great at and where can we be in three years and then bringing that back to the team, incorporating them, getting them buy-in, that was something I got feedback in the past, like, hey, you're just making decisions without us.

Starting point is 00:56:30 So, yeah, by the end of the year, I think mid-November now, we have a three-year vision and Basecamp's towards that vision. Basecamp's project management. Not necessarily Basecamp.com, but Basecamp specifically, what are milestones? So, our destination is to be able to distribute software tools for entrepreneurs.

Starting point is 00:56:46 That's what we love doing. I love promoting things. And so how do we be the number one place to distribute software tools? Not just deals, but software tools. And then what are the different key milestones numerically, as well as from what we want to do in the business within these separate years to be able to get there in 2026? So that was feedback directly from the team that they told me. And then we do this for everyone in the company the top three bottom three yeah how do people track that

Starting point is 00:57:09 or how do people keep it present right because it is one thing having just come off of an off-site myself and i actually think we did a good job with this because we sort of assigned ownership next steps and then did working sessions during the offsite. Like, okay, let's actually get these things in motion because it's great to have a bunch of meals, have some wine, walk around, talk about big ideas. Oh, we're so excited. Let's take a team photo next to the paper on the wall and then right back to status quo. How do people keep these top three, bottom three present

Starting point is 00:57:43 or maybe a better way to word it is, how do they keep themselves accountable? A few things that work for us. So one is scorecards. Everyone gets a scorecard. If you're an app senior, you get a scorecard. And so I can show you an example of it. I focus on the leadership scorecard. So I have a company scorecard. What are our top three things we're trying to do in Q1? And Sean, he's our head of revenue. Alona, she's our COO. They each have a scorecard with just what are your top three things based on what we're trying to do in Q1. Okay, this would be for Q1.

Starting point is 00:58:08 Yeah. And so that is a helpful way where maybe it's something they want to improve, or maybe it's just something that they need to work on, or it's just an outcome that we want. And then we agree on what those are. They propose it, I review it, and then we decide it. Got it. It doesn't mean necessarily like, hey, it's going to be one of their B3s, but that for me is like the three things that they want to get better at or they want to accomplish the other thing i would

Starting point is 00:58:28 say you know it sounded like you guys had a planning session and all this stuff we had you know i told you we have a three-year vision and then we have like all this stuff but on monday i was with one of my coaches dan putt from reboot and i was talking to dan i was like i don't know if we're on the same page what we're doing because i'm not really clear he's like well if you're not clear they're definitely not clear and i was like oh that's interesting right it comes from the top how are you leading by example if i'm not clear where we're going to go necessarily in the next quarter like does everyone else know so we had a meeting that i saw that diane i was like everyone needs to bring the their top scorecard projects we need a line on them make sure they're tied to the main thing

Starting point is 00:59:04 and have a one pager around it. Had a meeting the next day, everyone brought their stuff and now we have a one pager that ties all this together. And so now being very, very clear, like what's our number goals? What's our key projects?

Starting point is 00:59:15 And by the way, this is something that's counterintuitive in businesses. It's like, if there's not fighting, you're not really getting the best ideas. I want more people saying no. Like the best people at Facebook when I was there

Starting point is 00:59:24 were always saying no to Mark. And I was always like, yeah, Mark, that was a pretty good idea. That's maybe why I got fired. But over time, I've realized that challenging respectfully is very healthy. And so you ask about feedback and all that. It's ask for feedback rarely. Be clear on what success is. That's what a scorecard is. It's like, here is success for me with our work. And then you can be able to measure against that in a very clear amount of time okay we are going to come back to saying no pretty quickly because a big part of enabling yourself to say yes to the things that matter is being able and equipped to say no yeah so i do want to come back to that other frameworks that you would like to mention the other one i do that this changed everything for me in the past two years,

Starting point is 01:00:05 especially as a CEO, was a weekly review. And so I only have three questions. And really noticing what you actually do. A lot of people are like, I have all these frameworks. And then you ask them like a year later, like, yeah, I don't use it again. So maybe they've evolved it, but really, it's not sticking. And so this is one that sticks with me. And I could show you, it comes up on my phone. So every week, I get a Slack bot. Here it is. You can see. So it says complete your Friday weekly review.

Starting point is 01:00:30 So today's Friday as we're chatting. You can click on it. And there's three questions. And the three questions are very, very simple. It's how was the week? One through five and why? And this is you could do whether you're CEO or whether you're a junior person. And so we track it.

Starting point is 01:00:42 We track the ratings every week. One is sucked. Five is fantastic. Yeah. So this week was a five. This week crushed. And that's thinking about, okay, well, what made this week a five? What happened this week? I got to hang out with you. We had lack of clarity on Monday. On Tuesday, we dialed in our Q1 planning, and everyone was super hyped on that. I finished executive compensation, which was challenging about how much people get paid. So this week was a five. And then explaining, line adding, all those different things. And it's not always like i just bullet point i

Starting point is 01:01:07 don't necessarily need to write stories number two thing especially as my leadership style i noticed i was very inconsistent yeah were you consistent yeah so my number two question is was i consistent this week one through five and basically because i'd go into a meeting and i would just start fucking ripping on people like i was in me with mitchell and olman and i'm just like shitting all over them. I'm like, your ideas are sucky. And I wasn't coming with solutions. That week was a three.

Starting point is 01:01:30 That was not a good idea. Because as a leader, you want consistent experience for the people you work with. And you're being consistent based on feedback you've received from the team and your top three, bottom three? Is that sort of a compass? A little bit.

Starting point is 01:01:43 It's also, this is more my own subjective opinion. Got it. This is how you feel. Yeah. I found this really, really helpful. And then the last question is, what are my top three for next week? So it makes me be very more focused about,

Starting point is 01:01:53 okay, I have a singular goal. We have Q1 priorities. Now I can break these down to smaller levels and say like, okay, this upcoming week, what are the three things you want to work on? Then with my executive assistant and our chief of staff, we can help realign my schedule. Like, is that actually what i'm working on next week or is it a bunch of other things one tool we stopped using because it costs money so we stopped paying

Starting point is 01:02:12 for it but there is a tool that does this t3b3 and then follows up and you can have all of it but i was like i think we can do it in google forms for cheaper uh is lattice lattice lattice hq.com it's sam Altman's brother, Jack. Got it. But it was like 15,000 a year. And I was like, I think Google Forms for free a year can do pretty equivalent. And just, it's a little more work on the team.

Starting point is 01:02:33 Shout out Charlotte and Anna and Angelina for helping facilitate it. But yeah, that actually will do your tracking. And then you could double check how you are against it versus honestly, Google Spreadsheets is comparable. Q1 top and singular goal. Do you want to talk about either of these? A lot of it, when you're trying to go anywhere in your business,

Starting point is 01:02:48 is like, where do you want to be by the end of the year? So right now, for anyone who's watching this, it's coming out in January. Where do you want to be December 31st, 2024? And just pick a destination with the time. Most people don't do either. They're like, dude, you've influenced so many people on health. Like, I just want to be healthier. What does that mean?

Starting point is 01:03:03 Be healthier. So be more clear on your goal and your destination. That's something that Zuckerberg, I've talked to you about it, where he brought me in a room. He's like, I want to get a billion people. I was like, wow, that's pretty cool. And this is when we had 10 million. Yeah, that's a big one. That was amazing. It was exciting. And so have a very clear singular goal that you want to accomplish. Maybe it's like a thousand subscribers. And my goals lately are much more unambitious because I want to focus on goals I can sustain.

Starting point is 01:03:28 Could you give an example of what that looks like? So with AppSumo.com in the past, if we didn't 2x a year, I'm like, oh, it failed. And you'll hear this. You'll say, shoot for the stars. And if you're not at the moon, you're good. But also, that means I'm running really fast. You burn out because you're working really hard and you're not getting where you want to go. And so now with AppSumo, our general growth range is 5% to 10% a year. And so this year for 2024, I believe it'll be around 7%. And the reason that is, is because if I can do 7% over year after year, after year, after year. Yeah, you end up the Warren Buffett of AppSumo.

Starting point is 01:04:02 Exactly. And the other thing that I've noticed through these unambitious goals, and I'll give more examples, is that it creates more freedom for taking 10x experiments. So we're doing a lot more content this year by the time this comes out. We're going to be trying doing like an alternative to product time

Starting point is 01:04:14 and some of these other options. But if we're so focused on having to grow revenue and do all these things, you don't really have oxygen to experiment in a way that feels confident. So same thing with my YouTube channel. I'm going from 1 million to 1.25 million this year. Like 25%, but we've been going 50%. And that's because

Starting point is 01:04:32 I would say we've had less aggressive goals. And so thinking about that for everyone out there, I do think Silicon Valley and what they're telling you, oh, you got a 10X. That's because these investors don't care if people fail. I would add to that. This is super important. I'm glad you're bringing it up because I do like how some of these outrageous questions break your mental models or your assumptions about what you can or can't do. So how could you achieve your 10-year goals in the next six months? Love that. Great. That's an excellent thought exercise. But if you are applying to yourself as a bootstrapped entrepreneur, 10x or bust. And if, let's just say, well-being or happiness is reality minus expectations, you can paint yourself into a precarious corner and you can paint your team and employees into

Starting point is 01:05:19 a very precarious corner. In the venture-backed power law distribution of startups and venture capital, there are a few things you got to realize. The first is that investors are banking on that kind of power law return within tech. So they're looking at huge possible multiples, right? So they can make a thousand X on something that breaks out. This happens. And that pays for all the losses. Other invisible, I would say invisible to the public factors include the incentives you may not see in the headlines. For instance, if a founder is able to take money off the table with large rounds of financing, they're already in the black. And then for the company outcome to have a huge impact on their quality of life, they're willing and able to make enormous outsized bets with ridiculous ambitions.

Starting point is 01:06:13 Because guess what? It's not in the news, but they already have 20 million in the bank. They're good. And this is why I think what you're saying is really important. The consistency matters. And I want to tie this because everything is related to everything in some respects. And I want to talk about YouTube briefly. We are going to talk a lot about building. But guys, these are the ingredients that allow you to build and experiment consistently. You need to develop certain attributes and frameworks. We can talk about KPIs and goals and what we want to achieve. There's a survivorship bias

Starting point is 01:06:47 in entrepreneurship where you tend to hear about the success stories. One of the things you have done on YouTube, I'm not sure if this is going to be fertile ground for harvesting, so we'll see, but you've asked a lot of millionaires, billionaires, versions of of was it worth it what do you regret etc are there any takeaways from that that were either non-obvious or that have really stuck for you because it's easy to find every year some version of the article that is like so and so talked to people on their deathbed and they all said i wish i had spent more time with my family and less time in the office. It's like, okay, fine. Right.

Starting point is 01:07:28 Don't neglect your health. Fine. I get it. Like these, these are all kind of predictable things you would expect. Yeah. And no one on their deathbed, if they would want to be considered like a miserly cunt is going to say, my family sucks. I really wish I'd spent more time in the office.

Starting point is 01:07:41 They're just not going to say that as their legacy. That's what I'm going with. really wish I'd spent more time in the office. They're just not going to say that as their legacy. So has anything really stuck with you from those conversations or lines of questioning? Was it worth it? If there were any regrets, things they would have done differently. For context, for the listeners, interviewed John Paul DeGioia, founder of Patron Tequila, Paul Mitchell Hair Care, Paul Orfalea, founder of Kinko, sold that for $2.4 billion. John Paul sold Patron for $3.5 billion. Founder of Qualcomm, $100 billion company. There's a few things that have stood out from chatting with them. One, none of them became billionaires within 20 years. Not one. Not paper money where it's coming up and down super quickly or crypto billionaires where it can. Not one. Not paper money where it's coming up and down super quickly

Starting point is 01:08:25 or crypto billionaires where it can go away. It took a long time. Long, long time. Number two, they all got rich. And this is kind of, people know these things just like you said, like death benefit people know to spend more time with their family, but they don't do it. This is another one. They all got rich in one way. Just one thing. John Paul DeGioia, just Paul Mitchell hair care. Then he able to do it again, which is, we can talk about that. There's something there. Kinko's, just copiers. Larry Janeski, just basements. Michael Hudner, just ships. But all of us are like, no, I'm going to diversify. But then you think about all these people, it's like, ah, they just did one thing. Two other things I would comment from billionaires, two to three, they're all entrepreneurs.

Starting point is 01:09:03 They weren't W2 employees. They hired W2 people. The richest people on earth, they hired W2 people. And so it's realizing like, oh, maybe this entrepreneurship is, there's some upside to that. The one that you commented on, another highlight there, and this is from John Paul DeGioia, which I thought was super powerful. And this is something you start noticing with billionaires. They're actually all really good at sales. And that is the skill you're like, oh, it's asking. How can I practice it? And John Paul DeGioia,

Starting point is 01:09:29 I don't have hair, you don't have hair. He was like, give me your hand, I'm going to put on lotion. And he rubbed it on my hair. He's like, how's that feel? I was like, it feels actually pretty good. He's like, how are your hands feeling? I'm like, they feel good.

Starting point is 01:09:38 I literally went home and bought Paul Mitchell hair care. I went home and bought it. And he was just like, what I like to do is find the best product that exists and make sure it's a product people reorder. I'm like, oh, that's smart. And then I'm really good at selling. And I was like, ah, that's really interesting. So there's something about selling, I would say, that stood out for me. And then lastly, yeah, I think, I would say 50-50 seemed like they could be happier. I just don't know if they all seemed as happy as I would have

Starting point is 01:10:03 imagined. I'm like, dude, you're a billion. You can literally do anything you want all day forever. And I think like John Paul DeGioia for me stood out where he was just very kind. He was kind with me. He was kind with the staff. He was kind, like he sold Patron and he sent a $50 million check that day. And he felt like he had a good balance. I would say the Austin balance of like, I'm not trying to be a Silicon Valley workaholic, but I'm trying to work, make a lot of money and have a great life. i admired that yeah he gives me that impression i've had him on the podcast yeah and what that proves to me is that it's possible yes there are a lot of there are a lot of prick billionaires a lot but you don't have to be a prick it's not a

Starting point is 01:10:40 it's not a prerequisite you don't have to be gordon gecko yeah You don't have to be Gordon Gekko. Yeah. You don't have to. But I would add to that is that there are many different ways to be good at sales. When I first graduated from school and when I first moved to Silicon Valley and I was selling fiber channel storage area networks and I was the lowest paid sales guy,

Starting point is 01:11:02 which I learned because a spreadsheet got emailed to the wrong place. And one of my buddies was like, bro, you're going to love this. And he showed me the annual salaries. And I was like, barely above the receptionist, which I was actually okay with because it was commission-based, but didn't love the fact that I hadn't negotiated harder on the front end. But at the time I was pretty desperate because I had gone without a job for a while. My parents were like, so you can stay here as long as you want, but what's going on? The point I want to make is I had a desk and a chair in an emergency exit.

Starting point is 01:11:39 It was like shoehorned into a fire exit, totally not up to code. But I took a lot of opposite approaches from other sales guys who had come in from bigger companies like EMC. And there were some great salespeople from EMC as an example. They had a really good training culture, really good hiring practice, generally competitive athletes or former competitive athletes. But the approach I took was two things. I'll just mention this briefly because it might alleviate some of the allergic reaction that people have to this word sales. The first is that I looked at the biggest block in the vein of the task that hinders your task is your task. And what I realized, I couldn't get the dealmakers on the phone. I couldn't get the CEOs and CTOs who would have to greenlight a seven-figure investment on the phone because there were so many gatekeepers. So I just did the opposite of what I saw around me, which was instead of making calls during nine to five, I just made calls before and after nine to five. And guess what? Those people who are working dogs, men and women who have really gotten to the

Starting point is 01:12:39 top still tend to work a lot by and large. And so they would pick up the phone. The second was, I studied the tech inside and out to the extent that when we got to the point of closing a sale, and sometimes they'd get handed off to accounting and the accounting department or the VP of finance would ask them, who's your sales guy? And they would say, I don't know who my sales guy is. And then eventually they'd be like, oh, wait, is Tim my sales guy? Because I came in with not quite the knowledge of an engineer, but I spent all my time with the engineers. So I had technical conversations. I'd be like, oh, well, let me guess. You probably have this Solera system and this and this and this, and you're using this and this. You might have problems with this. And you can approach it in a technical way, as one example, with certain products,

Starting point is 01:13:27 it doesn't have to be Glenn Gary, Glenn Ross. So I just wanted to mention that. The following I'm curious for you, and this is something I've been thinking a lot about, is how come immigrants are so successful? And specifically, I think one, you can control their attitude, and I think they have good attitudes about,

Starting point is 01:13:43 like, I got to figure this out. And the second thing is effort. there's no limit on effort there's only a limit on time so I was really curious because especially with for our work I just remember your effort was insane and so I wanted to know and this is sales right sales is like all right well I'm going to put an effort to see if I can help this person if I believe I can so I wanted to hear more I was curious to hear more about like what effort you put in because I just remember the time I was like who is this guy and And how hard it is? Man, he's working hard. Into the book itself, like the writing or the launch?

Starting point is 01:14:08 The launch. The launch, yeah. Let's see, where to begin? So if I think back to the launch of that first book, I still approach my launches very similarly, believe it or not. As the tools have changed, and the technology and the platforms have changed the general principles that i used i still use to this day for instance for every launch book or otherwise i have looked at the landscape and interviewed people so for the book for instance i interviewed and you can interview people who might seem out of reach. Keeping in mind, I had no platform, no nothing at the time. I know, I remember.

Starting point is 01:14:48 But I just had to reach out and ask. And if you get somebody on a good day, and maybe you take your hat off, put it in your hand, and do a little begging, best writing authors were very forthcoming with their time. So in a number of instances, I was able to interview best writing authors. What I mean by that is real prose masters and prolific nonfiction writers who had very, very high quality output on their writing process. So I did that prior to writing the book. Then seeing that the end was near, and this was all on a schedule, although I faced a lot of hiccups and a lot of challenges along the way, so it wasn't a straight line. best writing authors. And the questions revolved around their most recent launches and specifically the vehicles or formats or people who seem to be diminishing an impact and those that seem to be

Starting point is 01:15:56 ascending an impact. And those that were ascending an impact, I assumed rightly at the time, and this has been true almost every time, would be uncrowded. So for instance, for the four-hour work week, it became clear even then that television and radio seemed to be, television especially, television seemed to be diminishing in its impact on sales. Nonetheless, the dominant playbook included tons and tons and tons of, say, morning TV. But almost every best-selling author I spoke to said, by and large, not worth the effort. They said, however, there are a few other things that have been impressive and notable. Number one is that certain radio programs, like NPR and so on, move a lot of books.

Starting point is 01:16:43 This is, again, 2006 prior to the publication in 2007. And then towards the end of 2006, and I actually remember this because we're recording this at the end of December. And I remember sitting at my parents' kitchen table after Christmas and sitting down to really put together a plan for the first book. And another pattern that had emerged is people said, you know, I'm not really a tech person, but there are these things called blogs. And for whatever reason, these single author blogs move a lot of books. And not a single person I recall in publishing gave a shit about blogs. So what I decided to do, I also had a very self-imposed and also practically limited budget for the launch. So for me, it was like five to 10 grand. I can't remember. I had a huge whiteboard

Starting point is 01:17:35 and decided to make my target blogs. And there were many conversations that went into this, but decided to put my effort into blogs. What's the most crowded channel? So I'm not asking it just about the formats, but also the means of reaching bloggers. What's going to be most crowded? Blog comments, email, these are the most crowded. So I took my budget and allocated it to in-person travel to events where in the hallways and at after parties and so on, I could have drinks around or with bloggers. And I spent all my time in the lounges, I spent all my time in the waiting areas, and that is where I committed my investment of time and money. Who knows if that was the right thing to do,

Starting point is 01:18:30 the only thing to do. Maybe I just got lucky, but it worked incredibly well. And I'll just give one more recommendation. And actually, people can find a talk I gave ages ago at South by Southwest, which is called How to Build Your Network in Record Time, or some clickbaity-s sounding headline, but it does deliver. It explains a lot of this and also how I use South by Southwest similarly for the book because South by was where the book really broke out.

Starting point is 01:18:57 But there was a bunch leading up to it. So this is going a little long, but it might be helpful for folks. Rule number one, be nice to everyone. And this isn't some feel-good, snow-white, hummingbirds landing on your hands kind of thing. This is the right thing to do, but it's also the most practical thing to do. And I'll give a real example. I went to Blog World Expo or something, and I'm hanging around, didn't go to any sessions. In this particular case, a lot of folks had pointed out Robert Scoble as a power broker, hugely influential, which he certainly was, and a super sweet guy as well. And at that time, I had no contact with him. He was the hottest girl at the prom, right? Everybody wanted to talk to him. And I didn't really know how to navigate the event,

Starting point is 01:19:43 but I knew there would be people who were familiar with it. So I went to a lounge, and I didn't really know how to navigate the event, but I knew there would be people who were familiar with it. So I went to a lounge, and I think it was a Seagate lounge or something like that, way back in the day. And there was a woman checking people in and kind of handling the inbound traffic, and I just struck up a conversation. I was like, I bet you're meeting everybody. I don't know what I'm doing.

Starting point is 01:20:04 I'm working on my first book. I'm kind of lost here. And we just talked. All that was true. We talked and we talked and we talked. And I was explaining to them here. I laid out my whole plan. I was like, well, really, my best option is to focus on the blogs because the publisher owns a bunch of different territory. This is not their first rodeo, but it's my first rodeo. So this is kind of key. There were a bunch of things that I assumed were off limits for me. I don't understand radio. The publisher's going to handle radio. I don't understand television publisher or other publicists are going to handle that. So the one area I felt where I could play and potentially leverage things was blocks.

Starting point is 01:20:39 So I'm explaining all of this. Well, guess what? That woman who was checking people in turned out to be Robert Scoble's wife. And she was like, oh, you should meet Robert. And then that led to meeting Robert. I'm pretty sure I sent him a galley and I made it absolutely zero expectations. So first of all, I was like, if it would be of interest, I can send you a galley after I described the book for certain facets of it. And I said, what I can do also, because you're not going to probably have time to read the whole book, I'll just put in a couple of post-its for the four or five pages that I think you'll find most interesting, most tactical. And he's like, great. Sent it off.

Starting point is 01:21:19 That turned into a blog post he put up about what I'm reading, something like that. Went nuts. I don't recall the exact timing. That was before or after South by Southwest. And South by Southwest was in March. Talk about sales, right? I pitched myself to Hugh Forrest at the time, who I believe was director of programming just for South by Southwest Interactive. Not music, not film. At the time, it was like the redheaded stepchild. Nobody gave a shit about interactive or tech. It was just nerdville. It was small. That was also the year that Twitter launched publicly at South by. You could see all the tweets in the world on one big screen TV

Starting point is 01:21:55 where they were scrolling through in real time. And Hugh, to this day, I feel a debt of gratitude. So part of the reason I come back to South by every year is because I feel like it's just karmically the right thing to do. And Hugh is now running pretty much the whole show, I believe at this point, but I got a last minute cancellation in like the cafeteria, like the Adobe sponsored cafeteria. Somebody backed out. I took a last minute spot. I gave a presentation on the four hour work week. I was able to print up flyers beforehand, which I did at the very last minute. And I am blanking on his name. I feel really badly about

Starting point is 01:22:32 this, but it was the developer behind Firefox. I think so. Yes. He had very graciously given me a quote for the four-hour work week. He read a galley. And I can't remember how that came together. I owe him a debt of gratitude as well. But I printed up flyers with that quote, with a couple of other quotes based on galleys, and encouraged people to

Starting point is 01:22:55 attend this cafeteria. You put up flyers for the event? I handed them out. I had people handing them out. I put them up all over Austin. Printed them out, I'm'm sure at Kinko's. And I practiced in my friend's garage because I was crashing on a friend's couch. And I remember practicing in his garage with his chihuahuas. You mentioned chihuahuas. He had three chihuahuas. And clearly the chihuahuas do not understand the content of my talk, but I used them as the gauge of whether I was engaging or not. If they started wandering around, then I had to change my mode. I had to be more Tony Robbins.

Starting point is 01:23:30 And I prepped, I prepped, I prepped. I prepared my ass off for this thing, like it was my first and last opportunity to nail it. And got up on stage. I had this entire presentation with all the visuals. Of course, what happens? Laptop dies. And so I had to improv and just do voice only, which I think ended up being a very good thing. And made autoresponders available. I gave people, this was key,

Starting point is 01:23:57 and this is something you do very well. I gave people real time challenges. I was like, here's something you can try today. You're going to be going to a lot of sessions at south by you're going to take a lot of notes here's what i suggest everybody gets busy things get lost here are a few things you can try today here are a few things you can try in the next week related to autoresponders send me feedback let me know how it went go on my blog let me know i will give you also feedback, like constructive advice.

Starting point is 01:24:27 And it just went ballistic. It went ballistic. And that set the conditions such that I could execute on other things. But lest people think this was this home run international phenomenon from the get-go, that's not what happened. It did hit the extended bestseller list in its first week. But keep in mind, the publisher only printed 10,000 copies. Nobody expected it to do anything. And with those copies, sold the vast majority of them, but that was not enough to hit the real print bestseller list for AdviceHow2 especially, which was hyper competitive at the time. It the extended list so people in the in the business knew that it was on the list but not in the print edition it took an additional five or six months if i'm doing the

Starting point is 01:25:14 math correctly to get to number one on the new york times for the monthly business list and then it just stayed there for years but to answer your question in terms of effort, effort isn't enough. Effort is not enough. You need a means of focusing that effort. So for me, I used this, what's uncrowded, what's overvalued, what's undervalued. That's how I found podcasts for The 4-Hour Chef. That's how I found other things for the earlier books. And that's how The 4-Hour Chef sold whatever 100,000 plus copies in its first week was because I jumped on these new things called podcasts. That is also the impetus behind me then starting my own podcast in 2014. But you're right, I put a lot into it because first and foremost, and now I'm getting on my soapbox again, but I really, really, really, really put everything into that book. I did not leave

Starting point is 01:26:11 anything behind. I put it all on the playing field and based on early feedback and based on also the many feedback forms, many questions I had asked, many revisions I had made for years, workshopping it in classes. I knew this stuff worked. I knew it worked. I knew, in other words, right, talking about AppSumo and your metrics, like I knew it converted. I just needed top of the funnel. And that led me to the blog. So very similar approach that i would take today with most things wow you seemed a lot happier when you're recounting that story like i was noticing like earlier in the show you're kind of like i don't know if you felt frustrated or i don't know how i don't know how you're feeling but you seemed excited and like proud so tempting and often the case, right? When you're in the weeds and you're just like

Starting point is 01:27:07 running through this jungle with a machete trying to make shit happen and it's hard and things are going wrong. And you think about that as the thing you have to do to get to the other thing. But then you get to the other thing, meaning like you reach some escape velocity with your business success. And then you're like, okay, this is the thing I thought that I was getting through other things for, and I'm happy with where I am, but I'm making trains run on time, and that's cool. I'm like a Swiss operator on some type of transport platform, and I'm tweaking things, I'm pulling levers i have other people doing a lot of the grunt work but those early chapters when i look back that's where so

Starting point is 01:27:52 much of the juice is like so much of the excitement for me yeah right we're like fuck my computer broke right gotta fix it gotta figure it out i can't figure it out fly fuck you know all right flyers like flyers okay like i'm gonna give out flyers like flyers okay like i don't have anybody who's around because my friend has to work like i'll give the talk to the dogs like all right like yeah you get a chance this is true later too but you really get a chance to prove how resourceful and creative you can be because you don't have a huge bank account to play with. You don't have tons of employees to delegate to things that oftentimes they shouldn't do in the first place. Right. And for me, that is the real heart and soul of entrepreneurship. And

Starting point is 01:28:43 the fun of it is making something from nothing because you are resourceful, right? You look at a set of tools or a complete lack of tools and you see something different. You see a little gap and you're able to pursue that and manifest something in the world that otherwise doesn't exist. And the later stages are amazing. And there are people who are so good at the later stages. I'm not convinced that I'm one of them. Okay. But the early chapters where at the time we're like, you know, it's going to be great.

Starting point is 01:29:19 One at some point, I have X. One at some point, when I cross my number, which is a moving goalpost, right? You cross like a million and then you cross this and then you cross this and it keeps moving. That when I think back to those early chapters, I get excited. It's like, I remember how unknown it all was too, right? And how fun some of the unknowns were. There were definitely hard times. There were all sorts of difficult chapters that I'm sure I've blocked out from my memory. But I wasn't frustrated earlier at all. I think it's just the juice of thinking back to those very nascent stages. That's my guess.

Starting point is 01:30:02 Yeah. Well, it's also, I try to remind myself that a lot of my nostalgia is a liar oh totally like oh starting up cmo i would drink most of the days which we were doing i was just like drinking with neville fucking around getting some deals and and then you remember like oh i felt lonely i felt really insecure i thought well for sure and um i guess i'm wondering is that something you're exploring now? To like, what is that creation or thing that you can bite into? Yeah. That was something I was wondering for you in that, you know, I've obviously known you a long time.

Starting point is 01:30:38 And I remember, it's funny, when I'm doing this whole book thing, which I'm not talking about what the book's called. No, no, no, no. No, no, no, dude. No one knows. Don't even look it up. And I think about you because i think that guy fucking worked hard yeah i remember you working hard and uh it made me wonder where you're at today because i i see you not chasing i think in my in my older age we're both in our early 40s i'm i think i was chasing a lot like i want to get famous or i want to get money and and then i was

Starting point is 01:31:01 like i wonder not what you're chasing anymore but like what you're enjoying or what you're not after is the right word and not what's next but I'm noticing oh Tim's not really going aggressive on YouTube and chasing what other people are doing and so I was yeah and it's not just YouTube but it made me I was like I wonder how he's evaluating things yeah totally I think to your point of nostalgia being a liar, oftentimes, right, where we have this rose-colored picture of the past. If I look at the chapters around, say, the beginning of the four-hour work week, four-hour body, et cetera, I was very hungry. I was moving very quickly. And certainly using processes and automation and so on. But there was a lot of uncertainty and i would say that as i have prioritized mental health

Starting point is 01:31:48 and just overall well-being which includes physical but at the time i was in physical prime condition i mean i was in very good shape i was still competitive in sports i would say that looking back a lot of those adventures were formative and I enjoyed them, but I, in retrospect, should have enjoyed them more for what they were, which were these seminal moments. And I think part of what you're reading in me in terms of less chasing is that I feel like, and I suspect many people feel like, you know, the dog that catches the car or the greyhound that catches the mechanical rabbit. And you're like, this is what I was chasing?

Starting point is 01:32:28 It's good. Fuck. That's funny. Like, it's kind of like tragic comic, but which is not to diminish money. It's not to diminish financial success. It's, I think, easier for us to have these conversations because there's a degree of security and stability and comfort. So it's not to diminish any of that because I know what it feels like to be like, fuck, I'm not sure what I'm going to do about healthcare next month. I'm not sure what I'm going to do

Starting point is 01:32:53 about this next month. I know what that can feel like. And it's not a good feeling. Eating from Jack in the Box. I remember eating so many meals from Jack in the Box on shoreline across the street from my shitty apartment with my terrible roommate who just ditched and almost got all my stuff yanked because there were all these eviction notices. I remember those days. I don't want to return to those days. But having caught the thing that I was chasing, I've realized that none of these targets are fantasies. They're kind of placeholders to keep you motivated. And I've also, if you look at patterns in my life, I tend to do things, if I'm going to do something well, seems to be in the five to 10 year range. Books,

Starting point is 01:33:39 startup investing predominantly I focused on from, say, 2008 to 2015. And then I published this blog post on taking a long startup vacation and stopped that categorically. I stopped doing it completely for a period of time because the game got saturated. It got more complicated, much more competitive, much riskier from a terms perspective. So I stopped.

Starting point is 01:34:04 And then you have podcastinging i'm coming up on 10 years next april and it's a good time to pause and reflect and i feel like podcasting also and i will have questions for you about youtube because i go back and forth on my thoughts on youtube but when i see best practices emerge or converge maybe maybe is a better way to put it with a lot of the algorithm-driven growth slash lack of growth that we see, I really want to step back and see if I am in a position where I'm uniquely differentiated or have some type of competitive advantage. Not because I care about competition per se, se but it's like am i in a red ocean that used to be a blue ocean or am i developing practices that are going to lead me to a point of not just uniformity with others but like

Starting point is 01:34:58 are we all running towards a cliff like a bunch of lemmings in the sense that for instance email i'm going all over the place, I realize, but like, with like email blog, especially if you're open source, like I'm based on WordPress, you effectively own your audience. You don't own your audience. You have a direct relationship with your audience. Your audience is portable. If you're on a platform that includes almost any platform, there's some technical workarounds for these things, but you are renting your audience. And so I've seen multi-million dollar Facebook pages back in the day when that was a huge thing.

Starting point is 01:35:31 Get turn off. Just like PG&E might turn off your power during a rolling blackout in California. It's like one day you're on and you have employees and a big business. The next day you are turned off. And I've seen that over and over again. I've seen, for instance, organic reach get throttled. Now you have to pay. I think it's foolish to assume

Starting point is 01:35:50 that can't happen to whatever platforms you're using today. And as we've seen a number of precipitating events, COVID, for instance, the writer's strike, another example, drive people to what they've realized can be a profitable model in the form of podcasting, YouTube. As the mimicry of TikTok has engendered a drive to video and short form video, I feel like I have fewer and fewer differentiators and advantages. And the human basis of recommendation has been replaced by, in large part, kind of top-down corporate directives and algo modifications. So I feel like I'm in a transitional period right now, potentially, where I'm taking my foot off the gas because I'm not sure the car is going in a direction where I want to take it to 120 on the Autobahn. So that's where I am.

Starting point is 01:36:53 And I'm also not in a rush because maybe it's just fatigue, frankly. I mean, I started the podcast 10 years ago. And there are people with incredible longevity, and not very many, but like Rogan, as an example. I mean, the guy's a machine, and he's very good at what he does. 10 years is also a long time for me. That's a long time to do one thing consistently. I'm going to continue doing the podcast. But from a growth perspective, I feel like YouTube is probably one of the more appealing avenues for growth currently. But offsetting that is a desire to increasingly be less publicly, visually recognized. Because there are compromises that I've made related to that.

Starting point is 01:37:35 There are safety issues. There are privacy issues. There's lots of weird stuff that happens. I'm not sure I want to, actually, I'm quite sure i do not want to make my face more recognizable on the counter argument side i know we're going all over the place dude by the way this is fire okay this is keep going i want to know on the counter argument side and this is both a reason not to do youtube but also a reason maybe i'm over evaluating risks. And I've talked to some folks, I don't want to name them, but very well known, iconic writers, photographers, creators who did one thing very, very well. One thing. Which also makes me question sort of the jack-of-all-trades approach that I think is in some respects a norm now, where you're present and growing on many, many different formats. But putting that

Starting point is 01:38:26 aside for a second, the half-life of fame, I think, is going to drop precipitously as algorithm chasing becomes more and more dominant and more and more determinate of what has surfaced in the sense that there will, I would be shocked if there's ever again someone as dominant as, say, Oprah was for effectively, let's just call it, who knows, a third to a half of all the women in the United States, one person, one show. The sort of long tail of personalization i think has largely removed that possibility and if you even think about like the personal half-life which i think we can extract like studying the micro to to study the macro because the macro can seem super intimidating and abstract and ungraspable if you just think about your personal experience and i've talked to friends

Starting point is 01:39:23 about this 10 years ago if you got sent some crazy video from friends, that video would stick around for a while. It might be the video that sticks around for a week. Oh my God, do you see that crazy video of the thing? How many of those do you get per day now? Something that would win the gold medal of the meme Olympics crushes all of the stupid things that you would have looked at 10 years ago. Infinitely more attention grabbing. And the half-life is what? 30 seconds? 60 seconds? So I think fame as a phenomenon in most cases online will have a very, very short half-life. And that worries me a bit from a psychological adaptive perspective, because I think that has supreme implications for the sort of dopamine hit, rat stepping on a cocaine pedal aspect of content creation. If what you do is less and less persistent, meaning it has less and less durability, what game are you signing up for? And what does winning that game look like?

Starting point is 01:40:29 These are really critical questions, right? Okay, we're all playing games right now. Beyond food, shelter, a handful of things at the lower rungs of Maslow's hierarchy of needs, we're all playing games. What games are you playing? And just as important, what does winning that game or those games look like? And is that the life you want? So looking at how things are developing, and maybe this is a very fancy way of rationalizing just being older and more fatigued, I don't know.

Starting point is 01:40:58 But I find where things are trending super, super worrisome. So if I could be long a number of things, I'd be like, okay, mental health therapeutics, dialysis, which seems pretty dystopian, but I would be very long those things. I think we haven't even seen a glimpse of some of the mental health challenges that are on the horizon. So probably a long answer to a very short question, but that informs, I think, a certain, it's not just calmness, although there's a lot that goes into that on my side compared to my earlier self, but a not wanting to rush into committing at high speed in certain directions that are very appealing right now at face value. I'm like, you know what? If you have, here we go. I'm going to shut the fuck up in a second.

Starting point is 01:41:48 But it's like, here's the thing. If I think about the authors I respect the most, if I think about the filmmakers I most aspire to be like or admire the most, they're not playing a volume game, right? Like Miyazaki, who just put out, I think it's The Boy and the Heron. The Japanese name is like, How Do You Live? It's a totally different name. But they put out great work that is uniquely their own. You watch that movie, and if you've seen

Starting point is 01:42:15 other Studio Ghibli Miyazaki movies, you're like, that is the signature. That could not be anyone other than Miyazaki. You see like a Daniel Day-Lewis film. There are so many examples of this. These people have unique capabilities they've harnessed. They don't need to rush, right? So if I find myself feeling compelled to rush, either it's a false signal I should ignore, or I'm about to do something that a lot of other people could do. And that for me is a cue to really chill the fuck out and be like, wait, wait a second. Let me go back. Let me read Blue Ocean Strategy. Let me go back. Let me read 80-20 Principle. Let me go back and read any number of things. I mean, I do like reading. Let me go back and watch these following documentaries about people who really took an unorthodox path. And then let me sit down and ask,

Starting point is 01:43:06 why do I feel like I am compelled to rush? So there you have it. Bro, that was one, that was fucking fire. Thanks. This has been on my mind nonstop for the last couple of months. I think people confuse inaction with patience. Okay, tell me more.

Starting point is 01:43:24 What I heard, and I'm curious how you approach it, is that instead of rushing really quickly, you're understanding yourself and thinking patiently, okay, what is my right play for me to move? And I think in the past, and maybe you can revisit it, is okay, let's go rush and find things and maybe stuff will happen. But now you're like, you're observing.

Starting point is 01:43:41 You sound calm. You sound, you're thinking about what's happening, where are my advantages, what's happening where my advantage is what's going on and where is a place that you frankly want to play and instead of rushing into let's say youtube world which does feel like a lot of people are rushing into these kind of things really thinking about what your play is i love that i guess the question i was curious about what is your approach for thinking about what's underserved because what you said i thought was it's fucking powerful it's like you said, I thought was fucking powerful.

Starting point is 01:44:06 It's like you can put effort, but in the wrong thing. When you did your book, you're like, oh, blogging is it? And then your second book, podcasting is it? How are you approaching thinking about getting to, like even now you're like, all right, I like podcasts, I'm doing a podcast. Yeah, I love doing podcasts. I love doing podcasts. It's going to get a lot harder as a business.

Starting point is 01:44:24 It is already, I'm very fortunate in the sense that, and this was not accidental, right? Like this podcast and the audience for this podcast, this podcast is intended to be long form, thoughtful, dense, and incredibly practical, tactical. And I'll mention it because you've been very good at receiving feedback, but million dollar weekend, we are going to get to it and talk about very practical steps. All of this is practical, though, if you look at it through the lens of making decisions. This has been positioned as high ultra-premium as far as podcasts go, advertisers, audience, right?

Starting point is 01:44:58 And we've done all the polling and so on. So it's like, if you want to reach Ted, this is the podcast, right? If you want to hit millions, or at least let's just say thousands of very, very well-known creators with one podcast, like this is the podcast. So the premium positioning means that like for the next year, we're basically already sold out with advertising, right? So I'm in a very good position, but I think overall it is, this is true on YouTube too, too but and it relates to everything i just said it is going to get and is getting harder to differentiate right like back when i had like jamie fox and arnold schwarzenegger on the podcast that was insane blew people's minds right like that was

Starting point is 01:45:34 just not something that really happened and now that you have incredibly talented people comedians entertainers writers right that's why i mentioned the writer's strike earlier who for a period of time did not have the option of doing what they normally do. And they dipped their toe into podcasting. They dipped their toe into YouTube. And they're like, actually, I'm really good at this. And I can get paid. Interesting. There are exceptional, exceptionally skilled people producing things for podcasts and YouTube. What I'm saying is the bar for quality has gone up dramatically in all of these areas, but the possibility for originality, I would say, has diminished as a result of the sheer volume of entrants. So in terms of thinking about what's

Starting point is 01:46:19 unserved, I would say that I'm looking for a Venn diagram because if you ask any of the questions I'm asking myself in isolation, which I've done in the past, you can lead yourself to bad decisions. So if you ask yourself, what can I uniquely do? And that's your question. And you use that to determine what you do. You can end up doing things that you dislike, that are draining, that don't have any type of market fit whatsoever. So that's not enough, right? Although for me, that is necessary. Like, what am I uniquely suited to do? Because that will give me not only an immediate, say, first mover or early mover advantage, it gives me endurance. So being uniquely suited to something doesn't mean that you are the only person that can do it

Starting point is 01:47:06 maybe you just love it more right like with me and language learning as an example now that's not a business i mean it did lead to me being one of the first investors in duolingo so that worked out but i have infinite endurance for that in a way that most people don't that's a huge advantage even though other people could technically do it so So there's, what am I uniquely suited for? What do I find easy that other people find hard? Then there's what is underserved. But if you approach that by itself, you can make some really bad decisions. And I've done that in the past.

Starting point is 01:47:36 Like, what do people need? Now, I'm not the boss of myself. I've turned my audience into the boss of me. This is also how people get shaped in horrifying ways by social media or their audiences on YouTube, right? Your most extreme behaviors get reinforced. So you repeat those, you exaggerate them, and your stage presence, your social media presence becomes you. This is really important. You have to be careful about the masks you wear because you will become those masks. And I've seen that. I'm sure you've met people. It's

Starting point is 01:48:09 terrifying. You will be shaped by your audience and by these creative decisions. So not just asking what is the unmet need, but a question I might ask is, what experiments can I run that I think will meet the needs intended by, say, the podcast in a different way. And also, I mean, another question that I ask is, instead of what is the new, new thing, what is something old that is being neglected? It doesn't have to be new, by the way. So for instance, that led me to start Five Bullet Friday in the newsletter ages ago. Because people were like, email's dead. Nobody's going to use email anymore. Email's dead. You hear that every year. And that was particularly true when I launched

Starting point is 01:48:49 Five Bullet Friday because social media, Snapchat, ah, young kids are never going to use email. And I was like, well, it's true until they get a job. And then guess what? They're going to use email. So in that particular case, I wasn't looking for the new, new thing. I was looking for something old that was kind of neglected. And I wanted to also own my audience. So that led to millions of people for the newsletter. So those are some of the questions that I ask. I think I've learned, for me personally, I make better decisions when it's a bit of a Venn diagram. If I go after any one of those, which could include profit, by the way, that's one that gets people. Boy, oh boy, I've succumbed to that too right if you're like what has the most

Starting point is 01:49:25 leverage for revenue profit etc that can lead you in directions that end up compromising well-being end up compromising long-term growth end up compromising fill in the blank personal and professional and organizationally speaking so damn dude that was fine i mean someone said to me recently, like, don't trade your nine to five for a 24 seven. And it's like, the cool part about entrepreneurship is that you can create a life you want, whether you want to live in Austin,

Starting point is 01:49:52 you want to live in Spain, you want to live wherever, Tokyo, but it's then, are you actually living the life you want? I think that the two comments, one common one question, I love that you said experiments. That was kind of super early for you and how you developed a lot of your stuff. And I think a lot of people it's like oh well i gotta make this

Starting point is 01:50:09 big decision it's like well how can you test it right now how can you just really cheap how can you test it and see if that's actually the case so i love that you said that the other thing i was curious when's the last time you read for our work week you know you were talking about books you read that you come back to i was like i wonder wonder, sometimes we come back to our own things. Yeah, yeah, for sure. I was looking at 4-Hour Workweek a couple of weeks ago, actually. Because my books, I make, I mean, they reflect things that I am doing and have done, but they also act as references for me. I go back to the 4-Hour Chef all the time for various things. 4-Hour Body, I go back to it all the time for various things. And 4-Hour Workweek in this particular case, because I'm thinking about virtual assistants, which have really

Starting point is 01:50:49 up-leveled in the last handful of years with technology and also different companies and types of training, I've been thinking again about virtual assistants. And so I wanted to revisit like scripts, principles, et cetera, because I've shifted from VAs to in-person full-time org chart type stuff. And I'm experimenting again. I have a full-time VA also on the payroll now. And I wanted to revisit some of what worked in the past because very often the things that worked then are still going to work. And the principles are the principles for a reason. The tactics, the tools, the platforms, the hardware devices, those all change. But in terms of human communication, clarity, lack of clarity,

Starting point is 01:51:30 the words are still words. So I wanted to revisit some of that. So as an example, I mean, I've been thinking about going back to text. I've been thinking about going back to blog posts. It's so antiquated. It's so out of fashion. And it's so high labor too.

Starting point is 01:51:46 I mean, because that is something where I do not feel comfortable delegating. If I'm putting my name to something, I want to be the one who has put those words on paper or on a screen in this case. But I've thought about it. I've thought about it quite a bit. We'll see. I mean, that's a heavy lift. It is a heavy lift, but that's also something I want to be aware of or cognizant of. And that is, am I doing this because it fits into the Venn diagram or am I doing it because it requires less work? Because requiring less work does not automatically mean elegant combination of things that leads to my goals,

Starting point is 01:52:18 right? And if you don't have those KPIs, like you mentioned, watch out for vanity metrics too. Like, okay, this matters. Why does that matter? Because it leads to, this matters. Why does that matter?

Starting point is 01:52:25 Because it leads to this. Okay, why does that matter? Why does it, because of this? Okay, because of this. And ultimately it's going to come down to, all right, you want this amount of money? Okay, why do you want that money? Because I want to trade it for this experience

Starting point is 01:52:33 or this possession. Okay, why do you want those? Because you want this feeling. Okay, well, let's keep that in mind. You want to sleep well at night? Don't do all this other shit that is going to cause you anxiety. And let's come back to- Can I highlight what they- Yeah, of course. So two parts. One, I'm going to shout you anxiety and let's come back to can i highlight what they

Starting point is 01:52:45 yeah of course so two parts one i'm going to shout out for people looking for vas the site i use is hire my mom.com really yeah okay all right amazing so hire my mom.com i'm not affiliated no cuts no nothing they can sponsor my podcast or tim's podcast uh but you basically it's moms who want to spend time with their kids that are super elite moms and they just don't want to work full-time though yeah yeah and so you can basically get these super impressive parents at pretty affordable prices so i hired someone recently was the executive assistant for the dallas stars the hockey team oh wow okay right she has two kids she wants to stay at home she did quit last week telling you real she quit but but it's like you're finding that level of caliber at

Starting point is 01:53:29 i'll say because she's not working she was 30 bucks an hour yeah which is insane yeah yeah for someone who's a really impressive why'd she quit she is an executive assistant and she thought i was asking to do some assistant level work so i asked her to schedule some appointments i asked her to make some purchases and she's like I just want to do the business work. And so I really admire and respect when people know what they want. I was a little frustrated because you quit all of a sudden abruptly, send me a voluntary termination letter. I've never received one of those ever, but she's a professional. But you go back to it and that's part of business. I think a lot of people do once and then they, like you go, it doesn't work. It's like, yeah, that's part of

Starting point is 01:54:04 business. It's like, okay, I'm going to go and find another one and improve my process to understand like, hey, in the hiring process, you're going to have to purchase something from a store.

Starting point is 01:54:12 Is that going to bother you? Great. It doesn't? Okay, we can move you forward. My recommendation there, especially if you're considering a full-time hire,

Starting point is 01:54:19 test them for a few months and have them do that stuff because people know how to interview and a lot of people will say, absolutely, no task too small, no problem. And that's horseshit in the same way that they say they're going to buy whatever you're offering,

Starting point is 01:54:32 ask them to pay you. Yeah. Then you know, then you know it's real. So if you can try before you buy, especially on the EA, VA, PA,

Starting point is 01:54:41 hiring in general, make them do some of the grunt work. Not grunt work, but just smaller things. And by the way, anyone who's got real chops, it's kind of like Jean-Paul Desjardins, like putting lotion on your hands. That guy has done every job. He's done every job.

Starting point is 01:54:58 And this isn't always going to work, but you want someone with that same type of ethos. Yeah, we will. And I mean, it's how we you want someone with that same type of ethos. Yeah, right. We will. And I mean, it's how we hire almost every person at AppSumo as a contractor to start. Yeah. And it's like, hey, we're going to, and even with my YouTube channel, I'm going to pay you to do your trial video. Great.

Starting point is 01:55:15 You can say if you like me, maybe you hate me. Maybe I don't like you. Maybe we'll do like each other, but you're at least getting paid. So there's not really as much downside for both of us. Yeah. The other thing I thought was really cool is looking back on our old lives that you said. Looking back in your old work, I used to live in this really 800 square foot shitty house

Starting point is 01:55:30 and I went back at it. And then I also look back on my photos. Every month I do a month review. I look back on my photos and it's nice to look where we've been and where we are. So if everyone, I do a month review, you can literally just scroll up on your phone, go to your photos, scroll up really far.

Starting point is 01:55:43 And almost every time you're pretty proud of where you are now. So those times were frustrated. I went back to that old house and I felt, wow, man, I'm so proud of where I am now. But I didn't really always notice that. I do. But going back there helped that for sure. Yeah, totally. Especially if you're used to looking ahead, right? Always forward. Yes. And you've developed a certain set of habits and attributes being in sixth year, always being in the fast lane. It is a practice to augment that with other abilities. This is why a lot of people self-destruct when they quote unquote retire. If they're trying to

Starting point is 01:56:17 go from like Autobahn to park, it's like, well, hold on. Maybe we should get used to some other gears. Let's see what happens. So let's talk about tests. Let's talk about experiments. Let's talk about small steps. Million dollar weekend. Number one, what is the, well, here, let's do the subtitle. The surprisingly simple way to launch a seven-figure business in 48 hours. So for people who find this tantalizing, I guess, number one, why should they believe it? Let's start there. Like, why the fuck should they listen? Because they're going to come across a lot of promises, a lot of clickbait on YouTube, and then they click on it and they're like,

Starting point is 01:56:50 oh, come on. So why should they believe it? Maybe there's a case study or two or example you could share. And then if somebody wants to test drive something from this podcast, are there things they can do? I've come up with a simple rule because what's crazy on YouTube and podcasts now, you can make whatever title up you want. There's people

Starting point is 01:57:08 saying, oh, I'm worth a hundred million. I'm like, really? You can just write that? And so don't trust any author that has gotten rich from their, any business author, I would say, that's gotten rich from their book or their course. I think that's a pretty straightforward approach. Like if that's how they got rich, teaching you how they got rich, double-check who they are and maybe look for someone else that's maybe. I worked for Zuckerberg. I helped start Mint.com. I helped start Kickflip.com. I helped start Canva.com.

Starting point is 01:57:33 Somebody who has a very well-groomed mustache. My Latina girlfriend loves the mustache. I don't normally like it, but she's like, you got to keep that. I was like, yes, baby. See, see. And running apps, sumo.com. And so you can, I'm not getting rich on the book. And I think that's a very simple test

Starting point is 01:57:49 to think about who you want to listen to, specifically in business. Yep. And secondly, can you see their businesses? A lot of times like, oh, I've got these businesses. You'll never see it though. Why not? Because you can't know about it.

Starting point is 01:57:59 Why not? Yeah. You never get to the answer. That's probably why you don't ever have them on your shows. Now, in terms of the surprisingly simple way in that i'll just give you a case study of jake so jake lives up north texas he's got three kids got a day job and he's had dreams just like a lot of people have had and he's had it for two years i was like jake how do we change you in 48 hours because everyone has a weekend and now i'm about to have a family and i'm realizing like family

Starting point is 01:58:23 youtube book prioritizing my partner and our kid it's hard to have time to start a side hustle. It's hard to have time to like get going. And the reality though, is we do all have weekends. We have 52 of them. So we can do something in a weekend, even if it's really small action. And by the way, it doesn't have to be a million in a weekend. It's through every weekend. You can pound it over some time. It can get there. Now, the things that people can do in a weekend right now, this is the thing with books. I think your book is phenomenal. If everyone gets two books, it's yours for a work week and a million dollar weekend. Your book has such a great recipe. It's such a great recipe. But what I noticed when I've worked through my course, which I'm not

Starting point is 01:58:57 going to call it, I've worked through a course, 10,000 people have gone through it, YouTube channel, millions of people. You can give them the recipes, but they still may not do something. And I was kind of like, what the fuck is going on? Right? Like you have a big dream. You have a dream like, hey, I want to work here. I want to make a thousand bucks a month. I want grocery money. I want whatever it is. But then you haven't done nothing for two years like Jay. And the reality is that most people are afraid of starting. They're not ready. They feel they're not ready. They're actually all ready. There's a lot of rich people who are really ordinary. I think people think it's all like, no i grew up in silica valley and tim

Starting point is 01:59:27 did these things like no there's a lot of really normal people that are rich but they all got started and we got started over and like how many times you did brain quick and you've done all these things opening the kimono yeah yeah you've done a lot of things and so how do we overcome the fear of starting then you could do that right now that's why i asked people and we did it earlier do the dollar challenge just get a dollar right Then you can do that right now. That's why I asked people when we did it earlier, do the dollar challenge. Just get a dollar right now. Just go get going right now. And we surveyed just like you did with your book. And the number one takeaway from the book by far was now, not how. I was like, what do you mean now, not how? They're like, yeah, no, you always just do right now. I'm like, what do you mean? Just right fucking now. What's the

Starting point is 02:00:00 smallest action you can take that will get you momentum? So you want to be a content creator? Post a video right now with your phone. My first YouTube video was with my phone, just shirtless in my little house, eight and a quarter foot house. You say shirtless? Yeah. Yeah. It's not impressive.

Starting point is 02:00:12 It wasn't like ripped shirtless. It was just like sweaty, just got off a bike in my spandex. I actually just watched the video a few weeks ago because I was like, is this true? And I was like, wow, it really, it's on the channel. And now my videos are, you know, give or, around $30,000 to make per video. Wow. From all the salaries.

Starting point is 02:00:26 Oh my God. But that was a shirtless thing with an iPhone X that everyone can do right now. My most popular YouTube video of all time. And we're sitting here with a pretty nice video setup. Got basically a studio, the whole nine yards. My most popular YouTube video of all time is me in my kitchen.

Starting point is 02:00:42 Somebody was like, God knows what kind of old phone. The resolution's terrible. De-shelling hard-boiled eggs without peeling. That is my most successful YouTube video of all time. I'm a bit sad about that, given how much effort goes into other things. But yeah. Yeah, dude. I mean, one of your favorite videos of mine is microwaving eggs. Yeah. We talked about it last. I love microwaves and I love microwaving my eggs. Sometimes I use the stove. My girlfriend's like, let's use the stove, baby. All right, see. So what can we do right now? Let me give you a great example as well. I'm a big pinballer.

Starting point is 02:01:10 So I have two pinball machines at home. And this morning, literally, I was watching how to make a pinball machine by Godzilla. It's the number one rated pinball machine in the world. Sick. That's what I have at home. And when most people think, I want to start a pinball business, what do they think? Holy fuck, I've got to to bend this machine i've got to go figure out software i've got to do oh i got to probably get a website maybe on shopify shout out shopify they sponsor your podcast which you'll eventually need maybe i need a lawyer because i've got a patent idea and then that's six months 12 months two years of nothing now what's crazy stern pinball the number one maker of pinball machines they put out this video behind the scenes of a Godzilla. They literally took like a board and then bent some metal and just kind of threw the

Starting point is 02:01:48 ball. You could do that right now. You could do that in one day and go to people literally on your phone in person. Hey, we're working on this pinball machine. Let me just let me show you to you right now and see what you think. And you could get people to purchase your pinball machine before you spent six months, six years doing nothing. Same thing with the Cybertruck, six years and barely it's getting delivered. And so there's things that people can start realizing. Let me actually see

Starting point is 02:02:09 if people really want this and find out right away. So that's really around surprisingly simple. It's like, there's business models. There's all these things you can do. It's like, well, if I only have a weekend and I don't have a lot of time, how do I break it down to the essence of the simplest form? And so in terms of the book where I think a lot of the breakthroughs happen is how do I get going right now? Like with the pinball machine or with Jake, Jake had a dream to do golf trips. He wants to do golf trips,

Starting point is 02:02:31 like super bougie high end and do golf. I don't golf. I have golf. I wouldn't say I golf. Yeah. I don't golf. I like disc golf. Yeah.

Starting point is 02:02:40 You know, disc golf. Yeah. Yeah. Like I'm a, I'm a cyclist, but he wants to do golf trips. And so he's been thinking about it.

Starting point is 02:02:45 It's one of these people, I'm sure you've noticed them. They're like, talk to you about a dinner. They're like, ah, man, I hate my job,

Starting point is 02:02:50 but I'd like to try this. And so it's like, all right, we have 48 hours, Jake, how do we actually do right now to see if other people want golf trips? Cause that's what you think is a problem. Now I think the best problems in business are your own.

Starting point is 02:03:01 Yeah. I agree. Like your show really, I mean, if you think about it, it's you getting to talk to people you want. Yeah, that's what it is. Yeah, that's a problem you have

Starting point is 02:03:08 about learning different areas, business, science, health, fitness, and then you publish it and make a lot of money doing that. Like how cool is that? Best job ever. Dude, it's a sweet work. It's super sweet.

Starting point is 02:03:18 So in terms of the book, it's one, how do we just get going fucking right now, right now? And then giving people more momentum, stories, actions like the dollar challenge, now not how, freedom number, which is understanding what is the number you need to quit your job.

Starting point is 02:03:29 For me, it was 3,000. Do you have a number? Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. Slightly different moniker, but same idea. Like target monthly income, which was not just the replacement. It was a bit more part of this exercise called dreamlining.

Starting point is 02:03:40 Oh yeah, yeah, exactly. But very similar idea. Totally. Like figure out the basic math because maybe you need less very often you need less than you think you need i live in barcelona i think our apartment's a thousand dollars it's not huge to be clear but it's like you can live actually a lot cooler life than you think for a lot more affordable than you realize yeah so part one is around that and then we get into the recipe and i think you know for

Starting point is 02:04:02 our work recipe is fire you know i shout out you in the book and honor how you approach it and that as one way but even before that it's how do you understand the upside of asking and how do you become an asking machine how do you build an asking muscle yeah so what did jake do so jake i mean first off we did the coffee challenge so we drove over to taco deli and i was like all right jake let's go ask for 10 off he's like ah he just done sales before he's like it's easy it's always easy until you do it. And then guess what? It's not as hard as he thinks. And that's really true for a lot of life. We're afraid of things. Almost every time we face the hard thing, it's never as hard as we thought. Like ayahuasca for me. Part of it, I was so afraid and thank you for giving me time and coaching me around it before I went in.

Starting point is 02:04:41 But a lot of ayahuasca was just like facing something hard more than all the other stuff. It was just like, it's so challenging for me. It felt so challenging and being able to overcome it. Same thing with the coffee challenges. Go do it today. Commit to do it right now for yourself. So Jake did it. Bam. Just to be clear, I wouldn't do the take ayahuasca today as a translation of that. No, no, no, no. I would say the coffee challenge. Coffee challenge. Coffee challenge. Then Jake did the dollar challenge. Just get a dollar. And he was so nervous. But then he was like, like wow i haven't done shit in two years in literally in like six hours he already had a lot of momentum now once you kind of get practice on those different things really the book breaks down in two parts which is how do you build and find something that people

Starting point is 02:05:14 are excited to give you money for now that you're better at starting and asking all right let me start swinging so it's thinking about okay how do i come up with ideas how do i see if there's a million dollar in money i can make on it check Check out a one-minute business model. And then the third part, grow it, is like finding social media for customers, email to actually, as you were saying, sell them and communicate with them. And then the growth machine, which is the playbook I use at mint.com and appsuma.com, YouTube, the book. It's the same marketing playbook I use over and over. And these are all things, by the way, people are like, oh, I want it more complicated. And I need it. It's like, it's 48 hours. And you know this, like by having these limitations, bring out a lot more creativity, bring out a

Starting point is 02:05:47 lot more resourcefulness. Yeah. I mean, I would go so far as to say like, this is going to be a broad statement, but like the best creativity comes from constraints. You need constraints. Those sound bad. They sound like restraints, like you're strapped into, you know, electroshock therapy or something, but you need constraints and weekend is a constraint less than a hundred dollars is a constraint two hours is a constraint these are all four hour work week four hour work like these right which is it's a constraint it's a constraint and how is it an advantage i think most people think i don't have money it's like that's a great thing okay what do you do now that you don't have money okay how can you make it happen?

Starting point is 02:06:25 And then you realize like, oh, maybe there's something here for that. Just like a pinball machine, which is crazy. Like, no, you need to build an engineer. No, take a piece of wood, bend some metal, see if you can get a three, I generally say three people on the weekend. If you can get three customers, to me, that's validation. Meaning that this is something that you can invest in. That's it.

Starting point is 02:06:40 You can do that in 48 hours. And I think people give themselves so much time and so many excuses. That's why the book starts with frequently made excuses. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Frequently made excuses, yeah. To be able to get them past that so they can get going on their journey. Yeah, totally. And there's so many examples of low stakes, low cost, say prototyping, right? I'll just mention one guy. People can look him up. Stephen Key, fascinating guy. And he has licensed tons of toys to huge manufacturers. And so his game is licensing, right?

Starting point is 02:07:12 He's not actually in the venturing business. He's not in the manufacturing and the distribution business. He comes up with ideas. It's like, this is a great game. And he sells it to Hasbro or whoever it might be, these huge companies. He uses construction paper, some some glue scotch tape he'll prototype it take some photos of how it might work and then off to the races he goes and he just does that over and over and over and over again there's a lot of examples it's like airbnb how 60 billion hundred billion dollar company that literally started a weekend

Starting point is 02:07:42 they posted to some design conference like hey we have we have a couch. Does anyone want it? There wasn't some fancy website. There was no Mark Andreessen funding. There was none of that. And now that's $100 billion business. So the thing that we talked about a long time ago is that you only need to get lucky once. But to get lucky, you have to be doing things consistently every single weekend to eventually get to that point. And I think people miss out on that. So once Jake had a little bit of movement, so taco deli, et cetera, what happens then? For someone like a Jake, it doesn't need to be Jake, but like for someone like a Jake. Yeah, let's break it down. I think the more concrete tactical, I know that that's what we both appreciate. So now it's like, okay, well, what do I sell? And so again, there's a lot of

Starting point is 02:08:22 different ways. I'll just give you one. Literally just make a list of your day list of your day do breakfast lunch dinner and try to write everything that sucked so for you right now you've already told me one finding a va yeah yeah opportunity jake his different ones he has kids so toys he found it really annoying to that his kids get older now to find toys he's like oh shit i need to get rid of these toys and get new ones maybe there's a toy rental business oh it's kind of cool well i mean look at, look at Chegg for textbooks, right? Huge business. Chegg for toys. Doesn't exist. So if someone does that, sorry, Jake. He didn't end up doing it. But it was going through different problems that he was excited to solve for himself. He had a coffee problem. And what he stumbled upon was that he went on a golf trip with guys a year ago. And he

Starting point is 02:08:58 was like, I really love that. I want more of that in my life. I want to have something to look forward to on my calendar. And I didn't want him to do that business. I wanted to do the toy rental. So one additional approach I'll throw in there because it's actually how I started Brainquick, the first business, sports nutrition, et cetera, which is where I cut my teeth for all the things I followed. But I, as part of my calculus, I went through all my credit card statements. And at the time I was making, I don't know, like base salaries, 40 grand a year in the Bay Area during like one of the peak rushes. It was, it was partially explains why I was eating jack in the box, like with California taxes and like rents, it was like gone before you know it. So I went through my credit card statements and I looked at

Starting point is 02:09:40 what I spent a lot of money on. Like, what did I spend a lot of money on disproportionate to my income? And that's how I landed on sports nutrition, in part. I also had some knowledge around it and the ability to find people involved with that. But another approach I've heard from several different entrepreneurs who ended up building huge businesses is they looked at where they were cobbling together solutions. Like where are they paying for multiple things or using multiple things to MacGyver some half-assed solution to a problem that they have? Opportunity, right?

Starting point is 02:10:14 Yeah, another one I've liked. And to be clear, you can have that and then still there's no business there. So we did that. We tried to compete with Klaviyo in e-commerce and we were cobbling together solutions. I don't know what they do. They're MailChimp or ConvertKit, but just for e-commerce.

Starting point is 02:10:27 I see. And so we cobbled together a solution and we're like, oh, we could sell this to people. And then when we tried to sell it, no one wanted to buy it. Yeah. And that's what we get to later in the book. And so I think the other comment I would actually highlight that it's great you called it out is what's on your to-do list that you're just avoiding doing? That is actually a really interesting business.

Starting point is 02:10:44 So for you, your to-do list is to find an EA. What else is on your to-do list that's maybe been there over two weeks? Yeah, yeah, that's a good one. That's a good one. Let me think about that for a second. Yeah, what is? I can tell you one of mine.

Starting point is 02:10:54 Yeah, let's do one of yours. Fuck, dude. I need a house manager. Yeah. I need someone to- Just handle property stuff. My painting fell. My grass died because I put my car over it.

Starting point is 02:11:04 It didn't get watered. I have my car over it. It didn't get watered. I have a cold plunge that needs to get refilled. And I have my girlfriend who's pregnant, so I'm taking care of her and prioritizing her. I don't have time to even find the house manager. Yeah. So there's one. So in the case of, and if a better example exists that we want to run with, but let's, since we've introduced Jake. Yeah, we can stick with Jake and we can also do the VA one, but Jake's thing was, I want to do golf. Let's stick with that.

Starting point is 02:11:26 Next up, is it a million dollars of money that you can make in that? So how big is the market? Over what period of time? A year or what period of time? I'm more just looking at the market. I'm not necessarily looking at a timeframe on that.

Starting point is 02:11:36 It's just like, are there people now, today, that at least a million dollars? Like I would, literally what's crazy is AppSumo's success, I would say is significantly

Starting point is 02:11:43 because the market just grew. We chose a great market. When I started AppSumo success, I would say is significantly because the market just grew. We chose a great market. Yeah. When I started AppSumo, there was 10 software products. Now there's at least 10,000 software products, if not more. And so we chose the right market.

Starting point is 02:11:53 So with Jake, he was basically, there's two ways you can do it. One, just look at Google Trends, which is super basic. Everyone, most people know this. Like Google Trends is a flat, declining is a growing, and look at it relatively.

Starting point is 02:12:02 In terms of search terms, right? Yeah. Go to trends.google.com and just double check it and this is again this is almost identical to the blog post we had it's just been evolved on your blog on tim ferris's blog for our workweek.com and then the second part is all right is there a million people or not even a million people how many people and how much they spend on this same thing with chihuahuas how many people have chihuahuas how much they spend on chihuahuas so for jake it's how many people are golfing how much they spend on golf and can

Starting point is 02:12:24 you get any other data points but that's probably the most straightforward way because again we only do it in a weekend to see is there at least a million dollars in there golf is a billion dollar industry multiple billions of dollars so you can look at the clubs you can look at things but simplest way to do it go on facebook do an ad how many people are searching golf and then you can google how much do people spend on golf a year okay is there at least a million dollars in there I can make in it? I would imagine at this point, too, I'm just throwing this out there, but that some of these tools like ChatGPT or BARD could also be incredibly helpful. A hundred percent.

Starting point is 02:12:52 A hundred percent. How much money do people spend on golf a year? How big is the market on golf? You could put that in right now. And again, people are like, well, I need to do more research. It's like, no, we really just want to understand generally. Because we only have a weekend. Otherwise, that's the thing that, okay, two weeks, four weeks, six weeks, 10 weeks,

Starting point is 02:13:07 and nothing's happened. So next up, how do we actually understand what the business model looks like? Again, not I went to Berkeley, went to Princeton. There's all these complicated discounted cash flows. You've done a lot more investing than I have. I just want to know, can I make a million dollars in the business? So the real simplest business model is one minute revenue, cost, expense, divided by a million. And I have a bunch of templates on business? So the real simplest business model is one minute revenue, cost, expense, divided by a million. And I have a bunch of templates on the website. But really, again, I'm trying to understand, is this realistic?

Starting point is 02:13:31 Trying to sell a business that, let's say a golf trip. That's what he was excited about. $5,000. It's like $3,000 to do it. $2,000. Can I sell this many golf trips? And how long will that take me? Help him adjust the business model.

Starting point is 02:13:42 When I did Sumo Jerky, and even when I've done AppSumo, I had to do the same change when we did app sumo i did bundles remember i do yeah because your productivity model you helped put it on the map we did these bundles and i was like dude i'm doing fucking two months of work selling for 50 bucks i made five dollars right andrew chen came and he's like a math genius and he's one of my best friends he's like let's just do this quick model and that's what we've replicated stop doing bundles just do one and do one a week what's the margin i went from five dollar margin to 25 margin can you say that one more time yeah so let me back up so when you're doing these quick models and again i don't want people to spend a lot of time people like it's so simple i'm like that's the point have a one minute by the way not to interrupt but like

Starting point is 02:14:20 the vast majority of incredibly profitable, elegant businesses are simple. Yeah. Right. At their very core, they're simple. Beautifully said. At their core. Like Google, at its core. I know there's a lot of complexity that goes into delivering it,

Starting point is 02:14:39 but as a business model, very straightforward. Uber, at its core, very straightforward. Airbnb, at its core, very straightforward. Uber at its core, very straightforward. Airbnb at its core, very straightforward. And Patron, right? I mean, at their cores, these businesses, or Geico even, right? Very simple. And one thing I want to take a step back on is entrepreneurship is awesome. It can create a great life for you. And that doesn't mean you have to be a millionaire. That could be even grocery money. And I don't think people realize they can change their life and have that option. I was fired. Have you been fired? Yeah, for my first job, fired. Ice cream shop. It's a long story.

Starting point is 02:15:13 How do you have to try to get fired there? Well, it's actually kind of funny. My first job, the way this guy was doing stuff, the big boss, I was like 14. I don't even know if it was legal. But I was working at this ice cream shop and I was the cleaner. So I was cleaning the machines and doing this that and the other thing and the way that I was taught to do it made absolutely no fucking sense so I came up with my own system for cleaning and I did it in like one tenth the time the mistake I made was I stayed at work for the rest of the time and I read black belt magazine and I took the broom handle off of like one of the mops and I practiced karate moves or something in the parking lot.

Starting point is 02:15:45 And the boss, understandably, didn't find that terribly inspiring. So he was like, I don't care if you already cleaned it, clean it again. And I was like, but it's clean. And that was early proof that I'm effectively unemployable. So yeah, I got fired. I would agree. I'm sure maybe I got fired from other stuff, but I definitely got fired from the first job i was trying to wish i could see that dude i wish you could have like some cameras that i could see you with your broomstick there's a good chance i had a rat

Starting point is 02:16:11 tail or a mullet too there's a very high likelihood that i had a rat tail or a mullet at the time my point of going back and what we'll stick with the jake example is that i was fired and that was one of the most traumatic moments of my life and then i was like i'm never fucking again i'm going to be dependent on someone yeah ever fucking again and so i at that moment was very clear like i need to get to my own level it's taken 30 years to it's taken therapy to work it has i mean therapy has been an amazing thing oh i get it i'm laughing because also i get it yeah but that was a realization that like one person determined my fate yeah i never wanted that again yeah and so it doesn't mean you have to quit.

Starting point is 02:16:45 What's crazy at AppSumo, dude, we have a lot of people with really interesting side hustle. Amy does flowers. She heads our customer support. Nick heads our growth. He has a teeth whitening clinic. Amazing. Oldman and his wife have a facial clinic.

Starting point is 02:16:58 I don't know, it's kind of cool. But at least they have the option. They seem to like their jobs at AppSumo, but they have the option that they can do that. And that's why I do think people should consider it no matter what they're doing. And it does take time to kind of get to these places. Like I didn't, my first sell at AppSumo was 12 bucks.

Starting point is 02:17:11 Yesterday was 200,000, but that did me getting going, be able to get to that point. And I'll throw this in there too, that much like despite everything that I've said in the fricking TED talk that I gave earlier about all the things I'm thinking about, despite all of that,

Starting point is 02:17:24 I still think everybody should start a podcast because you will learn a lot about yourself and your own thinking. You will need to get better at communicating. And there's a lot to be taken from that, even if you stop it after five episodes. So I still believe that for improving your ability to communicate, identifying verbal tics, cleaning up your thinking by going through that process makes it worth starting a podcast. Similarly, I think everybody should start a business. It does not mean everybody

Starting point is 02:17:52 should be a lifelong entrepreneur. There are upsides to nine to five. The ability to just like turn off your work, go home, like throw on the TV or watch some YouTube and like have a couple of beers with your friends or family. Like there are arguments to be made that in the right circumstances.

Starting point is 02:18:08 I'll tell you, Monday we have a lawsuit because someone doesn't like something. Two people are upset about their salary. That was Monday. Yeah, right, right. I'm just saying. There's trade-offs. I was at this rock climbing gym not too long ago, last week actually, here in Austin. A lot of good rock climbing gyms. There's a new one, Mesa Rim, that is much taller in terms of their top roping areas than anything else I've seen here. In any case, I was there, and

Starting point is 02:18:32 I saw this woman climbing, and she had a shirt on that said, No Solutions, Only Trade-Offs. And I looked at it, and I said, Okay, maybe that doesn't make sense. Maybe it's like a Japanese billboard. Who knows? It seems like English, but it's not quite. It's grammatical. They're English words, but wait a second. Bear is the best friend? Wait a second. What does that mean? That doesn't mean anything. But I sat with it and I was like, you know what?

Starting point is 02:18:52 That's actually a very healthy way to look at a lot of decisions. There is no one best. There are always trade-offs. So coming back to Jake. Jake and business model, how did you tackle this? And it can be Jake, it can be other examples, but to the extent that you can give real world examples. All right. So let me give you two examples, one Jake and one, you know, very clear as well with AppSumo. So Jake's- Oh, with Andrew Chen when he came in and modified it. So that was one example. The other example, and I'll show you the, there's dials, you know, kind of like where meets with your finance styles there's revenue dials in your business and so with jake he was like i'm gonna do 10 profit i was like okay hold on let's look

Starting point is 02:19:32 at a one-minute model see what you can actually make and how you can make a million dollars doing this so we put it into the one-minute model and again it's very simple we don't have a lot of time revenue cost profit so let's be specific jake was like, Jake, how much can people pay? And again, let's just try to see what we can put together as an offer that we'll bring to people. How much do you pay on your golf trip before? I spent $2,000. What do you think is reasonable for a 48-hour amazing experience for people to go golfing? $4,000. Great, $4,000. Now, what are the costs that go with that? Do you have to pay for travel? No, make them pay for travel. Okay, hotel, golf, whiskey, cigars, food. Great. How

Starting point is 02:20:05 much is that? Just real quick. 2,000 bucks. So your old model was like you took a percentage, but now we just do a one-minute model. It looks like you make like $2,000 to $3,000. Let's just call it 2,500 per each golf trip. Divide that by 1,000. That's not that many sales. That seems actually very doable to create a million-dollar business just having golf trips. So just by understanding that, it's like, okay, cool. We have an idea we like. We see that there's a million dollars because a lot of times you're going to work really hard in the wrong direction or in a market that's really small. And you actually understand that this is a business model relatively that can work. Now we talked about revenue dials. Let's just say the average order value, like people are going to pay 1,000. Holy

Starting point is 02:20:39 shit, that's never going to get there. That's 1,000 people that you're going to have to sell. Is it 1,000? Yeah, 1, thousand people. That's a lot of people. So if we can 5X that, maybe we make it more expensive. Can we get people to buy it twice? Is there another types of products? And I've written down the revenue dials in the book, and there's free on the website as well, that you can be like, how can I change this model so that it's easier to get to the million dollars?

Starting point is 02:20:59 So people can find some of these resources for free at milliondollarweekend.com. Totally. And now with that, it was like, oh, okay, cool. If it's $2,500, I don't have to sell that many people to get to a million dollar business. Now let me see if I'm going to get even just three customers today. And I will tell you at this point of the day,

Starting point is 02:21:16 Jake was really frustrated because we had no sales. We finished this model and it's like, shit, man, I don't know if this is going to work. And I think that one of the most powerful things you can do is go for a walk and that's all we did it's like jake for two years you've thought about this idea for two years you've wondered what if and you want to be an example to your kids and in 24 hours so far you have an idea you have a business model around it and now we can actually find out if we can make a real business out of

Starting point is 02:21:41 this and i think that's just kind of amazing for all of us like how can we change our lives in a very quick amount of time give yourself a fucking break if it's not immediately a million dollars like go for a walk get a good night's sleep go look at old photos to realize how far we've come so the next morning woke up and what we did within i don't know in hours he put together on a google doc pictures of a golf trip, golf course, food, cigars. I don't know if people do golfing. Clothing, polo shirts, and then a price, 4,000 bucks, 5,000 bucks. And I was like, all right, cool. Let's just call people. So there's three different validation methods to see if people want to have a business. And number one is pre-selling. This is one of the most popular.

Starting point is 02:22:20 Oh, I see. See if people will purchase. Yeah. So you have an offer. He literally put together a Google Doc because I do think it's nice when you sell something that you can get people like, oh, wow, I can visualize it. I can see it. Same thing that Elon's done with Cybertruck Model 3. Those are six years and 10 years before he actually delivered. And he pre-sold thousands, tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands of them. So it's a very effective model. Same thing with airplanes, hotels. They all pre-sale to see if someone wants it. Apartment buildings. I mean, we're looking around here, like the vast majority of these were sold before construction was finished, certainly, but often before construction started.

Starting point is 02:22:51 A hundred percent. And when you're doing businesses, find a problem you're excited about. As you said with your stuff, like if you only do that and make sure that no one else wants it, you don't really have a business. You just have a hobby. So Jake has that. The other thing I think is a super common mistake for new entrepreneurs is like well i want to do ai i'm like okay have you done anything so funny i was going to bring up this exact people i love yeah i'm like have you used chat gpt not

Starting point is 02:23:14 really have you coded anything no not at all who saw what do you do what's your day job i'm in sales okay what do you sell i sell solar okay maybe it's easier for us to start a business selling, and you can sell AI, and do something within your zone of influence and your zone of expertise, versus so far outside of it. People make it way more complicated on themselves, especially new entrepreneurs.

Starting point is 02:23:37 Like, what are problems you like? What are groups or zones of influence you have? Doesn't mean you can't, but just makes it so much harder. And so with Jake, he plays a lot of golf. So you know golf. He has a lot of golf friends, so the pre-sale method he also knows how to find those people right like he knows what which websites he goes to he knows which celebrities he follows he knows where to go fishing yeah i don't what's a golf course and he has more

Starting point is 02:24:00 credibility in selling it too if he's like this is the trip that i have always wanted to design for myself there's a lot of weight behind that when you're talking to someone yeah it was cool it was cool to see him excited to create a business around that and there's some some mistakes that he ended up making that others can avoid that i'll cover but through that it was like all right jake you have a doc you got a model let's contact these people let's just call him right now you already practiced it remember the beginning, we talked about starting. You got started. Let's start asking. And he called his brother and be like, nah, my brother, like it's too easy. It should be easy. Make it fun. Like be like, no, it's gotta be hard. I gotta make it challenging myself. Like why? Why do you want to make it hard on yourself? What's the advantage in that?

Starting point is 02:24:40 Because that avoids you actually facing reality. So he called his brother and his brother was like, and again, we talked about that listen option transition. Hey man, I need feedback. I'm doing this process. I'm trying to start a business in a weekend. Do you remember the golf trip one? I was like, yeah. How did you like it? Oh, I liked it. Is there anything you missed on it? Would you want to do it again? Do you have another one scheduled? Oh, you don't. Oh. So you're listening to see what problems they have. Then you provide an option. Hey, I've got a golf trip. It's going to be in April. It's going to be to this place. It's going to be 5,000 bucks. And it sounds like something you'd be excited to do. Transition. Do you want to give me a hundred dollars right now

Starting point is 02:25:11 as a deposit that's totally refundable for this trip? And then shut the fuck up. His brother sent him a hundred dollars right away. Okay, brother. Fine. Easy. Jake, who else have you golfed with? Let's make a dream 10 list of everyone you've ever golfed with. Just 10, super easy. This is inspired by Chet Holmes, so I gotta give him a shout out. Ultimate Sales Machine, one of my favorite books all time.

Starting point is 02:25:33 And he has a dream 100. I'm like, 100's a lot. Let's just do 10. You only got a weekend. So then let's just go through your list. Who else plays golf with you? Who else have you gone on a trip with? I went on a guy named John.

Starting point is 02:25:44 Calls up John, and actually we recorded the calls. He's like, yeah,'s like yeah fuck you john i'm like that's how you talk to your friends but they're friends and then he calls john he's like yeah man can i just get your feedback because again when you're selling you don't have to make this big scary thing talk to someone hey i'd love to get your feedback this is what i'm working on is that something you're interested in you are okay cool do you want to give a deposit to commit that you're actually serious about doing it because a promise of a deposit is a rejection a promise is a rejection hey yeah yeah i'll do it just uh when you get closer that's reject that's actually a no you know this you've sold a lot

Starting point is 02:26:14 you've done a lot on this and so getting them to actually tell you the truth with their wallet and for me a lot of times with rejection it's do i actually want to do this business do i actually want to make this thing possible and so it's a test if you want something that's it and so when you're getting rejected be like as i'm doing this book and as i'm doing other things even with asking people for on my youtube videos do i really want this i'm like fuck yes i do do you want the thing that is being rejected am i proud of what am i doing like is this the thing i actually believe i want to do and that rejection is just a test for yourself and everyone can pass. It's up to them to choose. And yeah, those are also like those early rejections are valuable because if your commitment starts to waver, you're still in the honeymoon phase. You are going to have hard

Starting point is 02:26:56 challenges. You are going to have hiccups later. And if it's not going to work, like if you are going to waver or you might fold, it's better to do it in a sense early than later. And you're really, for me, getting rejected is an opportunity to learn. And this is what I do in sales. I do this all the time. To this day, I'll just say, I just want to learn. And I frame it. That's my first phrase. Second phrase is, you didn't want this. Just tell me why not. I want to learn. People will reply and they'll tell you. Really? Yeah. They just do it. I don't think people are like, no, I won't want to tell this person why not. And a lot of times after they say why they didn't do something, you can answer that question and sell them again. So Jake called John. He makes fun of this guy, so forth. And then, hey man, I have an idea,

Starting point is 02:27:37 this golf trip. I'd love your feedback. What do you think about it? Dude, that sounds awesome. Yeah. It's in April. Do you want to do a deposit? Another deposit. And then he ended up getting, I believe, five deposits within 48 hours for 500 bucks. And then he also had a partnership with another guy that he went on a trip with. And now three weeks later, he's securing the location. He's getting the $5,000 or whatever the end up price is going to be along the way. Now there's some interesting things around this. So one, and this is mistakes that people make, you have to deliver what you just promised. So focus on that. You just promised like promised like hey give me a deposit and let me take you on an amazing golf experience so over deliver on what you just promised common mistake that jake was making

Starting point is 02:28:12 he came back to me i checked in on him he's like dude these people are buying it it's exciting i'm gonna get eight people here's the model it looks great one guy talked to me about an app so i'm gonna start an app oh boy oh boy and i was like squirrel yeah that's a good movie by the way i love squirrels until the titans i put squirrels my favorite animal and so they're very easy to get distracted very easy to get distracted and this is the best businesses are the ones that work and so i'm like jake you just sold five people another mistake that very very common you know i don't know about these trips because I don't think I want to go on them in a few years. I was like, dude, you haven't even gone on one. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Starting point is 02:28:49 Guess what? You know how much work I do at AppSumo day-to-day? Zero. I don't do any work. And that's not as like a flex, like, oh, I don't do any work. No, I hire the people that do the work and they're excited. And frankly, they're better than me at the work. You don't ever have to go on a trip. Maybe for a podcast, if you're the signature host, it's called the Tim Ferriss Show. You probably need to be doing it. And let's say AI your voice. But for these golf trips, don't ever have to go on a trip. Maybe for a podcast, if you're the signature host, it's called the Tim Ferriss Show. You probably need to be doing it. And let's say AI your voice. But for these golf trips, don't be so worried about making a million

Starting point is 02:29:10 when you haven't made one. Just deliver the product. And guess what? Then do it again. And then again. And then again. And so that was another common observation. I was surprised.

Starting point is 02:29:17 And I've seen it by others. How's it going to scale? You haven't even gotten a dollar. Don't worry about scale. Don't worry about it. Yeah. And let's deliver the experience, which now he's getting it going in April. He's getting

Starting point is 02:29:26 these people to pay. And then it's like, hey, just after they pay in April, you know what you do? You just do it again. And then again, and then again. And then the rest of the book is now, how does he get it beyond that? So it can be beyond his network and his zone of influence. Also, just to emphasize a few things that you've said, and also just add a couple of comments, right? The whole scaling thing, look, I invest in businesses that scale, but I think that what a lot of entrepreneurs tend to do, especially if they're fantasizing about doing something big, like if it's not huge, it's a failure. If it's not 10X, it's a failure. If it's not, it's like paradigm shifting. Most businesses that help their owners

Starting point is 02:30:05 to craft unique lives that are incredibly rewarding are completely invisible to you. The businesses that you see on magazine covers or in these tweet threads and so on, X threads, whatever the cool kids are calling it these days, are outliers. And trying to just model those crazy outliers is like deciding for New Year's, you want to get into shape, so you watch the Super Bowl. And you're like, okay, so I'm watching how Tom Brady moves.

Starting point is 02:30:41 And if I can't be Tom Brady, then it's not exercise and you're like well hold on a fucking second it's not the right way to look at it chances are also you're not tom brady right so maybe before you're like it's not worth me learning to swim unless i can be michael phelps you're like well look at his ankles you're can your ankles do that No, I don't think so. Are you shaped like that? No, you're not. So just reminding folks, you do not need to mimic the top 1% of 1% of 1% of outliers who probably are mutants on a bunch of levels in order to have a business that fulfills the dreams you have associated with being an entrepreneur. I just wanted to say that because it's so common. It's really common. And what you've been saying also echoes something that Seth Godin has said on the podcast, which is, and I'm paraphrasing here, but effectively like do the smallest thing possible.

Starting point is 02:31:35 He's like, people hide behind the big because when they have this like, I want to do an AI app that does this and this and this, which isn't to say those things can't exist. But when they've got this huge idea, I want to help 5 billion people, whatever the thing might be, you can hide behind that and never get started. It's easy to hide behind the big thing. But if it's call five of your friends, you can't hide behind that. I mean, business really is three W's when I look at it. It's what's a problem you're

Starting point is 02:32:04 solving that people care about? Who are those people and where are they? That's it. What's the problem that people care about? So for Jake, it's golf trips. For AppSumo.com, it's software deals at good prices. For Tim Ferriss, it was learning like very Tim Ferriss shows very tactical, practical things in different areas of your life.

Starting point is 02:32:20 Who are the people that listen to that? And then where are they? And it has been awesome to see someone like Jake who's had that dream be able to make that change. There are other validation methods I'll just share because I think people want to see other ones. So one is pre-sell. So whether it's a pinball machine, which we talked about,

Starting point is 02:32:33 whether it's even AppSumo.com, I was able to get this going within a weekend as well, the same exact method. It wasn't even pre-sell. I was able to close it all in 48 hours. So just to share another story of that, I noticed through all of my work that I was like, I like deals, I like marketing, and I think the software thing is going to be big.

Starting point is 02:32:50 How do I do this very quickly to find out if this is something people actually want? And that's the reason you have Weekend, because you have 52 chances to change it. If it doesn't work one, guess what? You have another one and another one. And to at least understand a process, you're so good at this. You're so good at thinking about that. So how do I experiment? And so with AppSumo, I was like, I think there's something with these three things. Let me try to do it in a weekend. I cold emailed Imgur, this college kid, said, hey, I want to do software deals. I'll pay $7 for everyone I sell. For him, he's like, I'll get free money. That's cool. So a cold email. It was just, and it was funny.

Starting point is 02:33:18 How did you find the college kid to cold email? Because I went to Imgur.com. Oh, sorry. Yeah. No, no, not a random color. I thought that was some name from Azerbaijan. Okay, Imgur. No, no, no, no. The website. Imgur.com. So I knew that the problem with software deals at good prices, I knew that I'm a Redditor and I was like, well, that's where the customers are. And then that's who the customers are and where they are. And I was like, they want Imgur. That was the

Starting point is 02:33:40 most popular product at the time. That was all over it. So basically cold emailed Alan, just alan at Imgur.com. I was like, hey, I want to promote you. $7 the most popular product at the time. That was all over it. So basically, cold emailed Alan, just alan at imgur.com. I was like, hey, I want to promote you. $7 per deal. You get free money. It's no cost to you. And then I was like, well, I can get this posted on Reddit. And I even cold emailed the founders of Reddit and was able to get them to give me free ads.

Starting point is 02:33:58 Yeah. How did you do that? Just out of curiosity. I know. Why would they give you free ads? I don't really know, actually. That's bullshit. No, no. What was the pitch, though? The pitch was twofold. One, I know. Why would they give you free ads? I don't really know, actually. That's bullshit. No, no.

Starting point is 02:34:05 What was the pitch, though? The pitch was twofold. One, I said I knew someone they knew. So I worked with Chris Smoke when I started previous companies. He knew Chris Slow. That's where Chris Smoke's was from. So when you're sending an email,

Starting point is 02:34:16 it's a really strong subject line or any messages referred by blah. At least you're going to get an open reply. And by the way, don't bullshit that because you'll get fact-checked. I just got someone fact-checked with me, like Jordan hart you know jordan harbinger yeah he's a good buddy of mine he fact-checked someone who messaged him like hey noah kagan's working with you hit me and jordan messages me it's like of course this guy immediately yeah i was like no i'm not yeah it was a little bit more than that basically i said hey i'd love

Starting point is 02:34:39 to just treat you to lunch and share more what i'm working on and so i took him to a pork store cafe and hate and i just shared what i was working on and said, I'm doing this idea for software deals. I want to focus on Reddit. I'm a huge Redditor. I've been a Redditor since 2006. It's with Imgur. I'd love to see if you can give me free ads. There wasn't a bigger ask than that. Again, we come back full circle. It's because I like asking. I practice asking. Everyone can ask. He's like, sure. Crazy part of that story, fast forward about six months. I asked him again, and he's like, $10,000. But I highly appreciate Chris and Reddit for giving me that free.

Starting point is 02:35:12 They were just getting their ad platform out. So it was a good chance. And that was a good chance for them. To showcase something or have a case study. That it worked well. So I launched it. I was like, if I can do 200 sales, this is obviously a little bit bigger than what I'm encouraging others. If I can get 200 sales

Starting point is 02:35:27 within a very short time, this is it. And let me just break down the website. I paid $48 to a guy named Muhammad, who I can still recommend to people, to help me put a PayPal button on AppSumo.com. And I spent $12 on AppSumo.com, which I know I should have maybe done even not the website. But that PayPal button, people, when I post on Reddit reddit hey i've got a deal on imgur pro instead of 24 it's 12 and i gave alan seven dollars immediately that first 12 sell was the best dude yeah it was so sweet and i remember and this is the thing people were like well how do i scale i emailed the codes for every 200 person you know what my back end was gmail i got the paypal notification and then i sent him an email saying, thank you so much. Here's your code for Imgur Pro. What other deals do you want me to get?

Starting point is 02:36:07 And that is what's led now to like a 100-person team. And we have all these crazy products. We've launched on so many different things from AppSumo. We have, I think, a 20, 25-person engineering team. It started with literally manual Gmail codes. And so the concept there is just so fucking basic. I didn't let all these other things get in the way. Yeah. just so fucking basic. I didn't let all these other things get in the way. Yeah, and also,

Starting point is 02:36:25 that super primitive back end that you're talking about, highly manual, but high touch with the customer. Yes, yes. Gives you a lot of really valuable input. And even though we've been talking about the word scale

Starting point is 02:36:40 as kind of a four-letter word, in one of the very first episodes of Masters of Scale that Reid Hoffman did, he interviewed Brian Chesky of Airbnb. And it's a great episode. And one of the key tenets in the beginning for Airbnb was do things that don't scale. And those things tended to be highly manual, helping people take photographs of their places. And what they learned then led to a lot of what we've seen i mean you didn't think about yourself i hope i recall correctly i thought you super

Starting point is 02:37:11 responded to everyone super early on i recall you in the comments on your blog on the comments when i was building that community for sure and this is highly responsive in the blog comments you were i remember that it stuck out to me and that's exactly if people were like well how do i like have high touch and how do i do things that skill that is literally it so for me on youtube i still reply to my comments not every single one now because there's a lot but i reply to them and guess what when you get that message that someone actually connected with you and this is great especially if you're at one two three four five customers so early on i don't know if i've talked about this at all, when I had decided that bloggers were the path, at least that was the hypothesis worth testing for launching the four-hour workweek.

Starting point is 02:37:49 I went to a bunch of their blogs and I left comments and my comments were like blog posts unto themselves. I mean, they took forever, right? But I put a ton of energy in and I would do that in some cases, like two or three times on a given blog where the authors were active in the comments and they noticed that and people bloggers in this case in many cases directly reached out to me to thank me for the comments and that laid the foundation it was like super targeted very much sniper shot it was not me trying a hundred thousand different things but you also in the beginning need to throw a lot against the wall. You don't know what you're good at. You don't know what works. So you try a lot.

Starting point is 02:38:27 And going back, it's fun taking the trip down memory lane for BrainQuick, and way back in the day, the sports nutrition company. And I say sports nutrition because it turns out Americans did not want to be smarter at all. So selling something for improving cognition at that point didn't work at all. But I got reports back, this is when very high touch from athletes, especially NCAA athletes who bought it for studying. They're like, yeah, I don't really care about studying though, but it improved my time off the blocks for my track event. It helped me with this, and being the idiot that I was, I ignored that for ages. I was like, no, this is brainquaking,

Starting point is 02:39:03 right? In my own head. So I kept pounding my head against a brick wall. It didn't work. And eventually I was like, well, wait a second. They're using this for sports. The only reason I spent so much money on my supplementation as a percentage of my income is because I cared about sports performance, really. And then pivoted, and that's when the whole thing took off. But that's not the takeaway that I was going to share.

Starting point is 02:39:22 What I was going to share is at the very earliest stages, I had a website up, which a coworker at work at Truesan had put together for next to nothing. Right. Cause we were always scheming and we were always just like going out to lunch and bullshitting. We were friends. So I paid him,

Starting point is 02:39:38 but I couldn't pay him much. And he was like, it's fine. And he put together a website for me. I had not manufactured anything. I had done quite a bit of basic math to figure out if the economics would work. Nothing fancy though. It's like, how much do I think I could manufacture this for? What are some of the basic

Starting point is 02:39:52 costs of sourcing? Landed on a retail price. And at this point, nothing has been made. Nothing has been manufactured. There's no product to ship. And I just went to coworkers who are friends. And it wasn't exactly guilting, but these people at that point didn't really need this necessarily. Like it could be of benefit, but I was like, hey, I want to try this out.

Starting point is 02:40:14 Like, would you be willing to just prepay for one of these so that I can try to do a first manufacturing run? And they're like, yeah, sure, why not? 50 bucks or something at the time. And that gave me just the bare minimum of capital to start having conversations. I love that. And then I had to negotiate everything, right? Because I would go to these contract manufacturers and they're like, well, our minimum order size is this. And in my head, I'm like, impossible.

Starting point is 02:40:37 That's never going to work. And then they're like, and our minimum term of commitment is this. I was like, yep, also impossible. So I had to sell the vision. And at that time, I was able to, because I'd learned through cold calling off hours, get ahold of the president of this manufacturer, got him on the phone at one point. And I was just like, I know at some point somebody gave you a break. I'm not asking for anything other than, can I drive to you at any time and just tell you about my vision for this business? And if we are able to find a way to work together, which I would like to, I promise you that I will work with you exclusively

Starting point is 02:41:11 as a manufacturer as we grow the business. Went down and I think he was maybe just amused more than anything else. And he's like, okay, sure. Like after all was said and done. And then I used them for years, right? And that's how the deal got done. But it all hinged on, in the very beginning, the pre-sales. And also, I was buying, I mean, negotiating. At that time, you want to talk about a real pain in the ass, magazine advertisements. Feedback loop is really slow. After you have put out the cash for the advertising, you might not know what you're selling for months. It could take a really, really long time. And so what I did when I started getting more ambitious, because I started

Starting point is 02:41:51 with small ads, of course, and then once I got to kind of full page ads, I would go to, say, distributors, and I would say, I would love to feature you exclusively in this particular ad. But for that to work, I would just need you to pre-order X amount of inventory. So they buy X amount of inventory. Let's say that's $10,000. And I would also say like, it's $10,000, but the rate card for this full page is like 40 grand. And they'd be like, okay, well, seems reasonable, especially since we're going to make a profit on the product. Then I would buy the ad space as a remnant. So I would negotiate last minute. I would get that for like five grand. So what has happened? If I had them pre-order, let's say 10K, I paid five. I'm already in the black, no matter what the outcome of the advertisement. And this is the kind of stuff

Starting point is 02:42:39 most entrepreneurs are going to have to do on some level, something like that. Two things I want to highlight from your story. One, it's beautiful. You seem to have a knack for finding underserved opportunities. And that's where the opportunity is. If it's a market, there's no opportunity because people know about it. You finding remnant inventory. I think there's something with AppSumo, we've had a lot of times where when the news feed came out years ago on Facebook, no one was really advertising. We're like, oh, this is huge. No one else is doing it. Let's go hard on that. And there's something interesting in business and finding what others aren't noticing just yet. Specifically for me, I'm interested in the kind

Starting point is 02:43:11 of the marketing part. I think the other thing that was interesting about what you do is you put a little bit more extra effort in. Just a sprinkle of the hot sauce. That's what you do, right? So one thing, and just to highlight for others out there to copy, copy it. Like success leaves crumbs. When you wrote a blog post comment on other blogs you didn't just write hey cool story thanks tebow right you wrote like actual in-depth things that made people want to reach out to you like many many many hours on a single comment right like 17 revisions kind of thing and the same thing goes for when you wanted to do the manufacturing you didn't just say like call the guy and be like i'll show up to your door. Tell me where you're at

Starting point is 02:43:47 and I'll be there. That's a little bit more. It's not a lot and it's not exclusive to Zimperis. That's available worldwide. Just put in a little bit more, take that little bit of chance and what a cool story. If it doesn't work out, at least you have this crazy story that you can talk about. Exactly. And another little tweak, because it's not like the story I think that's appealing for a lot of people to hear, which is not what we're saying, is I did 100x more than the next guy. That's not what I did. I ring binder, which I treated as my swipe file. Whenever I bought something, and at that time, magazines were a big deal. That's changed, of course, but print advertising and stuff was the game that I was interested in. Anytime I was about to buy something or I bought something, or I flipped through a magazine and my attention stopped for a period of time on an ad, I would take out the ad and I put it in a three ring binder and I would study the ads. I'd be like, why? Why did this affect me? And then I would copy it.

Starting point is 02:44:48 And to give an example, just to a fine tune, right? How many emails have you received where someone's like, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. I'd love to pick your brain and meet for coffee. How about next Tuesday at 2 p.m.? Right? And you're like, that's pretty presumptuous. Maybe that works, right? But it's a little forceful. And in the same way that if someone's like, I'm a hugger and they invade your space and you back up, don't cause that instinctive defensive response in somebody who reads your email. So even in the very beginning, and I still do this because believe it or not, I get rejected. It still happens, right? But in the case of, say, the manufacturer, there was no

Starting point is 02:45:25 presumption. It was like, I really appreciate you taking the time. This might not be of any interest. It was very light. I wasn't like, I know what you need. This business is going to be 20x. We're going to scale, and you can be our exclusive provider. No, I was like, this may not be of interest, but I think there's a chance it is because I've studied your website. I've looked at this. I've looked at your customers. I've identified this, this, and this, and would love to meet everything I just said. And if that doesn't work for you, I totally understand. Now, what does that say? Because there's sort of a subtext to this. What that says is, if this guy meets up with me, I'm not going to browbeat the shit out of him. I'm not going to

Starting point is 02:46:02 follow up 20 times after he said no. So he's like, the risk of me meeting with this guy is low because he had a light touch in the beginning. Now there's a time to be forceful, right? There are times to be more forceful, but I do find that the carrot works better than the stick, or a better way to put it is just like a gentle touch works much more often than a heavy touch. This was also true with the bloggers. If a bunch of bloggers or people I thought might be bloggers were having drinks at like an after party at South by, I would wander up and I would just say, oh, hey guys, I know you don't know me. Is it okay if I just join you guys? I'm by myself. And they'd be like, uh, okay, sure. And then I'd ask questions and ask questions. Eventually

Starting point is 02:46:42 somebody would be like, what's your story? Like, who are you again and I would say oh I'm here because the only thing I can really control with my first book I'm really nervous about it is looking at digital stuff because the publisher's doing everything else then I'd stop I wouldn't give them a full pitch if it ended up being the right audience or if they had any interest they'd be like well what's your fucking book about right and then well it's about funny yeah well yes and if it's a group of like six to eight people chances are at least one person even if they're just being polite will be like well what's the story what's the book and then i would just pay attention to who was interested right who was opting in yeah right and then at some point not in front of the group by the way but like i like buy drinks for folks like let me buy you guys a round of drinks i feel like i I'm crashing your party. And then if somebody really expressed interest, I would say,

Starting point is 02:47:27 you know, zero pressure. I know I'm sure you got a lot going on, but if you're interested, I could send you an early copy of the book. You're not going to want to read the whole thing. It'll take too long, but I could just highlight 10 pages that you might be able to use immediately because it has templates for this thing that you just mentioned. And they're like, cool. And I'll be like, yeah, I'm not expecting to promote it i'm not expecting anything i just want to expose people to this stuff and you have to mean it right that you can't then follow up 100 times and be a prick about it like you said you didn't expect it yeah yeah and that worked it really worked and that approach that light approach has worked over and

Starting point is 02:48:03 over and over again i mean it took me two or three years to get Jamie Foxx on the podcast. That was a long time. And then it was, at the time, podcast of the year. It took time. That's cool. I think the two comments I'm curious, one comment and a question as well, if you start with the light ask, you can do a big ask. So let me give you an example. When I knock on doors for some of the YouTube videos where I just go to literally the nicest houses I see and just knock on their door, If I go to your door and say, what do you do for a living? Like, you're going to close my door,

Starting point is 02:48:27 close it in my face. Instead, now what I do, knock on the door, hello, I love your house. They're like, really? Yeah, I just, you know, we're doing a documentary on the neighborhood and I just love your house.

Starting point is 02:48:40 Can you tell me about it? Oh yeah, actually, that's so crazy. Yeah, I thought this, I always drive by and I was always fascinated, but what'd you do for a living to be able to get? Oh yeah, actually that's so crazy. Yeah, I thought this, I always drive by and I was always fascinated, but what'd you do for a living to be able to get a house? Like it's so great. It's definitely a different, it's the same ask, just done a little differently. That does take practice and through time and persistence, you do get better at it. One thing coming back, when the last time you were rejected, you were saying you got rejected from something. I'm curious that last time. And what do you tell yourself? It depends on

Starting point is 02:49:03 the type of rejection and rejecting comes in all sorts of forms, right? It could be silence. It could be light, like polite decline, or it could be something stronger. This relates back to my pausing around a lot of next steps for myself where I'm like, if you're rushing, it's probably because you have a scarcity perspective on something. And if you are, as I always try to, and this comes back to the question you asked that I didn't really answer directly, if you're looking to find something that is rarely seen or recognized or to meet an unmet need, you have some time. So I think those opportunities are everywhere. So my feeling is if I get rejected, and I'm sure there are examples, I can't think of them offhand,

Starting point is 02:49:45 but there are a lot of fish in the sea. The guest doesn't want to be on the podcast or they're too busy or whatever, fine. There are going to be 20 other people who will be as good, if not better, possibly. If there's an opportunity and the door closes because who knows, there's an investment and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah for X, Y, Z,

Starting point is 02:50:03 different reasons, I want to make the for X, Y, Z different reasons. I want to make the deal happen, but they can't make it happen. Or I get rejected as a strong word, right? But for whatever reason, I can't be part of that deal. My assumption is there are plenty of deals. Like there are plenty of fat pitches out there. And that is based on experience. And I would say generally I tilt pretty pessimistic and that I have a dim view of human nature, like very Hobbesian. I'm not this bright-eyed, bushy-tailed bunny that just hops around seeing gold everywhere

Starting point is 02:50:36 and the best in people at all moments. That's not me. But I would say just based on my lived experience, there are opportunities fucking everywhere. There's so many million million dollar and multi-million dollar opportunities out there like they're everywhere and for that reason when i get turned down that's within the entrepreneurial context i'm just like you know that's fine maybe i got saved from myself on this one and that's happened tons of times like i don't get

Starting point is 02:51:02 into a deal and it's a, unmitigated disaster. I'm like, wow, okay. Glad life saved me from that. Bro, that sounds like you're optimistic. That's a little optimism. Here's what I would say. In this particular case, it is a very specific form of informed optimism. I'm not default optimistic.

Starting point is 02:51:23 I look for hedging against worst case scenarios and so on. I mean, you have some of that too, right? With cutting costs and looking at these things. But in this particular case, I've just seen so many examples of successes where you would never predict a success. Starbucks gets turned down by everyone. They're like, another coffee company? Too crowded, no way. There are so many examples. When I started my podcast, I was told it was too crowded in 2014. Very smart people. I'm not going to name, but they said, you could do it, but I feel like that ship has already sailed, 2014. And I think I also have learned to have a less extreme response to what we might consider rejection. Because number one,

Starting point is 02:52:07 if you're going to be a good resource allocator, if you are easily offended or get easily spun out, you're going to be exhausted a lot of the time. And I also frame so much in the form of experiments. They're not pass-fail. This is feedback. And so I do so many things as two week experiments, one month experiments, three month experiments that applies to my podcast, that applies to everything in the business world that I do, that applies to my style of investing. All right, I'm going to experiment with blah, blah, blah. And then I get my face ripped off and I'm like, okay, good feedback. Maybe I'm not so good at X, Y, and Z. Maybe I should stick to bread and butter. Okay. Well, that was worth an experiment and I capped my downside. So I learned. Great. Good

Starting point is 02:52:52 feedback. And for all of those reasons, I would say that I'm less reactive than I used to be. But the truth is, like you told the story of Jake, there are so many opportunities out there. And I'll just say from meeting, let's just call it unmet needs or finding niche opportunities that other people don't see, there are a couple of resources I'll mention. And I return to these things all the time. These are things that I reread. And I'm probably going to reread all of these again. These are just almost like mantras. I'm trying to train myself to recognize and think of these things. One would be Blue Ocean Strategy. I mentioned it before. Excellent book. Excellent, excellent book. How can you be a category of one? Another one I've mentioned a million times, and I mentioned

Starting point is 02:53:36 a million times because I'll read it a million times, 1,000 True Fans by Kevin Kelly. And then within the 22 Immutable Laws of Marketing marketing there's one chapter called the law of category and it gives old examples that so don't get the for the internet because it was written in like 97 or something get the old version and i think i may have even excerpted it for either tools of titans or tribe mentors but it's called the law of category and they talk about for instance the invention of light beer or being the first light beer of X, and the first low-cost airline. I mean, these are things that came out of nowhere. And how can you create a category of one where you're not trying to be the best? You have decided and positioned yourself to be the only, whatever that is.

Starting point is 02:54:20 And I think of, there are so many examples. And part of how I assess playing fields also is I'm like, how hard is it right now to create a category of one? And I look at, for instance, some of the early innings in podcasting, and you had people who broke all the rules and became mega successes. Hardcore History, for instance, with Dan Carlin, my favorite podcast still to this day. His episodes, I think they come out, are they historically like once every six to nine months, maybe six to 12 months, one episode. And they're four to five hours long. They're effectively audio books on history. No one would have predicted or prescribed that as a successful format. Nobody, zero. And yet it developed this enormous call audience and has allowed him to do a million things.

Starting point is 02:55:09 Now that would be a lot harder. Why? Because it's less human-driven and more algorithm-driven. So I'm like, huh, okay, maybe it's time for me to choose an easier game. I don't like hard games. I mean, sometimes I like to push it if I'm doing some board game or maybe trying to ski right within the bounds of my capabilities. But in terms of big life games, I'm not looking to suffer. I'm not looking to crawl on my knees on broken glass for 100 miles to make some really complicated business model work. I'm like, no. Until I find something that seems simple, until I find something where I'm like, hmm, maybe this doesn't need to be the hardest thing in the world, I keep looking. All of my best investments have been kind of obvious and low risk. All of my best investments. And when I've deviated from that, so the same criteria that I use for entrepreneurship, for content, the same criteria I should

Starting point is 02:55:57 use in investing, at least early stage stuff, all the same stuff. Are there other people who come to mind who either worked off of the blog post or that you've interacted with personally who read early versions of the book outside of Jake where you're like, you know what, this is a good example of another person who's put it into practice? One thing I wanted to comment on,

Starting point is 02:56:19 I got rejected yesterday. It was like a mutual friend of ours. He's like, yeah, come on the show. And then yesterday he's like, no, don't come on the show. I don't like you. He didn't like that I made a comment about him. To his yeah well i did to his face and then he but he's been promising for two years and so i think younger no a 20 year old noah would have guilted him be like what the fuck dude you like said you would do this thing but what you said is actually something i work in therapy a lot which is

Starting point is 02:56:41 instead of emotion and react, pause and respond. And I tell myself that no pause, which I love that you're saying, I'm like, we're going to the same therapy off, off Mike. We'll talk about it. Oh my God. What a small world, but the pause and respond was like, okay. And you're not going to guilt anyone really into doing something that they're excited to do. And I said, Hey, thank you for being honest with me. I appreciated that. And I'm sure that's not what he was expecting me to say to him, but I appreciated it. And I was like, yeah, that must have been hard for him to send. He said, it sounds like there's a little miscommunication. We're probably going to have an experience in the future and we might work together in the future. Let's go

Starting point is 02:57:16 for a walk. And he's like, sounds great. Let's do it after the holidays. And that's definitely a matured experience for me. And so the rejections keep happening but how we we can choose to respond to them and approach them can change there are with most things there are always more opportunities it's easier for me on the business side to see this right so for instance you know i got out of a very long for me relationship you know five plus year relationship about a year ago so in just say the dating world which is has changed a lot in six years and is very bizarre on a whole lot of levels for the same reason that content creators and creation have become very different i mean a lot of the same factors are at play gamification volume paradox of choice i mean

Starting point is 02:57:56 all sorts of things sort of gamification of fomo right i mean there's a lot that goes into the similarities but on the business side just because i've spent so much time looking at that, and I've had so much feedback from people who have read the first book, and I've seen so many hundreds of businesses. I'm like, guys, there are opportunities everywhere. Yeah. Everywhere. You also have to believe, you're commenting on dating.

Starting point is 02:58:18 I was struggling with dating in Austin. And then I struggled in LA. And then I struggled in New York. I was trying all these places. You also have to understand that you have to believe it exists. Yeah. Yeah. You really do have to believe it.

Starting point is 02:58:28 I found that it was easier to believe it exists in Barcelona by, you know, one optimistically and then working on it and be like, holy shit, is it, could there really be someone out there? And it's like, yes,

Starting point is 02:58:35 there is. Yeah. That, that is optimism. Then, and it's something learned. One of my favorite books this year is learned optimism. Okay.

Starting point is 02:58:41 Tell me what this is. Seligman. It might be, I don't know exactly, but the idea is that you can actually learn it and practice it did you even write learned optimist oh i do a lot of homework i do a lot of research oh yeah i love that book and so i was believing that my friend said to me once his name one of my best buddies jr was like there's gonna be a woman you'll meet

Starting point is 02:58:58 who's all of us combined in one and i was like that's bullshit and it took me a few years and therapy and relationship coach and being alone to be like maybe there could be and being patient that that existed and then finding it being and being like wow it really does exist and it does still take work but it's like that was out there yeah same with business and all these things like believing you can have these things so who's another example yeah there's a guy pat pat is someone i you know he is in customer support in poland in poland all right, he is in customer support in Poland. In Poland. All right.

Starting point is 02:59:27 Yeah, he does a customer support job. Probably makes like 25,000 a year, give or take. I don't know, maybe that high, especially in Poland. And he's dreamed of being an entrepreneur. And he loves YouTube. Loves YouTube, loves it.

Starting point is 02:59:38 And so he's like, I'm studying YouTube obsessively. Maybe I can help local people with their YouTube channels. And so he, and it's not necessarily the pre-sale method, but close to it, he just started contacting people that he knew within YouTube and said, let me run your channel for you.

Starting point is 02:59:50 And now I think he's close to about $10,000 a month in Poland, which is basically he's a billionaire. But the idea there, just taking a step back, what are the elements people can learn from, where are you spending your free time? And he is obsessed with YouTube. He's just like, I love the channels. I love the thumbnails.

Starting point is 03:00:06 I love the title. I love the content. How do I make that my career, not being in a customer support role? And then if I understand it, maybe even go work for free. It sounds like you have experiences around that where like, let me do a great comment. That's a free work, frankly. A great comment is free work that gets attention. So as he reached out to people and started helping people, now he's actually got retainers on clients where he's running their YouTube channels. And so I don't know if he's quit his job doing that. I'm not sure exactly, but that was another example of him feeling good about starting, feeling good about asking, asking people. And now he's got a $10,000 a month business helping people with their YouTube channels. I want to triple underscore the free work piece because there's a lot of righteous

Starting point is 03:00:42 indignation online about this. It crops up a lot with spec work on behalf of artists and things like that, where it's like, I'll never work for free. People are being exploited, blah, blah, blah. And there are cases where that's true. Everything I have done has been built on free work. If I look at all of my biggest wins, I can't think of a single exception in the sense that first job out of college. Why did I get that? Because a guest speaker who was the CEO, a young guy, came in, talked to our class. I wrote my entire term paper on that business because I wanted to do a free

Starting point is 03:01:15 competitive analysis and show how valuable I could be to the business. I wrote my entire term paper on that. Free work. If I look at four-hour work week work week had that come about guest lectures twice a year tons of prep took it super seriously got feedback everything to iterate iterate iterate never got paid a dollar right i spent my own money on travel the blah blah blah all free if i look at my investments in the startup world i in, in the beginning, would do anything I could to co-invest with someone to get a tiny amount of money into the company. And I mean, just a few thousand dollars.

Starting point is 03:01:54 And then I would proceed to do like $100,000 of work in terms of being like the most valuable, low-cost person on their entire cap table. I wanted them to be like, wow, okay, this guy owns nothing of the company. And he's materially impacted the value of this company, including the value of my own shares as a founder. And then what happens is I get those people who are like,

Starting point is 03:02:14 Tim's fucking awesome. Yeah. And they are willing to do what? They're willing to say that to other founders. And then it builds and it builds and it builds. Love that. And people have gotten, I mean, this is not going to work right now, folks. So just be aware I'm in the process of streamlining everything. But as one example, like Charlie Hone, who worked with me for years,

Starting point is 03:02:36 he did that by sending me basically the equivalent of the term paper that I did for my first job. He would hear me, or rather not hear me because the podcast didn't exist, but he read my blog posts and he got a pretty good idea of the things that would be helpful to me. And he just did them. He just went out and put in tens of hours, maybe more, into these various projects. And he'd be like, just wanted to send this to you. I thought it'd be helpful. And that's it. And eventually, after two or three of those, I'm like, okay, this is actually very helpful. This guy's very proactive, very detail-oriented. Let's have a conversation. So there's just to say, sometimes the best bargain that you have is doing something

Starting point is 03:03:16 for free. Especially if they have time. Everyone has the time. I mean, I can give a few other examples to kind of just keep encouraging that. I got my job at Mint because I spend a week for free putting together a marketing plan. There you go. Because he said no to me. And I said, let me just at least present you a plan. So I spent more or less at least 40 hours, if not more, working on a plan, brought it to him and said, if you like this plan, I'll execute it. You can pay me this amount for three months. And if I do well and you like what the output is, then you can give me equity and $100,000, which I got three months later. Yeah. But that was because I spent a whole week for free working on it.

Starting point is 03:03:46 I mean, same thing with a lot of the best people I've hired within the company today. Jay Yang, he's 17 years old. He still has to get a permission slip to work with us. He lives at home with his parents. Shout out, Jay. I love this guy. But he put together, I think, a 30-point Google slide presentation showing me everything that sucks with my social media and my email.

Starting point is 03:04:04 Now he's making good money working, at his parents house so this guy's gonna be a beast he's phenomenal right same thing with jeremy who's the producer of our channel he worked on my instagram thing for free two weeks dylan who's our new producer put together a website that's like i want to work with noah kagan.com i almost always ask that question how much hours you put in this free work and they're like a lot it's almost always a lot and that lot. And that's a little risk, right? But at the same time, one, you have something cool you can show, two, you learn, and three, the opportunity for the ask is pretty high and the downside is you spend a little bit of time learning. So I think that's a great call out. Oh, it goes on and on too. Now that you're talking about it, I mean, certainly the podcast

Starting point is 03:04:39 had no business model for ages. I mean, I don't think I had any sponsors until, I'd have to go back and look, but episode 30, 40, 50, I can't remember. And rewinding the clock though, you mentioned something in passing that most folks are not going to recognize, and that was opening the kimono, OTK. So this event that I put together. And when I did this event, I was curious. I always try to go, and I'm not saying this is the right move. I just like the mathematics and the lack of crowding in high-end. I always like to go high-end if I can. It provides a margin of safety that I think is, there are many reasons for it, but it provides a margin of safety that's very appealing from an economic perspective, right? The better your profit margins, the more room you have for making mistakes.

Starting point is 03:05:29 And then I work backwards. So in this case, what I did was I was like, okay, I can't remember exactly what I started, but I was like, well, could I make whatever the number, 5 million bucks or whatever it was from one event? I can't remember. I'm making that number up. The math isn't going to actually compute. But I worked backwards and I was like, okay, if I'm going to do that, I'd gone to some high-end events that I'd paid for backwards and I was like, okay, if I'm going to do that, I'd gone to some high-end events that I'd paid for. And I was like, well, it looks like I'm going to have to charge a lot. So it's going to have to be, let's just say minimum 10 grand.

Starting point is 03:05:52 And then the sooner people purchase, the less expensive it is. It's going to escalate. So it's going to go from 10 and then the next week it's 12.5 and then the next week it's 15,000. And it was effectively, as one would expect with the name, sharing everything that I'd done with my first few books. At this point, I guess it was my first two books. And it seems very quaint at the time because of how constrained it was. Now it would be like a million and one different tools, or at least that would be expected. But content marketing at the time, which was more like a biathlon instead of like a quadruple

Starting point is 03:06:28 decathlon, which it is now. There's so many different options. And I put together a blog post, which is the equivalent of like a sales page or an email, a million different forms to take. And then there was an application process, which was legitimate. That wasn't bullshit. I wanted to make sure the composition was impeccable. I wanted the room to be not just diverse from an experiential perspective. I wanted a lot of people from different industries, different strengths, different weaknesses, different networks. I also wanted people who were fucking cool and low maintenance.

Starting point is 03:07:00 I just did not want assholes. And one of the ways I vetted for that, I didn't want anyone going into debt to go to this event. I didn't want anyone jeopardizing their finances. I didn't want anyone taking out a second mortgage. I didn't want anyone, I didn't want to be responsible for anyone else's bad financial decisions if they were betting the farm on this. So I asked people to provide in their Google form application, I was like, would you be willing to provide proof that you have, say, at least $100,000 in savings if you're going to spend 15 grand on an event? And one guy replied,

Starting point is 03:07:29 and he was like, I don't think you need to be my financial nanny, but if you want to come onto the tarmac and look at my private jet too, you're welcome to do that. And I was like, thank you for disqualifying yourself. You're like, don't need that guy at the event. no thank you and this is going somewhere so i i pre-sold the event with a blog post and a google form that was it might have been woofoo at the time and then then i was able to decide by the way at that point do i really want to do this i can still back out i haven't taken any money people have committed like they're in so i thought about it and then i was like all right now how do i work backwards from this cost and ensure this was going to be, I think a three day event, if I remember correctly, like how can I ensure that I have the peace of mind of knowing I've delivered that value in the

Starting point is 03:08:13 first few hours of the first day? And I was like, okay, how would I do that? Right. This is a question I didn't have an answer at the time. I was like, well, I'll do something I've never done. I'm going to share my actual book proposals and marketing proposals and I'll redact a few things. But otherwise, as soon as we get there, that's one of the first things I'll do. I'll be like, here you go. Keys to the castle. Boom. You just made your money back. This is worth what you paid. The second thing I did, this is not relevant to the... Well, it's going to get to the point because I was talking about buying. Sometimes you have to buy your first customers or your first proof of concept. If you want marquee clients, sometimes

Starting point is 03:08:47 you have to take a loss on that in time or money to make it happen. I really firmly believe that for a lot of things. Just like Reddit wanted to prove its ad system worked, they want a case study. So what do they do? They give you free advertising. Brilliant. That's a good trade. So in a way, they bought their first case study. I'll share one more thing just because people who run events might find this helpful or even just like small groups masterminds there were bios for every person at the event and people had a bound book basically with everyone's short bios and we took i want to say probably two hours or roughly 100 people and everybody in the room stood up and they got to do a brag, a give, and then an ask. Oh, I like that. So they get up because people, especially at higher end events are like,

Starting point is 03:09:32 well, you know, I run a tech thing. Like, oh, I have an app. And it's like, oh, that guy's like the founder of Instagram. Come on, like give us a little bit more color. And that's not a real example. None of the founders of Instagram were there, but sometimes you, you end up in these scenarios where people, for a lot of good reasons, or not for bad reasons, are being excessively humble. And then you really just don't have an idea of what the hell people are doing. And so I was like, get up and give a real brag. Like, detailed brag.

Starting point is 03:09:59 Don't make it 20 minutes, right? This is give one to two minutes, like real brag. Then give something you're really good at or something you have access to where you feel you're world-class, like where can you help people give a give there's one give and then an ask like something you really need help with or want help with could be anything. And everyone who's listening for every person, if they have a give, you need take a note. If they have an ask that you can help with, write it down. And that alone, I think, made the event hugely successful. To this day, I'd have to go back and check, but I mean, literally this was, who knows, I don't know, 2012 or something. For at least five years, maybe still to this date,

Starting point is 03:10:42 there was a Facebook group for those attendees that was active every week. And people still talk about it. Now, coming back to the original point, I'm talking so much in this, but it's more like a conversation than a podcast at this point. That's what, isn't that a podcast? Podcast, it's a podcast. I spent so much fucking money on that event to over-deliver, right? Like rented out a castle, had like flamenco dancers, fucking classical musicians. And plus, by the way, if you do an event in Napa, you're dealing with basically the cartel, not like mafia cartel, but coincidentally, everybody's going to charge $8 for a cup of coffee, right? You're not going to be able to

Starting point is 03:11:17 negotiate anything is my point. So this event ended up being so incredibly expensive, basically made nothing, but was a huge home run for people. I felt really good about it. I learned a ton, was an incredible investment of time. So one could argue that was a waste of time. But I developed relationships with 100 people who I handpicked. I had speakers at the event and a lot of questions that informed the whole thing. And if I ever wanted to do another event, I would guess I would have at least 90% of those people who would immediately book a second, like OTK2, done, no problem. So if I ever fell in hard times, quit the podcast business,

Starting point is 03:12:00 I'm like, you know what, I'm just going to do like one event a year. I know that that will work because I can pull different levers. I've talked to people who went to that event and they're like, that was the best event I ever went to. And I was a little jealous. I didn't go. I don't know if I saw the blog post, but a few comments. It's like, it's really interesting.

Starting point is 03:12:11 You're like, you didn't build a website. You sent out an email, which everyone can do that right now. If you want to start a business, you can pre-sell. You can have a form. I like that idea of like,

Starting point is 03:12:19 how do you survey people? And then you could filter who do you want to sell to and see if they're raising their hand to be customers. And then you could sell them something. I love that. Something see if they're raising their hand to be customers. And then you could sell them something. I love that. Something you said literally years ago, it was in Denver. Remember the, what was the conference we were both at? Somewhere in Denver.

Starting point is 03:12:31 It was 303 conference. Oh, I can't remember. It was the, those two brothers, Born Team Bros. Okay. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You said on conference. I never forgot about this because you said, I either do the most expensive or free. Yep.

Starting point is 03:12:44 And I love that because i'm always about the best price i'm the low end that's my thing i love it i'm like give me the best deal and so app sumo is about great deals and then you as well like you want to do podcast partnership it's going to be 50 60 whatever 40 it's going to be the most expensive and you're going to get a very high quality delivery and then how do you work backwards from that you don't have to figure it out in advance, right? I decided like, okay, part of the marketing positioning is how premium this podcast is. It is incredibly expensive.

Starting point is 03:13:13 I mean, we're going to get into the weeds here, but talking about like the 10%, what's the extra 10% that you can do? Like in the case of me pitching the manufacturer or whatever. So one thing that I've done with a lot of my sponsors, not everybody, because not everybody needs this, but what are the levers in a podcast? Well, let's just say the basic economic model for most podcasts, not all, is sponsorship. People are buying ads. Why are they buying ads? Because they want to sell products. What are some of the

Starting point is 03:13:40 metrics that matter to someone trying to sell products? Let's assume for simplicity's sake that we're talking about direct response. Let's say we're talking about AppSumo. You're going to be tracking the numbers that you just mentioned. Traffic, conversion, average order size. Now let's say AppSumo came to Tim Ferriss' show and decided we want a sponsor. Hypothetically, let's say, number one, I have to try the product. So I test every single product within reason. There's some enterprise stuff, in which case I'll do a bunch of polling and determine how my audience feels. Like one to 10, no seven allowed. How strongly would you recommend this to a friend? Do it off hours so

Starting point is 03:14:13 the people who work at the company don't see it and can't spam it. Anyway, there are ways to do it if you don't test. But I generally test stuff. Let's say I test apps and I'm like, great fucking product. What is the additional 10%? The additional 10% is I will look at the website and I'll say, how well does this convert? Because what is a nightmare scenario for me? Because one could say efficient, one could say lazy, one could say they're similar. If someone has a great product and I put time into a great read and I put it in front of my audience and then their website doesn't convert and they blame it on me, that's way too much brain damage, way too much wasted effort. Now I have churn, right? They're like, well, your podcast didn't work and they leave.

Starting point is 03:14:53 And then I have to find another podcast sponsor. So I might send my team to that sponsor, record a loom and say, we'd love to have you as a sponsor, but we'd like you to make these following changes to the website, at least to a unique landing page to improve conversion. We'd like you to improve in the following seven ways in the same way that that 17 year old sent you a video, which was like, here's how these things suck. I wouldn't word it that way, but I'd say, we want you to convert as strongly as possible. We know our audience really well. This is how they're going to read your website. Here's what the flow looks like.

Starting point is 03:15:27 These are two places where they're probably going to abandon the cart. Fix, fix, fix. Doesn't take that long because we've done it a million times. And then guess what? Then I have a sponsor who lasts like a year, two years, three years. And they spend millions of dollars instead of spending a lot on the upfront and then churning. It sounds like a lot, but it's actually not that much effort if you have the right team. So let's hop back into the weeds of entrepreneurship.

Starting point is 03:15:51 That sounds bad. Onto the front lines. Validation. What are some other means of validating your idea to try to ensure that you're not diluting yourself any more than is helpful? I've done it the other way where I've spent six months. I built a site, betarcade.com, spent six months, $100,000 on engineers. And then I spent $10,000 flying to Vegas talking to a lawyer. It was a sports betting site. First off, I don't gamble. Not a great business for me to even start. Launched it, no one came. I could have easily found that on a weekend instead of spending six. And this is the thing I'm trying to tell people. I've done it the other way. Maybe you need to go through the other way to find that truth for yourself, but there's another door. Two other ways that you can validate business ideas that I really like.

Starting point is 03:16:28 I would say the one that you really made famous. Ads and landing page. The only thing that, one, I don't like spending money if I don't have to. Ads cost money, and then you have to figure out the ad and landing page. But it is a way like Kettle and Fire, Justin's company. That's how it got started. He did bone broth ads. He found out that was was super cheap term,

Starting point is 03:16:47 had a landing page people could buy. And he's like, this is working. And now it's a hundred million dollar business. So he followed your method. The other method I would say is marketplaces. So where are people already spending money that they're raising their hands? So Etsy, Craigslist, Facebook, Amazon, and how can you put even a fake or real product ideally and see if anyone's going to buy it? So let's say you want to do like a digital equipment like microphones cameras whatever lighting business as a rental you can go put that online right now on craigslist in your local area or whatever site is local and see does anyone actually message you about it and if they do cool go get the product or figure out now you have a business or if they don't okay try something else out so those are the other two ways outside of, I would say, the pre-selling validation method

Starting point is 03:17:26 to seeing if you have actual customers who want what you're doing. And the constraint of spending as little as possible, well, generally, this is very broad strokes, but in my experience and certainly in the experience of a lot of people who are building businesses, not mimicking the 1% of the 1% of the 1%, right? Like the, I can't get fit until I'm Tom Brady, which is generally not a great approach, but the people who are building real businesses, businesses that produce a lot of cash very often test incredibly inexpensively. If you look at the origins of CrossFit, that's the case, right? I remember the very early,

Starting point is 03:18:00 super early days of CrossFit. This was not a, let's put $30 million in and see what happens. It was prototype, iterate, prototype, iterate, small group, second location, considering business models, et cetera. I mean, this is true in so many, so many, so many different places. Any other means of validation that you want to mention or an example of someone who used any one of those that comes to mind? You already mentioned Kettle and Fire. Yeah, I mean, another one you could think of that's kind of silly is Facebook. I mean, Zuck copied, he didn't even invent it, this website. And that wasn't his first business. He actually created a face thing that got banned by Harvard, so to start

Starting point is 03:18:37 again. Then he created Wirehog. No one knows these ones. I don't know anything about that. Yeah, Wirehog was a Napster competitor. Okay. That didn't really do much. But again, one thing in the beginning of the book is how do you get going? And he at least got going in his third idea, which was Facebook, or thefacebook.com. I believe he built it in a weekend, if not three days, give or take. And just by him, he sent an email, built it really quick, sent an email, and then it

Starting point is 03:18:57 went viral instantly. It wasn't even his idea. He copied the Winklevosses. Yeah. And there's just a lot of these ideas. You're like, you start realizing it. Most of the biggest businesses didn't start big. Like, okay, Google, two dudes at Stanford for a research project. Huh, that's interesting. Zuck in a college dorm, Bill Gates in Albuquerque, shout out Albuquerque, you know, working for someone else creating software.

Starting point is 03:19:17 And it was by doing these things where you had validation very quickly and had success that people wanted it, led them then to continue it for extended periods of time. And that's possible. I think, here's what happens though, Tim, if I may. This is the fucking problem, man. Everyone's like, my business is different. It's the unique one. I'm like, you're the unique one? Really? It's you. Okay. Do it. Just go try it your way. And then let's try maybe an alternative way after six months with no results. So corollary, do the easy thing first. If you want to, okay, you really want to do the hard way. Okay, fine. What you really want to do is build the flashy website and do the thing and hire a bunch of influencers and have girls in

Starting point is 03:19:57 bikinis prancing around with your energy drink, whatever. Okay, fine. Maybe you could start though with a blog post. Maybe you could start with an email. Maybe you could start with something that's very cheap, very fast, fast, fast, fast constraints. Are you hiding behind something big? Are you talking about the sexy photo shoot and the Super Bowl ad that you're never fucking going to do? Not because you couldn't do it, but because you're hiding behind the big thing and you're not trying the small thing. What is the easy thing that you can do first? Do that. And this comes up all the time in my business when I'm talking with employees, for instance,

Starting point is 03:20:33 who have already embraced this by this point. I'm like, we can do the hard thing. We can do the expensive thing. I'm not averse to it. But what is something fast or something cheap that we can do first? Because if it works, then that is a game changer. And then we have these backup plans. I'll give you another example. How can you keep your life incredibly simple? Well, in the case of podcasting, in the beginning, I realized if I end up with tons of accounts payable, accounts receivable, invoices, net

Starting point is 03:21:06 payment terms, et cetera, that will insert a lot of complexity into my life. So from the very beginning, I did something that a lot of folks said would never work, which was you prepay for all your ads. There's no, you book and then you run it and then you pay us 30 days later and then that drags out because it's the holidays or maybe you don't reply to email and then we're chasing you. There's none of that. You pay up front. That's it. And that is an example of let's try the easy thing first or the simple thing, the beneficial thing. If people say no, we can always go to that 30 because everyone does that. But let's

Starting point is 03:21:46 try the unorthodox thing first in the sake of simplicity. And every once in a while it works. And that ended up being a key determinant, I think, of my ability to build and scale and, most importantly, sustain this for 10 years. My dad would always joke, it's better to be chased for the money than you chase them. Better to be on that end of things. That's definitely how the AppSumo model has worked out. The idea with AppSumo,

Starting point is 03:22:14 just maybe a few more examples to get people like, oh shit, I can really get going. We say now, not how. That's definitely from the book. Examples of this is the team's like, we definitely need the engineers to build this first. Definitely. I'm like, really? All right, let me give you two examples. So one of them was we wanted, as part of our VIP memberships, we wanted to give out credits. So kind of like your event, how do we make spending $100 for our membership a no-brainer? Well, we give you $100. So they're

Starting point is 03:22:38 like, well, we need to build it, right? We did the model, fine, but let's go build it. I'm like, no, no, no. What's the fastest way you can find out today? Let's email people who are not customers or people who canceled, give them free credit, tell them to buy our membership. And if they buy their membership, they get free credit. They did it with a 17% conversion rate. Now we're building that kind of stuff into the business. Great. You did it. And if it didn't work, you can ask those people, why not? Or you can try something else. Instead of us spending a week, two weeks, four weeks, a month, two months now now product management and designing it, all these other things. There's another example recently where we want to offer a new feature for this VIP membership, the same thing. They're like,

Starting point is 03:23:12 well, we need the engineers to build SSO, single sign-on, so that you can make it easy to log in. Again, have you asked a customer? Just go ask the customers to pay us for it. If they want this feature, see if they'll prepay for it. And if they do, great, we'll build it. If not, we're not going to build it. And that is something that you can keep doing, whether you're an 80 million or a hundred million or a $1 business. Yeah, totally. Yeah. A lot of the time, just now in terms of now, not how, right. We think oftentimes, and there's a place for this, but you know, ready, aim, fire. Sometimes it's ready, fire, aim, or just fire, right? Fire, fire, fire, fire, fire, fire, fire, fire.

Starting point is 03:23:46 We're going to take a hard left turn here because you mentioned before we started you mentioned Hanukkah gifts. A question I often ask is best purchases for under $50, under $100. What has made some impact? Because the goal is to

Starting point is 03:24:01 give people listening some things that might be helpful or interesting that aren't going to break the bank. What you got? All right, so Hanukkah, or the Jewish Santa, a.k.a. Noah Kagan's here. I brought you Hanukkah, holiday, Yalda, Kwanzaa, all the gifts, depending on whatever people want.

Starting point is 03:24:18 And so these are my favorite things. I think almost every single thing here is under 40 bucks that I brought for you. And by the way, you could totally give it back. You know when people gift you and you're like, fuck, I really don't want this? Feel free to bucks. Great. That I brought for you. And I don't, and by the way, you totally give it back. You know, people gift you and you're like, fuck, I really don't want this. Feel free to be like, yay or nay on it too. Okay. All right.

Starting point is 03:24:29 First off. Didn't expect a bag of goodies. Okay. This is my, I wasn't able to get the Amazon basics one because it's sold out, but this is a, I think $14, $15 tiny travel backpack. And so I always leave one in my main suitcase. And every time you travel, you're like, oh shit, I want to do a day trip, but I don't want to carry my computer suitcase and every time you travel you're like oh shit I want to do a day trip but I don't want to carry my computer backpack and I don't have anything else

Starting point is 03:24:49 so I always leave a similar one of this in my bag you can get this on Amazon literally I was going to be buying one of these in the next few weeks so thank you that's a yay this is a yay this is 100% a yay because as you said you think you already have a backpack but that thing's full of your laptop and all your shit, and it's heavy. And you sometimes just want a day pack. And that's what this is. So this is a yay.

Starting point is 03:25:11 Thank you. Awesome. You like board games? This has been the go-to board game, Shot and Totten. Shot and Totten. I think it's $11.99. It must be. Oh, look at this.

Starting point is 03:25:20 Okay. I've never played it. It's a more basic card game. It's kind of like poker, but with cards. So you get all these different players. License to Kilt! That's the tagline. I like it.

Starting point is 03:25:31 I know you had the Taco Cat game. I bought that because you're a five-bullet Friday. Love that. Yeah, it's a fun game. Similar game. Basically, you lay out cards. It's a two-player game. And then you just play against for each of the cards.

Starting point is 03:25:41 There's about 10. You play three cards. I play three cards. And whoever has the better three set gets that card. And whoever gets the most cards wins the game that was a little fast amazing super awesome game shout out eric southwell he's the one who brought that board game to me yeah thank you and also i want to highlight something here just because i recognize something so shot and thought and i was like this must be german so of course it is and the germans are very good at designing board games and more precisely re Knizia, I believe that's how you'd say his name,

Starting point is 03:26:05 who designed this, is one of the most prolific game designers in history. He's designed hundreds of games, and he's won all of the awards. And he has this incredible set of processes and sort of creative methods by which he's one of the most successful game designers of all time. So that's also cool to see his name on that. Sean Ton, one of my favorites. You have Element. You've tried Element, right? Oh yeah. Sponsor of the podcast, too. You already have a bunch of it, don't you?

Starting point is 03:26:35 Let me see what you got. I brought you the citrus salt. Oh, I got a ton. Thank you. That is one of my favorite flavors. I take it every day. They sponsor me, too. Do you invest in them? No, I didn't. I couldn't get it in time so i just printed it out dude this is shout out tinen.com one of my best friends in the world what is it this is he was the one that taught me about this it's basically travel clippers i'm a huge nail

Starting point is 03:26:58 clipper and i i'm very particular about my nail clipping like all these fucking walgreens cvs they're just shit. And I finally, I got this because on his recommendation and it's a game changer. I wasn't going to give you mine, but that's kind of, it's too weird. Yeah, it'd be a little grody.

Starting point is 03:27:12 A little weird. So this is going to your address. Okay, amazing. These are $39.99. It's literally this big. Okay, so it's like the size of your pinky finger. Size of your pinky finger. It's very low profile.

Starting point is 03:27:23 Super low profile. And for people who want to find this, how they answer this is a this is a zwilling zwilling oh it's a zwilling like the kitchen knife company exactly and this is fire so super tiny but it opens up and the sharpness of it which i'm very particular about you can ask my girlfriend she's like you always cut your nails i'm like yeah i hate long nails i love this guy so big shout out for this because i've always been looking for like the perfect one. Wow. $39.99. All right. We'll put this in the show notes for everybody along with the other Hanukkah gifts. Hanukkah holiday.

Starting point is 03:27:51 I think you may have read it, but I brought you my favorite kind of memoir book of all time. Million miles in a thousand years. I am actually going to admit, I have never even heard of this book. So tell me more. This guy, Donald. Okay. And a quote more. This guy, Donald.

Starting point is 03:28:05 Okay. And a quote from Anne Lamott, who owns the author of one of my favorite books also. Oh, what book is that? Bird by Bird on creative process. Oh, by the way, you're Julia Cameron, Artist's Way. Oh, thanks. That book is so good. It's a good one.

Starting point is 03:28:17 It's a good one. Yeah. So Anne Lamott has an amazing quote on the cover of this. So Donald Miller. Donald Miller. And this is how I learned to live a better Story is the subtitle. That's cool already. A Million Miles in a Thousand Years. This is the book I gift the most.

Starting point is 03:28:32 Okay. And it inspired me to bike across America. But the bigger concept for everyone out there is that we all want to live a life without regret. We all want to live, not even with regret, don't even worry about that. We all want to live an interesting life. And so how do you do it? And so Donald doesn't, and he's a christian author he talks about i'm jewish like and i love it still it's still my most favorite book and he's definitely i love him and what he teaches you though is it's not necessarily like here's necessarily the tactic but how do you approach life to be more interesting so how are you around more interesting people how do you do more interesting things like he didn't like his life

Starting point is 03:29:03 and he was like i'm just gonna bike across America. And so he joined a group and then biked across America. And by doing interesting things, he led an interesting life. And I think it's similar to the four-hour work week and Million Dollar Weekend, where you read it and you're like, I'm going to go do something. And I think this really is that about how to have a fulfilling and interesting life. Amazing. I'll give a little teaser then also. So here's the top of the back of the book. After writing a successful memoir, Donald Miller's life stalled. During what should have been the height of his success, he found himself unwilling to get out of bed,

Starting point is 03:29:32 avoiding responsibility, even questioning the meaning of life. But when two movie producers proposed turning his memoir into a movie, he found himself launched into a new story filled with risk, possibility, beauty, and meaning. And then I'll just give the first portion of the first sentence that then leads after that, which is, a million miles in a thousand years chronicles Miller's rare opportunity to edit his life into a great story. Goes from sleeping all day to riding his bike across America. Amazing.

Starting point is 03:29:56 Alright. Yeah, man. And we all can live an interesting life. It's not exclusive. So far, so good, man. I brought you back an old school one. This is an old school one. Our team was looking up things. This is what you put on your blog uh in 2000 i think 11 oh my god one of your favorite toys i know what this is this is hilarious okay this is like a monkey slingshot and it screams when you shoot it across the room wow i haven't seen one of these in a long time this is a early recommendation that

Starting point is 03:30:25 you put on your site this must have been from the pliocene era on my blog way back in the day yeah we did a little research and so i know you like that i got one for my house it is fucking annoying oh my it'll drive you nuts it'll drive you completely insane but it's uh it's a fun toy i got it for other people for the holidays and i think it's like i'm like giving it to them and getting the hell out of their house because the screaming's loud flying monkey yeah no it is it is not it is not low volume thank you yeah man happy holidays yeah i appreciate it and i can put all of that into the backpack that you gave me also exactly this is the last one i love my pilot g2.38 i need to get sponsored by these guys i know you you have pens and i've seen you have pens all around but this this is just like everywhere I travel, I always have with me here. I bring them

Starting point is 03:31:08 to Spain, have it all around the house, boxes of them. Yeah. This is one of my favorite pens and I needed one. And I use blue. I almost always use blue instead of black because I copy edit a lot. And if you're printing stuff out, it's in black, blue just makes it easier. So nailed it. Thank you. Oh yeah, yeah man probably g2.38 all right where to go from here i mean what have we missed we've talked we've gone from the philosophical to hiremymom.com to nail clippers to bicycling across the united states anything else that you'd like to mention well Well, actually, let me ask you a question that relates to the things I'm considering just to ask you for help. So YouTube, how do you

Starting point is 03:31:51 think about YouTube? And do you think I should do more video? Because I have conflicting feelings about it, as you know. And then there's always that voice, not always, but there's that voice maybe 10% of the time, which is just like, are you just being weak? Are you just afraid to compete? Right? Which comes up with various things. Like maybe you're intimidated by the production quality, the ability that you see here. So you're just not willing to play the game because you don't like losing. That's less of the time. That's like 10, 20% of the time. Thoughts on YouTube and specifically thoughts on if you think I could do YouTube in a way that would be fun and energizing in and of itself so in other words something that i would find intrinsically

Starting point is 03:32:31 rewarding even if it doesn't pop right yeah i'm curious the voice in your head oh that's that's with this youtube with like yeah with the 10 or 20 well it's not all the time i was just talking to a friend of mine about this yesterday i I like competing. I've always been a good competitor. It drives me. And I enjoy the stakes of competition in sports. I enjoy the stakes of competition in a million different ways. It drives me to be better. And it genuinely is something that I derive pleasure from. I get a lot out of competition. So there are things that, for instance, at some point I would love to compete in archery. And I think there are some interesting opportunities there. I'm a happier person when I compete in some capacities. So being very competitive, seeing the market get really saturated with podcasts, and seeing some very good people come in and how it's skewed

Starting point is 03:33:25 pretty heavily into entertainment. So it has gone from, I think, what I find plays to my strengths, which is mostly kind of education, practical, tactical, et cetera, skewed pretty heavily towards entertain or bust. You can have some of the how-to and prescription, but you must be entertaining to cut through the noise. And I can be funny occasionally, but it's not something I do professionally. There are people who are far better. Yeah, pros. Right? Pros. Yeah, like Rogan. I mean, he's a pro. This is a superpower that he's honed. And there are many others, a lot of entertainers, comedians, actors, actresses, who are really good behind the mic and in front of the camera. So I think there is certainly part of me, because I like to compete, generally hate losing. And you have to be careful how you define losing

Starting point is 03:34:18 because you could find yourself caught in sort of a Venus flytrap of FOMO and all sorts of issues, which I don't contend with that much, to be honest. That voice is one of, are you sure that you are opting out of this for good reasons? Or is it because you just don't want to compete? Great coaches don't give answers, by the way. They just ask questions. All right. Oh, you reminded me.

Starting point is 03:34:40 You're not getting out of here. We'll talk a little with coaches. We'll do the 48-hour challenge. Maybe we can put front load a little bit of that. But there's the question around this YouTube thing. What would make the choice obvious? If I'm being honest, I think the choice is obvious, which is I don't do it. I mean, I think that like, I mean, I think, I think it's pretty straightforward.

Starting point is 03:34:55 Partially because I see no way to make YouTube pop without compromising my privacy more than I already have from a facial recognition perspective. And that is already a challenging aspect of my life from a privacy security perspective. Like, a lot of weird stuff happens. If anybody's curious, just read a blog post I wrote, which is titled, I think it's 11 Reasons Not to Become Famous. And that'll outline a lot of the issues, by the way, that people who are just starting out maybe a year prior to that coming out have, by and large, I'm in a number of private WhatsApp groups with various folks and a lot of very, very successful creators. And they're like, oh yeah, check, check, check, like right down the list. I've had to deal with all of those things.

Starting point is 03:35:39 So it's not unique to me. And they're much bigger celebrities, of course. I'm not Taylor Swift or something. But I actually really like my privacy. So I think that if I had to make a snap judgment decision right now, it's like, yeah, I'm not going to use that as a primary tool. It's appealing, though, because I recognize how effective it can be if you do a great job. But there's also part of me that looks at it and I'm like, well, much like choosing a business, much like choosing anything, a sport to play, if you don't have an advantage and that advantage often is that you really enjoy doing it on some level, you're not going to have, at the very least, the staying power to persist over time. You're not going to

Starting point is 03:36:22 have the endurance. So it's like, if you love golf, maybe you should consider doing something with golf. Instead of being like, well, I think Midwestern moms, even though I'm from New York City and I'm a male, I think Midwestern moms really need this when their kid is four years old. Maybe that shouldn't be your business because if there's a Midwestern mom who has a four-year-old who's got nothing but passion in her veins for that, she's going to beat you. She's going to own you, especially over time. So that's another way that I think about it. But I also assume that there may be things

Starting point is 03:36:54 hiding in plain sight that I'm missing. I got suggestions for you that I think will be low effort, high results. But before we get into that, what's your goal? What's my goal? Yeah, what would you say your goal is? I think the goals around it would be to experiment with one of the few means that i see of expanding the podcast like i do a lot with this podcast in terms of pulling interesting levers in the world

Starting point is 03:37:21 right like as a means of attempting to the best of my ability to really impact individual lives, but also on a macro level to really change conversations around, say, psychedelics and psychedelic-assisted therapies. Also discussing risks, but there are many different things I would like to introduce people to. And the larger my audience is, I should say qualified audience, right? I'm not convinced that YouTube necessarily will contribute to the profile of my, say, audience as it stands today, TBD. I think it probably could. If I could expand the reach of the podcast, and if I'm talking to most podcasters who have been around for a while, given a lot of the platform changes and given the black box nature of a lot of the analytics, once you hit a critical mass, it becomes very challenging to grow your podcast.

Starting point is 03:38:15 There is nobody after two drinks, if they're being honest with me, who says anything otherwise. And there is a grace period in the beginning when you have that kind of meteoric up and to the right. But it's like, this is going to be an exaggeration, but it's like once you become, like when you're becoming Google, sure, you can have that like double, triple, 10x every year growth. But when you get to a certain point, it becomes more challenging on a percentage basis to influence the size of the mothership. So the goal, and I'm not convinced that YouTube is the only way, but it's to extend the reach of the podcast. At this point, there are other metrics I could pull in, but let's use that for simplicity's sake. I think that's a great question is how do you stay hungry when you're full?

Starting point is 03:38:52 Or do you need to stay hungry? I think that's another way. That's a great point. It's like, what happens when you finally have the money or when you have the audience? And so how do we rethink what that vision and that purpose is? I noticed that was a shift for myself where like, oh, i finally get money so i got it's like dude you got it there's no you don't need to be angry about mark and facebook anymore no no for myself right it was therapy and a lot of work to be able to get to the point where it's like how do i want to spend that day and it's like my day can talk about money and startups and business with people like yourself and learn how you think about things run apps zoom or promote tools like wow i can do this

Starting point is 03:39:25 every day for until i never die yeah and so i think being clear on the goal of where it goes like for me with with my content i just want to keep doing it for 10 years so i'm on a 10 year 10 year plan and so that that's a balance of i like doing just business stuff i don't do bouncy balls i don't blow ferraris i'm not in prison there's no squid games unless it's a business related one yeah and it's like how do i do that with what i want and what the audience is going to be benefited by for a long period of time and that's i'd say for specifically with content my my interest okay so what might be you know sort of low effort high reward experiments so a few things number one who says you have to be on the camera now when you're doing these videos?

Starting point is 03:40:05 I was thinking that. I just don't know what the alternative looks like. Well, it's just you're asking the question, but then your guest is the one getting featured. So there's actually a reduction of the amount of exposure as well as on your YouTube thumbnails. It doesn't even show you. It just shows the guest. Yeah, yeah.

Starting point is 03:40:16 And so there could be wide shots, but it really could be a show where it's more featuring the person you're talking to. Yeah, totally. So that is one massive thing that in your channel, right? You can actually have great content, but it's not maybe you on camera. Same thing. How much, like I can tell, but how much are you putting into like producing your YouTube videos? Uh, I honestly don't even know at this point. I want to be the tools we use shape us, right? So I, it depends on what we mean by production. I okay with high production value what i have seen on

Starting point is 03:40:45 youtube in the last year and a half two years especially is a lot of fishing for clippable moments with like the most salacious clickbaity stuff used as headlines and text overlays and i do not want to shape myself into looking at my tent through the lens of like, when can I clip something into the Jerry Springer fight scene? Yeah, my baby mama. I don't want to suddenly go fishing for that because that will start to affect the macro level. I know people who plan their podcasts now around the clips. And so the drive becomes the clips. Now, I'm also, also i think longer form youtube

Starting point is 03:41:28 this is something where i'm unqualified to say but i have had clips on different platforms that have had like a hundred million views i mean i've had a couple go nuts which is a credit to my team however with those clips which have clear attribution to this podcast, I have seen effectively 0% conversion to increased downloads. So the value capture from the platforms is a very subtle thing. But the amount of value that platforms are capturing, they capture is all the value. They get all the value. All the upside.

Starting point is 03:42:00 That's a whole other discussion. Versus creator value capture is something I have paid attention to and continue to pay attention to. But why do you ask about how much I'm putting into it? I'm coming back on small effort, high results. So what you keep saying, or the underlying subtext, is that you want to grow the podcast. Yeah. It seems like growing the podcast is it.

Starting point is 03:42:20 And it's not clear that YouTube actually makes a difference. So I would wonder, what have you done in the past that grew the podcast? I mean, I would also say if I had to pick and choose at this point, frankly, just in terms of like, okay, winter's coming, not to be all dramatic about it, but if I'm looking at, and keeping in mind too, it's not like I have any insider information, but I do know a lot of people in tech who work on a lot of things. And if I'm thinking about defensibility, long-term viability, reaching my 1,000 true fans, and hopefully 1,000 or 1 million true fans, 2 million true fans, I mean, we're already in the millions with the newsletter and so on. But I would choose the newsletter over the podcast at this point.

Starting point is 03:43:02 How can you, coming back to, I think, how we like to approach this, how can you experiment? So let me give you specifics. How can you experiment with YouTube to drive a newsletter? So one, I think that's where I would look at it because you're thinking YouTube to podcast, but maybe YouTube to newsletter. So specifically thumbnails, not really that tight. Your title's not really that tight because you

Starting point is 03:43:20 probably don't have pros. We have a professional person that just does title and thumbnails. And we have a thumbnail-specific just designer for the team. And it is interesting. Do you want to compete in it? Maybe not. But I think you're already doing it.

Starting point is 03:43:31 You have cameras here. Yeah, I do. And so passing that to a team that chops it up. So for me, I show up to the video. They have the pre-production done. I've already chosen the topics. We've agreed on that.

Starting point is 03:43:42 Pre-production's done. I show up, do my part, and then it just happens. But they're testing thumbnails. They're're testing titles there's a shorts team that does all the short work and what my recommendation is is that I think you can invest a little more in that and then just put that into your newsletter all of youtube is is a legion legion always sounds so creepy but like as a generation of audience that you can then have as a frequent audience in your newsletter yeah I wonder I wonder. I wonder. I mean, it's worth testing. I know we've tested different subscription options. I don't want to take us too far afield.

Starting point is 03:44:09 So again, I think you could have a shorts team, probably actually a dedicated agency. I wouldn't even bring it in-house. I can recommend someone. I would also consider just having someone that does your titles and thumbnails on a consistent basis so that as you're doing great content, does someone want to watch this six-hour interview? Yeah, a lot do, but give them some shorts because they see great shorts. They're like, oh shit, where's more of that? And then go to the video. They see the video, then in the videos,

Starting point is 03:44:31 it's like, let me go to the newsletter and everything is around the newsletter. Now in the podcast, I always, again, in business, everything's about what's the goal and what's the thing that actually makes impact on the goal. So on podcasts, I do think you get potentially going on other shows. Could be-

Starting point is 03:44:44 Yeah, it always helps. Yeah, if you want to do it, I think that you get potentially going on other shows. Could be. Yeah, it always helps. Yeah, if you want to do it. I think that's an important part that you said. I don't want it. I want to do it or I don't. Like, you have to be mindful of what we want to actually commit to because that is how people burn out. It's doing the thing they don't want to do to the goal they may or may not actually want.

Starting point is 03:44:57 I'm aware that the drive to compete can lead me to do things that are not actually in my best interest. Just because you can win at a game or think you could win doesn't mean you should participate in that game. That is how you create a life you don't want to live. Yeah. And so, yeah, I don't feel rushed TBD to be continued. So we may pick up offline chatting about that,

Starting point is 03:45:18 but let's make sure we talk about a few things. So two things. So the first is, and we don't have to spend a ton of time on this, but spend a little bit of time. Lessons from spending more than a million dollars on coaching. So I've got all sorts of bullets here. CEO coach, biz coach, boxing coach, therapist, health coach, marketing coach, dating coach, three different ones, Hebrew and now Spanish coach. And the question I want to ask is related to all these inputs, because we also

Starting point is 03:45:46 talked about the top three, bottom three, the weekly, the monthly, the Q1, the this, the that. And what we're talking about is, you know, I've seen many examples of people, including myself, get inundated with inputs. This happens also when people read too many books, or they have too many advisors for the startup. and now they have 20 people they respect, or 10 people they respect, even four people they respect, giving them conflicting recommendations. Or it's just too many recommendations. If you have 100 New Year's resolutions, you have no New Year's resolutions. So the first thing I'm curious about is how, for yourself, do you choose what to act on outside of the business KPIs and stuff, let's just say?

Starting point is 03:46:29 Let's break these down. Let's take my marketing coach. I work with Moody Glasgow and cold messaged him on LinkedIn. Now, when you think about coaching, I think instead of having mentors, let's have very specific coaches in very specific areas that I'm weak in. Or the people around me. We have a lot of coaches for the team. Almost every single leader in the executive team of AppSumo has a coach. And with Moody, it was going to him and saying, I'm not as strong on some of the data stuff. I'm

Starting point is 03:46:54 not as strong on some of the marketing research stuff and branding stuff. Those are my specific areas of need. And when we meet, let's really focus on that. Now, this is really the interesting caveat with coaches. You're getting a coach because it's the things you don't want to do or the things you're not aware of. And so you have to be mindful of resistance. The resistance is almost always the direction I've noticed that ends up happening. And I just maybe don't always do it right away. So Moody, for instance, is really wanting to do a lot of surveys.

Starting point is 03:47:26 I'm like, Moody, I don't do surveys, man. Just let me go like put up some ads let me go do let's do more affiliate marketing let's do more video ambassador sponsorship he's like who are you doing that for i don't know dude i don't do research let's go do stuff i'm a doer and so his balance of these things is saying let's go do some research so we know who we're doing it for and be very specific who the customer is now you asked the question of inputs. I think the inputs need to tie to your main priorities. That's it. So what is the priorities I'm saying? So within our marketing team right now, it's getting a VP of marketing, it's content and it's brand awareness. Also video ambassadors, getting more of those. And so within inputs, I'm just like, I'm specifically

Starting point is 03:47:59 going over those specific problems and saying, walk me through how you're normally thinking about solving this. And then he normally is coaching me and we're having a discussion around it. What I have found with most of the inputs is that I end up doing them almost always six months later because I resist them and I'm going to do what I want to do anyways. Just like most people here maybe want to start businesses their way. Then six months later, they think about the coach. The other thing with him specifically on taking inputs, I record all my coaching calls, every single one, every single one. And then I go and listen to them again, not all the time, but selectively, depending on if I'm trying to learn something, noticing how I'm resisting, noticing where I'm paying attention,

Starting point is 03:48:31 and that helps me be able to be a better student with my coach. So coming back full circle with coaching in general, how to choose the input. I think it comes back to my priorities and the specific problems I'm going to them with. And a lot of times it's then sitting with the answer that they bring back to me. So how has, as one example from the bullet list, so CEO coach, would that be Dan from Reboot? That's Dan Putt as well as Ayman Al-Abdullah. So Dan has more feelings and then Ayman's more strategic. Okay. So how would you describe some of the benefits from working with those guys? Just in terms of looking in the rear view mirror, because I can think of a number of coaches I've worked with. It's like, oh, I picked up the whole body yes from that person. That ended up being

Starting point is 03:49:17 really important. And then you give another person, oh, okay, I took this thing away from them and it was very valuable. What are some of the things you would point to? Let's take Eamon Aladulo for instance. I am going over 2024 strategy. And so I talked to customers, I talked to partners, I talked to the team. We look at historically what we've done and we put together a one pager plan. And one of the ideas is we have original products.

Starting point is 03:49:37 We basically create affordable, low entry versions of popular products. So MailChimp, we have an alternative Calumny, we have an alternative. And I went to him and I said, Hey, we're going to, let me walk over. The one thing I'm uncertain of is 2024 and around what we should do with new products. And brought it to him, walked over it. And I'm so convinced that we need to build a bunch of new things. I'm like, dude, this new stuff is

Starting point is 03:49:58 going to be so sick. We're going to build a Loom alternative. We're going to build this other product alternative, maybe a DocuSign alternative. And he's like, and because I have Amir, I have him. And I like coaches who've done the things I want to do. He's ran the business. He's former CEO. So, you know, what's working in your products that you guys have built? I'm like, oh, we have this one product that's crushing it. Okay. So, you have a product crushing it and you want to do a new one. How come? I'm like, oh, that's good. We're not doing a new product yet yet we're doubling the team so that we can have a core team keep investing in what's working instead of moving off to the new thing and so that was a really powerful example of him just asking questions based on strategy and

Starting point is 03:50:36 understanding our business based on something i was like oh here's my thing here's what i'm thinking and here's my problem what should we do next year and then he's redirected me and i think in a very effective way so So that was one example. I mean, we talked about Dan Putt. Just having an outlet, frankly. You've gone to therapy. We've gone, I still go to therapy. So with Dan, we were talking on Monday about, he was just asking me, how are you feeling

Starting point is 03:50:54 about the future? I was like, I feel really unclear. This is what we're talking about. I don't feel like the whole team and myself really are crystal clear and fought what we want to do in Q1. Huh? What do you want to do about that? I'm going to set up a meeting right now for tomorrow so that we can all be on the same

Starting point is 03:51:10 page for Q1 and their scorecards for the company and then each of the separate teams. And that was from a five-minute question with Dan. So it's really just thinking about all these different areas. Moody two weeks ago was like, no, we're trying to hire VP marketing. That's one of your number one priorities in the marketing team and you're not doing shit. And I was like, I know because I'm really busy on the book and my girlfriend. He's like, well, what do you want to do about it? Because that's not moving forward

Starting point is 03:51:31 what you said is a priority. And so I think a lot of the inputs come back to what I'm bringing to them as what I believe is the top problems. And he said, what are solutions around it? It's like, can you help me do it? He's like, yeah, actually, I'm really good at it. I've hired a lot of VPs.

Starting point is 03:51:42 He's been a CMO at big companies. And so now he's spearheading it and I'm not the bottleneck. Have you bootstrapped this or have you taken financing for, or investment for? Okay. Now you mentioned a board. Do you have a board of directors or an advisory board? Maybe I'm mishearing you. No, no, you're hearing me correctly. So maybe taking a step back, how everyone can do this for themselves and copy this is think about what's the weakest part of your business and think about who would have the five companies, even three companies that might have the person that you could get to help you with that. And

Starting point is 03:52:12 then just go look up those people on LinkedIn and then offer them a thousand dollars to talk to you for one hour. And that's how we've done it. Okay. All right. So this is a group of people being paid for their time to help give you various types of strategic advice. So you can set up different retainer agreements. You don't always have to do a thousand. It could be more, it could be less. So we have a CFO advisor, as I said, from MailChimp. We have a chief people officer from Duolingo, shout out Christine. We have a CR advisor from Outdoorsy. And then on the board, we compensate them as well, Rajatish Mukherjee from Indeed, because I'm very good at starting businesses and I've struggled now that there's more people. Rajatish runs a 2,000 person organization.

Starting point is 03:52:48 Yeah. Quick question, just to zoom out though. So because you have CEO coach, but the CEO coach is really two coaches. I have a CEO coach and a business coach. There we go. And then you have- Marketing coach. Marketing coach. And then you have the board. So I'm wondering what you get from the board that you don't get from those other things. What I have found most helpful from a board is one, accountability. So it's just like, here's what I said I'd do this quarter. Here's how I did. And then secondly, it's providing an outside opinion of people that are thinking differently than me. So normally, every time I go to the board meetings, it's like, why aren't you growing faster?

Starting point is 03:53:19 You're not growing fast enough. And then so it's trying to figure out what things we should be doing differently based on the pace that personally I would like to run the company. But a lot of times, almost all the coaches are challenging in some capacity. They're finding things that you're not necessarily thinking about or doing, and they bring that to you, even though you may not want to hear it. So let's jump to the grand finale, speaking of accountability. So 48-hour challenge. Yeah, let's do it. Me and Tim love people taking action for themselves. And I think I said it earlier, is that the reason Tim's audience likes Tim

Starting point is 03:53:48 is because you give them things they can get results for themselves with. And that's why people listen to you, among other things. I think that's probably one of the top. So I want people to take action from this episode. If they've made it this far, I want people to see what they can do

Starting point is 03:54:00 and how they can change your life in 48 hours. So this episode comes out within 48 hours of launch. I want to see how people can change your life in 48 hours. So this episode comes out within 48 hours of launch. I want to see how people can change their life in either starting a business, and if you already have a business, what can you do in your business in 48 hours? And I want you to leave a comment on Tim's blog and hashtag 48hourchallenge in the comment.

Starting point is 03:54:18 So that makes sure you're paying attention. So tim.blog slash podcast. Find this episode. You're going to have to do a little work. Noah Kagan. It's not that hard. Put in the guest name. It'll pop right up.

Starting point is 03:54:27 Go to the newest one. Leave a comment with hashtag. Hashtag 48 hour challenge. And what result have you done in the past 48 hours? What can you do? Maybe you have a certain amount of customers. Maybe you have one customer. Maybe you posted videos.

Starting point is 03:54:39 Ideally, here's what I'm really looking for. I'm looking for the people who are willing to put a little more extra effort. Like if they've taken and you can follow a million dollar weekend, you can do whatever it is you want. See how far you can go in 48 hours. And I think there are going to be some people who are like, I made $10,000 from zero. What's the prize? The prize is an all-inclusive paid trip one day with me, helping you with your business, whether you're starting, whether you're going in Barcelona, Spain this year. So it will be delivered within six months. So I'll fly you out no matter what country you're in the world.

Starting point is 03:55:06 I'll put you up in a hotel and we'll have 24 hours together and be able to change their life. If they want to scale their business, if they want to just go to the beach, we can do that. If they want to do cycling. But the idea is that if you limit your time, even if you have a growing business, I want people to apply. How far can you go in 48 hours?

Starting point is 03:55:19 What can you do in the equivalent of a weekend, right? Which we all have. 48 hours. Any other recommendations for people who hear this and are like, I'm excited, I want to give it a go. Any other specifics, catalytic ideas, anything at all that you'd like to add to that? So again, folks, you're going to go to Tim.blog

Starting point is 03:55:38 slash podcast, look up Noah Kagan. Go to this episode, there'll be a blog post for it. And then you're leaving a blog comment with hashtag? 48-hour challenge. 48-hour challenge. If you forget that, there are going to be probably a lot of comments. So you'll be disqualified if you don't do that. Follow the rules.

Starting point is 03:55:56 Any length limits or anything on this? No. Well, speaking of it, I actually just saw this on Facebook. I printed it out for you. Do you remember the Tim Ferriss? You obviously remember the Tim Ferriss experiment. This was Cindy. So Cindy was someone who followed our material from when Tim showed this process.

Starting point is 03:56:14 That's right. And she changed her life in a very short amount of time. Hers was documented. Not everyone's was documented. She sent me a video too. Amazing. Oh my God. I got a video for you.

Starting point is 03:56:24 It's from the past. So she sent a video where too amazing oh my god I got a video for you blast from the past so she sent a video where sold out events so she has a video so 10 years ago I mentored under Tim Ferriss's wing which was the catalyst to me stepping into the entrepreneurship journey and I have to say I'm so grateful I did that. I'm so grateful for Tim and Noah, because ever since that day, 10 years ago, I've been able to be the leader that I truly want to be. I have my own company now. I have tons of people coming to me for support. They want to grow and scale their businesses, their companies, learning how to build inclusive communities for their brand. And so it's been very fun to how to where like my network has grown.

Starting point is 03:57:14 It's like they say your network is your net worth. Right. And so I look back at those moments where I work with Tim and I'm like, wow, like I have grown so much, like literally. And what Tim teaches has, has lifelong, um, lifelong benefits because the way that Tim thinks, the way the concepts around, you know, the deal concept, D-E-A-L, has definitely been instilled into my life. And so sometimes I think about when I move into the world, I'm like, hey, how would Tim think about this? Because I know that like being an entrepreneur can be really overwhelming. But the thing that I have learned is that to keep things very simplified and results driven. So anyways, I'll say thank you again to Tim Ferriss.

Starting point is 03:58:06 It's definitely been a journey for me. Sometimes not easy, but it's definitely been a very fulfilling journey for myself. And actually, yeah, me and my family just got back from Thailand two months ago. Yeah, like I said, I've just been living the life. So yeah, thank you. That's amazing.

Starting point is 03:58:27 But that was someone that you were able, I mean, you were able to get started on her entrepreneurship journey. And we probably had roughly, you know, one or two days.

Starting point is 03:58:34 I mean, it was not a lot of time. And we had a little bit of time, but it was constantly for a TV show, right? So you're stopping, you're starting,

Starting point is 03:58:39 you're stopping, you're starting. If you add up the total number of hours, that's wild. That's been super cool. Same with Daniel Bliss, who was on your blog when we helped him.

Starting point is 03:58:45 He was a postal worker. He was actually able to leave to move to Thailand. He was sick, so I wasn't able to get a video of him talking about some of his results. But I think the reality for everyone out there, yes, for some tactics and tips,

Starting point is 03:58:55 is y'all have your phones. Y'all have the ability to text, call, go to people in person, see who you have in your network. Like Cindy, really like yoga. And just by getting going,

Starting point is 03:59:03 maybe yoga's not the million dollar business, and maybe she doesn't need a million dollar business, but she got that going. That's a letter now, 10 years later to be able to have her own business. That's wild. I'm just looking at this, which I haven't seen. And she sold out her event. That was original. Getting started the original. And I'll just read this because I think it's worth reading, of course. Wow. wow well first of all congratulations Cindy that's so fun so here's just a portion the trick I learned while mentoring with Tim and Noah is to keep things as simple as possible focus on the most leverageable and

Starting point is 03:59:33 important thing that would yield the fastest all caps and best results so this is after she mentioned she sold out her event and then she goes would I have sold out this event in 36 hours if I had used paid ads no all caps would I have sold out this event in three to six hours if I'd used paid ads? No, all caps. Would I have sold out this event if I'd gone around to find the nicest, most expensive place to rent? No. And then in parentheses, I got a free office space instead through a colleague and brought my disco lights. Would I have sold it out if I just sat in my chair complaining that there wasn't enough time? No. Would I have sold out if I reached out to people who didn't know me? No. It went on and on and on. And that's amazing. That's amazing. Yeah. That's wild. 10 years later, still going. Good for her. And so it's interesting to think for the other people who changed their life in 48 hours from

Starting point is 04:00:15 listening to this one episode where they'll be in 10 years. Totally. And it works. People have done it with past appearances. People have done it with writing that you've shared on the blog. And now you've encapsulated it all after a lot more experimentation, many more businesses, many more years in the book. So the book is Million Dollar Weekend, subtitled The Surprisingly Simple Way to Launch a Seven-Figure Business in 48 Hours. People can find that on the website milliondollarweekend.com. If people want to interact with you online, do you have any preferred socials or anything else you'd like

Starting point is 04:00:50 to point people to? The website's great, milliondollarweekend.com. You can also look me up, Noah Kagan. That's everywhere. Noah Kagan everywhere. So milliondollarweekend.com. And again, if you want to throw your hat in the ring and give the 48 hour challenge a shot listen to this episode certainly check out the book but suppose you don't have to check out the book right you just have to do something and hashtag 48 hour challenge in the blog comments on the blog post associated with this episode noah good endurance. Amazing what ketones will do for your brain. I cheated.

Starting point is 04:01:31 But thank you for the time. Always great to see you. Great to see you. Congratulations on all the crazy success. I had no idea that it had grown in the way that it's grown. And what fun. Amazing. Barcelona.

Starting point is 04:01:42 Life is great. Yeah. But is there anything else you would like to add Noah before we land the plane I was thinking how awesome my girlfriend is and one of the message I was thinking for everyone out there is just a little bit more kindness for ourselves if everyone can just even today like give themselves a little bit of kindness like you know I came a few minutes late and I was like oh you're late what are you doing it's like and I think for all of us just a little bit more kindness and make the world a better place for ourselves and for everyone else. Here,

Starting point is 04:02:06 here, that is definitely true. And also it will just preserve the gas in the tank too. You know, life is short, but life is also long in a lot of ways. So spare your calories when you can be kind to recharge yourself and others.

Starting point is 04:02:24 And you're going to have off days, too. There are days when you're going to wake up and, as I've heard said before, it's like if you wake up and you meet an asshole on a given day, that person's an asshole. If you wake up and everyone's an asshole, you might be the asshole. And there are going to be those days. So just make a little bit of extra effort. Noah, thank you so much. This is fantastic.

Starting point is 04:02:45 Check it out, folks. Million Dollar Weekend. We will put links to everything in the show notes, Tim.blog.com slash podcast. And until next time, thanks for tuning in, everybody. See you soon. Hey guys, this is Tim again. Just one more thing before you take off. And that is Five Bullet Friday. Would you enjoy getting a short email from me every Friday that provides a little fun before the weekend? Between one and a half and two million people subscribe to my free newsletter, my super short newsletter called Five Bullet Friday. Easy to sign up, easy to cancel. It is basically a half page that I send out every Friday to share the coolest things I've found or discovered or have started exploring

Starting point is 04:03:25 over that week. It's kind of like my diary of cool things. It often includes articles I'm reading, books I'm reading, albums perhaps, gadgets, gizmos, all sorts of tech tricks and so on that get sent to me by my friends, including a lot of podcast guests. And these strange esoteric things end up in my field and then I test them. And then I share them with you. So if that sounds fun, again, it's very short. A little tiny bite of goodness before you head off for the weekend. Something to think about.

Starting point is 04:03:57 If you'd like to try it out, just go to Tim.blog.com. Type that into your browser. Tim.blog.com. Drop in your email and you'll get the very next one. Thanks for listening. This episode is brought to you by Eight Sleep. Temperature is one of the main causes of poor sleep and heat is my personal nemesis. I've suffered for decades tossing and turning, throwing blankets off, pulling the back on, putting one leg on top and repeating all of that ad nauseum. But now I am falling asleep in record time. Why? Because I'm using a device that was recommended to me by friends called the PodCover by 8sleep. The PodCover fits on any mattress and allows you to adjust the temperature of your sleeping environment, providing to as cool as 55 degrees or as hot as 110

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The Tim Ferriss Show - #717: Noah Kagan — How to Launch a Million-Dollar Business This Weekend

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