Start a Million Dollar Business in a Weekend with Noah Kagan

00:00:00.000 | Starting a company is the best way to build wealth.

00:00:02.160 | Is that true?

00:00:03.000 | Did you always think that if it is?

00:00:04.700 | It always seems so risky to have these day jobs.

00:00:07.600 | And then I thought, oh man, entrepreneurship,

00:00:09.120 | I don't know how much I have to make.

00:00:10.540 | And then I recognized like, well,

00:00:11.380 | how much do I need to really be able to do the thing

00:00:13.160 | I want to do and have freedom?

00:00:14.440 | Because we don't have as much time available.

00:00:16.360 | How do we find what's just the essence of getting started?

00:00:18.720 | With AppSumo, I put in $50 to start it.

00:00:20.960 | And last year I made $3.3 million.

00:00:22.840 | Most people want to be time millionaires.

00:00:25.300 | I would say that's universal.

00:00:26.440 | Don't trade your nine to five for a five to nine.

00:00:28.680 | The whole point of being an entrepreneur

00:00:30.000 | is that you can then become a time millionaire as well.

00:00:31.720 | So how do you practice starting right now?

00:00:33.880 | You started things, you feel good about yourself,

00:00:35.520 | you got momentum, you got the skills.

00:00:36.840 | Now, how do you build it?

00:00:37.960 | What's the high level process someone needs to go through?

00:00:40.280 | It's in the book.

00:00:41.360 | It's a good investment.

00:00:43.320 | But no, I'll give it to you for free.

00:00:44.240 | I'll give it to you for free.

00:00:45.200 | Noah, thanks for being here.

00:00:46.640 | Chris, thank you for having me.

00:00:48.040 | Yeah.

00:00:48.880 | So from the title of the book,

00:00:50.840 | it seems you might think that starting a company

00:00:52.640 | is the best way to build wealth.

00:00:54.360 | Is that true?

00:00:55.380 | Did you always think that if it is?

00:00:57.960 | (laughs)

00:00:58.800 | Coming in hot.

00:00:59.880 | I love it.

00:01:01.280 | Let's just look at data.

00:01:02.840 | So if you put your money,

00:01:04.840 | do you put your money in the stock market at all?

00:01:06.680 | I do.

00:01:07.680 | Yeah, like a great return on the S&P 500 is like 10%.

00:01:10.560 | Wow.

00:01:11.640 | Yeah, if I got locked in 10%, boy would I be happy.

00:01:14.000 | If you could do that, right?

00:01:15.960 | But if you look at the data since 1900,

00:01:17.360 | that's what you get at around 10 to 12% a year.

00:01:19.840 | Then if you look at housing, maybe it appreciates,

00:01:22.080 | but generally house, give or take,

00:01:23.360 | will do five to 7% return.

00:01:25.360 | Now, this is a, I'll just give you an example.

00:01:27.360 | With AppSumo, I put in $50 to start it,

00:01:29.600 | and last year I made $3.3 million.

00:01:31.400 | And I'm not saying that everyone can do that within a year,

00:01:35.840 | but over some time, the returns and upside

00:01:37.920 | of entrepreneurship are unlimited,

00:01:39.560 | while a lot of the costs are much smaller.

00:01:42.520 | And so, just kind of maybe something I've thought about

00:01:44.440 | for a lot of people, it's like you can work your butt

00:01:46.080 | trying to get clean an attic,

00:01:48.560 | and then literally my house yesterday flooded,

00:01:51.440 | a real estate house I have,

00:01:53.160 | or you can just start your own business.

00:01:55.360 | There's different problems, but at least the upside

00:01:58.800 | and the influence of it are much higher.

00:02:01.800 | - And did you always think of it this way?

00:02:03.480 | I think you and I both share a similar background.

00:02:06.120 | Early careers all in startup land in Silicon Valley

00:02:10.080 | seemed like building tech companies

00:02:11.840 | is the way you make money,

00:02:12.960 | and then we probably had other friends that made money,

00:02:15.280 | and then we're like, whoa, whoa, whoa,

00:02:16.280 | maybe the way money is real estate.

00:02:18.160 | Maybe real estate is how we make money.

00:02:19.520 | I keep hearing that this is the best thing ever.

00:02:21.860 | I have both FOMO about not buying more real estate

00:02:25.680 | and deep satisfaction only owning my house.

00:02:28.620 | - My next book is called "Rich Dad, Poor Dad, and Stepdad."

00:02:31.560 | And it's like, there's another dad

00:02:35.040 | that no one ever talked about that was just like,

00:02:36.960 | I don't know why these guys are working so hard.

00:02:39.560 | You know, I think what's interesting,

00:02:40.840 | we talked before about my YouTube channel.

00:02:43.720 | One of the coolest things is that

00:02:45.040 | there's so many different ways of getting rich.

00:02:46.800 | And when you grew up, I grew up a few miles from Apple.

00:02:49.000 | My father sold copiers and my stepfather

00:02:52.020 | was a computer programmer.

00:02:53.700 | And I thought that's just the way to have money,

00:02:56.780 | but I realized, wow, there's so many other ways,

00:02:59.300 | like fruit selling, basements, this guy Larry Janeski,

00:03:03.580 | Michael Hudder did ships, Paul Mitchell did hair care.

00:03:07.420 | Hair care.

00:03:08.420 | And yes, there is a lot of money in the internet too,

00:03:10.820 | which just came out 24 years ago, if you think about it.

00:03:13.780 | And that always gets me so excited

00:03:16.780 | is that there's so many different ways

00:03:17.860 | for people to find what they're interested in.

00:03:19.460 | And look, if you have a day job, I think that's even better

00:03:22.360 | 'cause now you have an investor, which is your employer,

00:03:24.860 | to now explore all these other options

00:03:26.740 | that can create unlimited wealth for you.

00:03:28.800 | - And do you think this is a path for everyone

00:03:32.440 | or how do you think about building companies

00:03:35.660 | and starting side hustles for someone

00:03:38.740 | who maybe never thought that was for them?

00:03:40.860 | - Most people wanna be time millionaires.

00:03:45.660 | I would say that's universal.

00:03:46.860 | And most people would like to be a millionaire or beyond.

00:03:50.140 | And they actually realize that you probably need less money

00:03:52.340 | to live a very satisfied life.

00:03:53.420 | That's why in the book I've talked about

00:03:54.540 | the freedom number, 'cause you realize

00:03:55.580 | that number's actually a lot less than you think.

00:03:57.820 | What I've recognized though is that most people

00:03:59.740 | think it's this big, scary thing.

00:04:01.180 | Like take my brother, for instance.

00:04:02.260 | He's a doctor.

00:04:03.100 | He went to school for 10 years.

00:04:04.180 | He got a certificate to do his stuff.

00:04:05.780 | And what's crazy about entrepreneurship,

00:04:07.260 | you don't need a certificate.

00:04:08.500 | (laughs)

00:04:09.620 | Everyone has permission.

00:04:10.740 | And you don't even have to be tall.

00:04:11.900 | You know, I'm only 5'10".

00:04:13.340 | You can be really short or you can be super tall

00:04:15.540 | or you can be anything.

00:04:16.380 | And I think that's just so amazing

00:04:18.140 | how accessible it can be.

00:04:19.940 | And the reality though is that

00:04:21.740 | we create this big, scary monster of,

00:04:23.660 | well, I've gotta be a talkative person

00:04:25.020 | or I've gotta go be on Twitter

00:04:26.660 | or I've gotta go sell.

00:04:27.500 | And that's just not the case.

00:04:29.460 | But you do have to think, wow, I could maybe do this.

00:04:32.580 | Let me see how I could maybe change my life in a weekend.

00:04:36.100 | Which I would say is possible for everyone out there.

00:04:38.060 | And especially if you have a day job.

00:04:40.340 | I don't know if you've ever been fired, Chris.

00:04:42.140 | - I have. - You've been fired?

00:04:44.020 | - And I've been fired twice.

00:04:46.100 | And thank you, Mark.

00:04:47.420 | And thank you, Matt Kohler.

00:04:48.860 | Thank you, Aaron Patzer.

00:04:51.300 | And the beauty of getting fired is the moment I realized

00:04:55.500 | that I'm not in control of my livelihood.

00:04:58.060 | These two people at two companies,

00:04:59.860 | Facebook and Mint, which I was early at,

00:05:02.340 | decided that I'm not good to be there anymore.

00:05:05.140 | And that was, so it really sparked with me,

00:05:08.620 | then got early on, like, wow, if that could happen,

00:05:11.540 | I need to protect myself.

00:05:13.060 | And so you can create a business.

00:05:14.460 | It could be a flower shop.

00:05:15.940 | And then keep your day job as well.

00:05:17.260 | So at AppSumo, where I work, we have this lady, Amy,

00:05:21.820 | she has a flower shop and a hair salon.

00:05:23.900 | And she's also our head of customer support.

00:05:25.780 | (laughs)

00:05:26.860 | You have Nick Christensen,

00:05:27.980 | who has a teeth whitening clinic up in Dallas.

00:05:31.220 | And he leads our growth team.

00:05:33.020 | And so it doesn't mean you have to quit your day job.

00:05:34.740 | Ideally, maybe have both.

00:05:35.900 | But at least have that option available to you.

00:05:38.260 | - Yeah, I think, and maybe it's Silicon Valley,

00:05:41.220 | but it felt to me for so long,

00:05:43.260 | maybe until this podcast, that starting a company was like,

00:05:46.220 | I'm gonna start a thing that's all-consuming,

00:05:48.180 | that's gonna be everything to me,

00:05:49.700 | and I'm gonna work a million hours a day

00:05:51.420 | and have thousands of employees, or it's a failure.

00:05:54.300 | (laughs)

00:05:55.580 | - No, I love the line, don't trade your nine-to-five

00:05:58.340 | for a five-to-nine, right?

00:06:00.740 | The whole point of being an entrepreneur

00:06:01.860 | is that you can then become a time millionaire as well,

00:06:03.860 | where you can spend, like, I'm going to Spain in two weeks

00:06:07.100 | to have a family.

00:06:08.820 | And that's a lot, if I had a boss who was like,

00:06:11.620 | no, you can't travel, you gotta come to the office,

00:06:13.420 | you gotta, I don't know,

00:06:14.260 | but entrepreneurship gives me that affordability.

00:06:16.460 | And with business, the greatest part about it,

00:06:19.580 | which people don't recognize, is that, yes,

00:06:21.140 | it does take some effort to get started.

00:06:22.420 | Yes, you have to find something people are excited

00:06:23.780 | to give you money for,

00:06:25.020 | but you can ultimately spend most of your time,

00:06:27.620 | if not all of it, in just the areas you like.

00:06:30.140 | And guess what, there's people

00:06:31.420 | that like doing customer support, like Amy,

00:06:32.940 | which I don't know how she does it.

00:06:33.940 | Shout out, Amy, I love you.

00:06:35.540 | And there's people who like doing operational stuff,

00:06:38.340 | Dusty, Vanessa, thank you guys for doing that.

00:06:40.300 | And they're happy there,

00:06:41.460 | and they get to live their dream lives,

00:06:42.820 | and that is available.

00:06:44.460 | It's not such this, like, oh, I've got to spend all night

00:06:46.900 | and don't have any free time around it.

00:06:48.860 | That's what this stuff enables you

00:06:50.020 | to have that option available.

00:06:51.500 | - And you said the freedom number people need

00:06:54.180 | is a lot smaller than you think.

00:06:56.020 | - For me, it always seemed risky,

00:06:57.180 | this freedom number, the way I realized it,

00:06:59.460 | and I've noticed that a lot of other entrepreneurs have had,

00:07:02.100 | it always seems so risky to have these day jobs,

00:07:03.820 | like I did at Intel.

00:07:05.020 | And then I thought, oh man, entrepreneurship,

00:07:06.580 | I don't know how much I have to make.

00:07:08.540 | And then I recognized, well, how much do I need

00:07:10.020 | to really be able to do the thing I want to do

00:07:11.660 | and have freedom?

00:07:12.500 | And it was way less than I expected, right?

00:07:14.780 | And it really came down to kind of three categories,

00:07:16.460 | which is like living, entertainment, and savings,

00:07:19.020 | or living, food, savings.

00:07:21.500 | And for me, it was $3,000.

00:07:23.180 | And when I was at my day job, I was like,

00:07:26.460 | well, if I can get the side hustle to that number,

00:07:28.100 | then I can quit.

00:07:29.540 | And I never encourage people

00:07:30.980 | to actually go take a risky thing.

00:07:32.740 | It seemed risky to quit your job

00:07:33.740 | to try to hopefully start a business.

00:07:35.380 | It's not what I want people to do.

00:07:36.420 | And when you realize how much smaller that number is

00:07:38.500 | than you expect, you realize it's also more attainable.

00:07:42.140 | And so I've twice quit jobs and then gone on

00:07:44.540 | once I hit my $3,000 freedom number.

00:07:46.420 | - And so for you, that's 3,000.

00:07:48.660 | But do you think that gets a lot harder as people age,

00:07:51.260 | have more responsibility, family, all that?

00:07:54.540 | - Yeah, it just takes longer, right?

00:07:56.220 | It doesn't, everyone has their own number

00:07:58.140 | based on their own lifestyle.

00:07:59.620 | So today, I think my credit card bill, I don't know.

00:08:03.100 | By the way, cool part about eventually getting money

00:08:04.900 | is that you don't have to worry about budgeting

00:08:06.540 | or worry about having enough for retirement.

00:08:08.100 | You don't even have to think about it.

00:08:09.420 | And I think that's available for everyone.

00:08:11.500 | But I just had to do a CNBC show.

00:08:13.820 | I think my credit card bill with all things

00:08:15.940 | is like 25,000 a month.

00:08:17.420 | So it goes up over time,

00:08:20.940 | but then obviously I've built up businesses

00:08:23.300 | and stuff like that.

00:08:24.140 | But what people are trying to do,

00:08:25.780 | if you have kids and I've noticed,

00:08:27.740 | there's a guy named Jake who ran Million Dollar Weekend.

00:08:29.580 | He's got three kids, he's got a wife, they got a house.

00:08:32.900 | So it's not something you can just quit overnight.

00:08:34.620 | But if you never get started,

00:08:36.460 | then he's never even gonna get to that number.

00:08:37.820 | I think for him, my guess, I think it was around $10,000.

00:08:41.380 | But you have to get started

00:08:42.220 | so that you can even get to that point.

00:08:43.340 | Same as I got started with AppSumo.

00:08:45.020 | I started with a weekend and I made my first $12,

00:08:47.540 | my first sale.

00:08:48.420 | - And so the idea of a weekend, why a weekend?

00:08:53.860 | Why not a week?

00:08:54.700 | Why not a month?

00:08:55.700 | Why do people need to figure this out so quickly?

00:08:58.140 | - You have a family, right?

00:09:03.060 | You have two kids?

00:09:04.060 | - Yeah.

00:09:05.620 | - And you have, I mean, you have this podcast,

00:09:07.140 | but you have a job and you have a wife to take care of.

00:09:09.020 | Most people don't have a lot of time, right?

00:09:12.460 | It's hard, right?

00:09:13.780 | And you're already got, you're already obligations,

00:09:15.580 | you got commitments, and you're like,

00:09:17.180 | maybe it's just easier to put in the stock market.

00:09:19.540 | But what everyone has is a weekend.

00:09:21.820 | Everyone has at least one weekend they can do something.

00:09:24.420 | Maybe not every single weekend,

00:09:25.500 | which is everyone's got 52, but maybe one a year.

00:09:28.100 | And because we don't have as much time available,

00:09:31.820 | like how do we find what's just the essence

00:09:33.620 | of getting started?

00:09:34.540 | And if you can do that in a very limited time,

00:09:37.740 | which creates a lot more creativity,

00:09:39.060 | I do believe limitation instills creation.

00:09:43.060 | And when you have this limitation, you're like,

00:09:44.940 | well, I'm not gonna mess around.

00:09:46.500 | And I can't goof around and buy a bunch of ads,

00:09:48.420 | or I can't, I don't have time to make a YouTube channel

00:09:50.020 | because I only got a weekend to get this done.

00:09:51.700 | And especially someone like yourself,

00:09:53.100 | if you were in that tech job and had a family

00:09:55.220 | where you are today, you don't have a lot of time for that.

00:09:57.500 | And so how do we focus on just the things that matter?

00:10:00.100 | And what I have found through myself starting businesses

00:10:02.420 | in a weekend and through others,

00:10:04.380 | this 48 hour time period is the best window

00:10:06.900 | to change your life.

00:10:07.900 | - And how far do you have to get?

00:10:11.620 | I look at this podcast as an example,

00:10:13.540 | that's now my full-time job and my wife's full-time job.

00:10:17.380 | - Congrats. - But when I started it,

00:10:19.260 | it was like, it was just a side project that I liked.

00:10:21.540 | It cost money and did not make any money at the beginning.

00:10:24.920 | You could argue maybe started it in a weekend,

00:10:27.940 | but I didn't have those ambitions.

00:10:30.060 | Where does stuff like that fit into this?

00:10:32.740 | - How long did it take for you to quit your day?

00:10:34.660 | Did you quit your day job when you started this?

00:10:36.720 | - Yeah, I did, it probably took,

00:10:39.420 | I started the podcast in May, 2021,

00:10:42.820 | and I quit my day job in December, 2022.

00:10:46.420 | - And how much were you making at the pod

00:10:48.940 | that you felt comfortable to quit your day job?

00:10:51.100 | - It was about, it crossed to a point

00:10:53.340 | that it replaced my work income.

00:10:57.300 | - That's your freedom number.

00:10:58.940 | - And so the reality is that in a weekend,

00:11:02.660 | you could find out if something that people want.

00:11:05.500 | And then the other part of success,

00:11:06.900 | and you asked about billionaires,

00:11:08.060 | which I've interviewed a lot on my YouTube channel

00:11:09.420 | and worked for them directly,

00:11:11.060 | is that you become a billionaire,

00:11:12.300 | but you have to do compounded action

00:11:14.260 | over a long period of time.

00:11:15.940 | And most people are quitting too soon.

00:11:17.620 | So you have to initially find something

00:11:18.660 | people actually really want.

00:11:20.900 | And then you do have to stick with it

00:11:22.100 | for some period of time where like at AppSumo,

00:11:24.300 | I don't think I made my first million dollars a year

00:11:26.420 | salaried until year seven.

00:11:27.980 | I paid myself, I think $0 first year, 40,000 next year.

00:11:33.900 | And frankly, if I would've just stayed at Intel

00:11:35.660 | or any of these other jobs,

00:11:36.580 | I probably would've made more most of the time,

00:11:38.140 | but I kept sticking with it,

00:11:39.540 | kept having good results, promising.

00:11:41.060 | And then over time it was like,

00:11:41.900 | wow, now we actually have enough,

00:11:42.940 | I can take a little bit for myself.

00:11:44.060 | And then eventually it was like a lot for myself,

00:11:46.380 | but you have to start and then you have to stick.

00:11:47.820 | And you were a great example of that.

00:11:50.740 | - Yeah, so the goal of the weekend

00:11:51.780 | isn't to kind of fast track your way to millionaire status.

00:11:55.140 | It's to make sure you validated

00:11:57.300 | that the thing you're working on

00:11:58.380 | could really be big enough

00:11:59.540 | to be the thing you want to do full-time.

00:12:01.540 | - It's recognizing that you can create

00:12:05.620 | a million dollar opportunity for yourself

00:12:07.020 | in a very short period of time.

00:12:08.700 | And no, I think in 10 years,

00:12:11.760 | I believe someone will make a million dollars

00:12:13.020 | in a weekend, legitimately,

00:12:14.220 | not like through drug dealing or something shady.

00:12:16.980 | - Or that app that was like $20,000 or something.

00:12:20.660 | - It could be that, right?

00:12:22.380 | You could sell pinball machines.

00:12:23.780 | This is actually, you could totally validate it.

00:12:25.200 | I love pinballs.

00:12:26.040 | I got an arcade at my house.

00:12:28.020 | You could sell $15,000 pinballs.

00:12:29.860 | And I walk people through business models

00:12:31.480 | and such in the book,

00:12:32.320 | one minute business models,

00:12:33.220 | 'cause you don't have a lot of time.

00:12:35.220 | You know, what is that?

00:12:36.580 | To make a million dollars selling 15,000 pinballs,

00:12:38.620 | depending on what the costs are like,

00:12:40.580 | you know, maybe you'll need to sell a hundred or two.

00:12:42.540 | It's not a bad business over the next few years.

00:12:45.160 | It was actually pretty crazy.

00:12:46.000 | Do you know Stern Pinball?

00:12:47.540 | - No.

00:12:48.740 | - So let's say you love arcades.

00:12:50.180 | And this is the thing, again,

00:12:51.020 | you can make money in different ways.

00:12:51.980 | Maybe it's a podcast show.

00:12:52.960 | Maybe it's videos.

00:12:54.380 | Maybe it's lawn care.

00:12:55.340 | Maybe it's games.

00:12:56.900 | And Stern Pinball,

00:12:59.180 | which I think they,

00:13:00.260 | I don't know if they do a billion dollars in sales,

00:13:01.820 | but definitely in the tens,

00:13:02.820 | if not hundreds of millions,

00:13:03.660 | it's the number one pinball maker.

00:13:05.400 | They showed a video about how they make pinball.

00:13:06.900 | And this is the same stuff I teach in Million Dollar Weekend

00:13:09.300 | which I thought was so unique,

00:13:11.060 | is that instead of building this whole pinball thing

00:13:12.660 | and making sure people like it,

00:13:14.100 | they literally take a piece of wood

00:13:16.100 | and then they put some,

00:13:17.100 | and pretty much the same day,

00:13:18.540 | they put pieces of metal on the wood

00:13:20.380 | and they throw a ball at it.

00:13:21.800 | And they see what happens is they throw the ball

00:13:23.340 | at this piece of wood.

00:13:24.900 | And then you realize, wow,

00:13:26.600 | pretty quickly they can see if the game

00:13:27.940 | that they're starting to think of is gonna be interesting.

00:13:29.460 | And that's the same thing you can apply in business,

00:13:31.340 | which is,

00:13:32.180 | how can I see if this is something people really want?

00:13:33.820 | Maybe it's a show.

00:13:34.860 | Maybe it's a pinball game.

00:13:36.460 | Maybe it's gonna be food.

00:13:37.460 | Maybe it's a software product.

00:13:38.380 | Maybe it's lawn care.

00:13:39.460 | So that if I'm gonna work on it for some period of time,

00:13:41.180 | I know that there's at least customers who are excited

00:13:43.620 | to be purchasing it and be a part of it.

00:13:45.620 | - So what's that process?

00:13:47.660 | What's, I mean,

00:13:49.060 | what's the high level process someone needs to go through?

00:13:51.800 | - I was gonna joke, like, well, you get the,

00:13:54.400 | it's in the book.

00:13:55.240 | I mean, it's a good investment.

00:13:57.480 | But no, I'll give it to you for free.

00:13:58.400 | I'll give it to you for free.

00:13:59.320 | So if you have to break it down,

00:14:01.080 | there's three categories of getting

00:14:02.600 | a million dollar weekend business going,

00:14:04.400 | which is starting it, building it, and growing it.

00:14:06.920 | And I would say there's so many business books out there,

00:14:10.040 | and especially for a lot of your audience.

00:14:11.200 | You have really good looking audience.

00:14:12.760 | That's a fact.

00:14:14.000 | You have a lot of six figure audience,

00:14:15.680 | a lot of have kids,

00:14:17.060 | and they're probably happy with the S&P 500 12%,

00:14:19.820 | or maybe they got crypto lucky,

00:14:21.780 | or they bought some silly NFT moon cats,

00:14:23.940 | which I didn't, lost a lot of money on.

00:14:26.300 | But I do think most people wanna have more money.

00:14:29.560 | And what I've seen from it,

00:14:33.260 | there's a start it, build it, and grow it.

00:14:34.940 | There's a woman who was at Warby Parker named McKinsey,

00:14:36.860 | and she dreamed the same thing.

00:14:38.320 | So the first part, though,

00:14:39.700 | is how do you get good at starting and asking?

00:14:41.940 | And those are the two biggest things

00:14:43.020 | holding people from back from success

00:14:44.860 | in really entrepreneurship, but also in life.

00:14:47.000 | I would say this book is almost as much self-help

00:14:49.400 | as it is start a business in a weekend.

00:14:51.360 | So how do you practice starting right now?

00:14:53.800 | 'Cause the more that you can get started,

00:14:56.360 | and let's say you wanna do a podcast.

00:14:57.880 | Let's put an episode out today.

00:14:59.320 | I have a YouTube channel, a million subscribers.

00:15:00.980 | My first video that I did three years ago

00:15:03.520 | was with an iPhone 10 and me shirtless.

00:15:06.960 | And it was just a video talking about COVID.

00:15:09.160 | Fast forward, today, each video costs $20,000 to make,

00:15:13.000 | but I got started.

00:15:14.560 | And then over time, I was able to add maybe a videographer

00:15:17.360 | or a little better camera or a little better lighting,

00:15:19.520 | a little bit of scripts, a little bit of thumbnails.

00:15:22.000 | And you stick with it, you keep improving it.

00:15:23.880 | And then now, the videos are more polished and so forth.

00:15:26.600 | But you have to practice how do you get started right now?

00:15:29.000 | Second thing is asking.

00:15:31.160 | Everything in life is asking, like your wife,

00:15:32.600 | you had to ask her to marry you.

00:15:34.200 | Right?

00:15:36.480 | You have to ask for a raise.

00:15:37.300 | You have to ask for things.

00:15:38.140 | And so people have a negative connotation of asking,

00:15:40.840 | and then they have this fear of rejection.

00:15:42.760 | This really strong fear of, wow, I'm not good enough,

00:15:46.880 | or they don't like me.

00:15:47.720 | And so when we can do that in silly things,

00:15:50.120 | like McKinsey, so she dreamed of having her own business.

00:15:53.440 | And so she loved connection.

00:15:55.480 | And so she wanted to start a greetings card company.

00:15:58.920 | And it's called merrymakery.com.

00:16:00.420 | I gotta give her a shout out.

00:16:01.600 | She's Red Million Dollar Weekend.

00:16:03.260 | And she emailed some of her coworkers at Warby Parker.

00:16:06.160 | She said, "I wanna do a greeting card.

00:16:07.720 | "Does anyone wanna buy some of my greeting cards?"

00:16:10.680 | And she asked.

00:16:11.840 | And the beauty of asking is that you can get what you want.

00:16:14.000 | If you don't ask, you can't get.

00:16:15.880 | And you didn't have to build a big website.

00:16:17.720 | You didn't have to buy domain.

00:16:18.760 | You didn't have to do anything.

00:16:19.600 | But you practice this in small things.

00:16:21.240 | And then in her first year of sales so far,

00:16:23.200 | she's done $50,000 in greeting cards.

00:16:25.280 | Greeting cards.

00:16:27.640 | And by the way, Hallmark has a TV show or channel, right?

00:16:30.800 | And they started the exact same way.

00:16:31.900 | I think people never make their million dollars

00:16:34.600 | 'cause they don't make their first dollar.

00:16:35.980 | And they're not making their first dollar

00:16:36.820 | 'cause they don't get started.

00:16:37.640 | And they don't realize it can be fun

00:16:38.480 | and you can't get started today.

00:16:40.120 | Now, the second section of the book is like,

00:16:41.880 | okay, you started things.

00:16:43.040 | You feel good about yourself.

00:16:43.920 | You got momentum.

00:16:44.760 | You got the skills.

00:16:45.580 | Now, how do you build it, right?

00:16:47.560 | And so I would say there's kind of three pieces of that.

00:16:49.720 | How do you find ideas?

00:16:51.200 | And there's more than enough.

00:16:52.440 | And we can go through some today.

00:16:54.400 | How do you make sure it's a million dollar opportunity?

00:16:56.040 | How do you make sure that there's a business model there?

00:16:58.320 | And then the part three of the book is grow it,

00:17:00.240 | which is like, can we really get customers?

00:17:02.480 | And then how do you take it to thousand,

00:17:04.520 | $10,000 million and beyond?

00:17:07.680 | So let's take an example of that.

00:17:12.520 | For me, I've found that there's three ways to get business,

00:17:14.740 | but let me just show people in the audience

00:17:16.160 | one thing right now.

00:17:17.040 | Let's just do a fun one.

00:17:18.280 | So for people listening, text someone right now,

00:17:22.000 | "Hey, what kind of business do you think I would start?"

00:17:25.360 | And that's an ask and that's a start, right?

00:17:28.080 | You're starting something right now, you're doing it,

00:17:29.280 | and guess what?

00:17:30.120 | You're gonna get a result.

00:17:31.000 | And that's a free business idea

00:17:32.040 | that you can already do for yourself.

00:17:33.440 | And one of the best ways to think about business ideas

00:17:35.600 | is what have you gotten paid for in the past

00:17:37.480 | or who do you have influence around?

00:17:39.200 | Who do you have in your zone of influence in your network?

00:17:41.880 | Make it easy on yourself.

00:17:43.440 | Three other ways, I'll give you three other business ideas

00:17:45.200 | in three minutes, in three ways.

00:17:47.000 | So number one, just think about your day-to-day

00:17:49.760 | and break it out, breakfast, lunch, dinner.

00:17:51.300 | Think of something that annoyed you.

00:17:52.780 | That's a business opportunity.

00:17:53.640 | Every problem is a business opportunity.

00:17:55.640 | Every problem is a business opportunity.

00:17:58.880 | The other one, number two,

00:17:59.920 | think about something you spend money on.

00:18:01.240 | Look at your credit card bill.

00:18:02.560 | I was really annoyed with DocuSign.

00:18:05.060 | I keep signing up for new accounts

00:18:06.300 | so I don't have to pay.

00:18:07.660 | So I was like, I'm tired of that.

00:18:09.300 | And so two weeks ago, I read Million Dollar Weekend

00:18:12.260 | and I followed the process and I made $3,000 in one day.

00:18:15.260 | And now in the next 30 days,

00:18:16.420 | I'm delivering a DocuSign alternative.

00:18:17.900 | I don't have a website.

00:18:19.340 | I don't have a domain.

00:18:20.180 | I don't know what we should call it.

00:18:21.060 | People have ideas, let me know.

00:18:23.280 | But I have a million dollar business opportunity.

00:18:26.120 | And then the third one is what have you avoided doing?

00:18:29.060 | What's on your to-do list that you have not done?

00:18:31.260 | There are other ways in the book.

00:18:32.100 | There's six other ways,

00:18:32.940 | but I'm giving you some quick ones

00:18:34.520 | that people can start thinking about themselves.

00:18:36.580 | Now the two other high pieces,

00:18:37.620 | and again, if you go to milliondollarweekend.com,

00:18:39.020 | it's super broken out there.

00:18:40.800 | But next up, is it a million dollar opportunity?

00:18:42.460 | Is there at least a million dollars of people,

00:18:43.940 | a million dollars of money being spent?

00:18:45.780 | And then what does the business model look like

00:18:47.280 | for you to actually make a million bucks?

00:18:49.580 | And so I was doing lawn care

00:18:52.580 | because that's what people told me to start as a business.

00:18:54.280 | I wanted to prove them, prove how to do it.

00:18:56.740 | Now, if you do lawn care

00:18:57.940 | and you're selling one-off lawn care,

00:18:59.300 | you have to, let's say 50 bucks a lawn.

00:19:01.940 | That's a lot of lawns.

00:19:03.500 | So by just having a one-minute business model,

00:19:05.180 | it's like, all right,

00:19:06.020 | well, I need to sell monthly subscriptions.

00:19:08.020 | And what I aim for in the business model

00:19:10.220 | and in general is how hard does this actually look?

00:19:12.620 | Like, do I have to sell 5,000 different

00:19:14.820 | lawn care things?

00:19:15.660 | That's tough.

00:19:16.740 | Now, next up, you have the idea,

00:19:18.280 | you've done the typical check on the business model.

00:19:20.220 | You have to see if you can actually get customers for it.

00:19:22.220 | And I always recommend three customers in 48 hours.

00:19:24.860 | I found that if you cannot get three,

00:19:26.580 | you're not gonna be able to get beyond that

00:19:27.820 | after the weekend.

00:19:29.100 | And there's three ways you can do it.

00:19:30.060 | You can pre-sell it.

00:19:31.500 | You can post it on marketplaces.

00:19:32.820 | So you can post it on Etsy, Craigslist,

00:19:34.580 | IndieHackers, Reddit, things like that,

00:19:36.100 | where there's people that are looking to pay.

00:19:37.860 | Or the third way is landing pages and ads.

00:19:40.140 | I love pre-selling 'cause it's the most direct

00:19:41.940 | and you could do it in a non-salesy way.

00:19:44.820 | You can just get feedback from people

00:19:46.420 | that you think you can help.

00:19:47.820 | So that's pretty detailed about it.

00:19:49.980 | And then grow it is how do you set up your social media?

00:19:53.740 | How do you set up your email list,

00:19:54.700 | which everyone should do?

00:19:55.880 | And then setting up your growth machine

00:19:57.800 | to make this stuff on repeat.

00:19:59.900 | And that's the million-dollar weekend at a high level.

00:20:01.860 | And you have someone like McKenzie

00:20:03.580 | who quit a very high-paying job.

00:20:06.700 | I did not recommend that.

00:20:08.220 | And in one year was able to get to around $50,000.

00:20:10.900 | And I think people...

00:20:13.140 | I have a friend, he works at Amazon.

00:20:15.420 | He makes 400K, which is very common.

00:20:17.660 | I mean, okay, 400K is a lot.

00:20:19.100 | But let's just say 120K or something like that.

00:20:21.780 | And he started a side hustle.

00:20:23.580 | And in his first year, he made 1,000 bucks, which is great.

00:20:27.660 | And he quit.

00:20:29.460 | He quit.

00:20:30.300 | And the question that I always think about for myself is,

00:20:33.140 | what is the 10 years from now Noah gonna thank me for?

00:20:36.740 | And for him, if he would have stuck with that,

00:20:38.460 | this is a few years ago now,

00:20:40.180 | I promise that for him and for everyone out there,

00:20:42.740 | if you can find something that actually works,

00:20:44.440 | which it was working for him,

00:20:46.060 | he was making content about food.

00:20:48.260 | You know, these like food cooking shows?

00:20:49.860 | - Yeah.

00:20:50.700 | - If he would have stuck with it, it was working.

00:20:51.980 | You know, five years from now,

00:20:52.820 | that could have easily surpassed the amount of revenue

00:20:54.820 | that he's getting in his day job.

00:20:55.780 | And you keep both or he can have that option

00:20:58.100 | to do that full-time if he wants.

00:21:00.060 | - Yeah, I mean, I found firsthand,

00:21:01.740 | you don't have to give it up, right?

00:21:04.100 | I was working for 18 months while doing this.

00:21:06.940 | And when you talked about pre-selling, it was interesting.

00:21:10.180 | There are some businesses like what we're doing,

00:21:12.300 | we're selling, you know, the person who might pay the bill

00:21:14.940 | isn't the person, the audience.

00:21:16.820 | But what I did when I started was I made a trailer

00:21:19.540 | and I was like, will anyone subscribe to this podcast

00:21:22.220 | after hearing just the trailer?

00:21:24.100 | I didn't even make an episode.

00:21:25.500 | - I love that.

00:21:26.340 | - I recorded a one-minute trailer, two-minute trailer

00:21:29.420 | and was like, this is what this show is about.

00:21:31.620 | And fortunately, Apple and Spotify will show you.

00:21:33.700 | Like, did you get followers?

00:21:35.100 | Did people say, I wanna see what happens next?

00:21:37.420 | So I don't know, I just wanna-

00:21:40.020 | - I love that.

00:21:40.860 | And then how did you, so I'm guessing you follow

00:21:42.860 | kind of the same playbook I'm gonna recommend

00:21:44.980 | in the book and beyond.

00:21:45.820 | And again, I think people think it's so simple.

00:21:47.580 | They're like, no, but I gotta make it more complicated.

00:21:49.300 | Right, isn't this stuff supposed to be fancy?

00:21:50.540 | It's like, yes, it eventually gets fancy, right?

00:21:52.620 | Like AppSumo now has a 20-person engineering team,

00:21:54.780 | 20-person plus marketing team.

00:21:56.860 | But it starts that you just kind of post it on there

00:21:58.580 | and then you tell some friends

00:21:59.620 | and then you kind of do that a little bit more

00:22:00.900 | and a little bit more.

00:22:01.740 | And yes, there's other parts of the process,

00:22:03.780 | but I think people wanna not trick,

00:22:06.940 | but make you believe it's much more complicated

00:22:08.580 | and people are further away skill-wise than they think.

00:22:11.180 | And I've seen so many smart people stuck in jobs

00:22:14.020 | that are, if not better than me and skilled,

00:22:16.100 | just as good as me,

00:22:17.220 | they just have been a little bit more afraid than me.

00:22:19.540 | And if they just do some small things today,

00:22:21.660 | I think they'll be shocked at their confidence

00:22:23.420 | and their abilities of what they can actually do.

00:22:25.340 | So for yourself, with your podcast,

00:22:26.980 | how did you get your first few listeners?

00:22:28.460 | I don't think you just posted it and prayed.

00:22:31.340 | - You know, I basically, I had like six or seven projects

00:22:34.260 | in my life that had email lists.

00:22:36.260 | And I was like, okay, well, when I launched this thing,

00:22:37.780 | I'm just gonna email all these people.

00:22:39.660 | And someone was like, well, if you do that,

00:22:42.580 | they might get upset and report you as spam.

00:22:44.620 | I was like, why do you even have a newsletter?

00:22:45.820 | Like, I just have a, you know, it doesn't even matter.

00:22:49.340 | But they had subscribed and opted into something.

00:22:51.580 | So I felt, I felt that was okay.

00:22:53.180 | And then it started when a friend of mine,

00:22:58.060 | I told him, I was like, I was thinking of starting a podcast.

00:22:59.960 | He was interviewing me about something random

00:23:01.740 | on his podcast.

00:23:03.340 | And he was like, pause.

00:23:05.860 | And then like kind of, he goes, all right,

00:23:07.980 | I want you to go home and record a one minute trailer,

00:23:11.100 | and then we'll just splice it in.

00:23:12.780 | Like you could tell, you could split.

00:23:14.620 | And so I came, I spliced in this audio that was like,

00:23:16.740 | all right, so the podcast is called this.

00:23:18.660 | I only had two days to name this podcast,

00:23:21.740 | because, you know, he interviewed me about the podcast,

00:23:24.300 | and he's like, I need a name.

00:23:25.460 | I need you to send me an audio file.

00:23:26.960 | So I was forced, I don't know if it was a weekend,

00:23:29.360 | but I was forced in like 48 hours to name the podcast

00:23:32.060 | and set up a website and create a trailer

00:23:35.580 | and put it up there.

00:23:36.420 | But I hadn't lined up an interview at all.

00:23:39.820 | - Well, I think most people get it wrong

00:23:42.260 | is that that's what they believe they have to do first.

00:23:44.480 | They're like, all right, well, I need to go learn

00:23:45.720 | how to even set up a website.

00:23:46.820 | Now I gotta waste time on that.

00:23:47.900 | And then I gotta pay for domain.

00:23:49.100 | And then I need to do this and this and this.

00:23:50.540 | And no, just put out a trailer,

00:23:52.140 | send it to friends and see if anyone subscribes.

00:23:54.140 | If people do, great, now do all these other things.

00:23:56.820 | Most people just do it backwards.

00:23:57.980 | And I think that's been a big misconception.

00:24:00.100 | Like there's a guy, Jake, who read the book

00:24:02.660 | and he lives, he has three kids, day job, very common.

00:24:06.580 | He's had the same idea for 24 months, same idea, right?

00:24:11.100 | And he wanted to be a good example to his kids.

00:24:13.260 | That's what he told me.

00:24:14.380 | So I read the book and in a weekend,

00:24:17.240 | which he was like, yeah, it's worth it.

00:24:19.540 | I asked him what he would tell others.

00:24:20.620 | He's like, it's just worth it.

00:24:22.420 | And I didn't wanna, he didn't wanna wonder what if.

00:24:25.580 | And I thought that was amazing.

00:24:26.780 | And in one weekend, he was able to validate

00:24:29.260 | his golf trips for guys' business.

00:24:31.720 | What a unique idea.

00:24:33.620 | And now he has five customers.

00:24:34.780 | They've paid $15,000, I think $3,000 each.

00:24:37.460 | And he's aiming to get eight of them.

00:24:39.180 | And in August of this year,

00:24:41.500 | he's gonna take these guys on a golf trip someplace.

00:24:44.020 | I don't know anything about golf, but some course.

00:24:46.140 | - Yeah.

00:24:47.620 | - And I think he's gonna make, I don't know, 5K,

00:24:49.480 | give or take for himself.

00:24:50.360 | And guess what?

00:24:51.200 | That's the start.

00:24:52.020 | And that's amazing.

00:24:52.860 | - And he doesn't quit his job to do it.

00:24:54.640 | - No, he still has his job.

00:24:55.480 | And I was like, do you have any social media?

00:24:56.600 | He's like, no.

00:24:57.500 | He's like, I have my email address.

00:24:59.440 | So I think it was like jakemdw.311.

00:25:03.280 | Anyways, message me and I'll put you in touch with Jake

00:25:04.880 | if you like golf trips and wanna have fun with other dudes.

00:25:07.360 | - Yeah, well, one thing you didn't say,

00:25:08.960 | but I know you said in the book, 'cause I read it,

00:25:11.480 | was you have to love the thing

00:25:15.540 | and it makes it so much easier.

00:25:16.700 | Maybe you don't have to, but it really helps.

00:25:18.620 | So my kind of, I often tell people

00:25:22.300 | they're thinking of ideas.

00:25:23.140 | I'm like, what would you go do for free?

00:25:24.460 | Like, what do you just, look at your internet history.

00:25:26.740 | Where did you spend all of your time?

00:25:28.500 | If you love going, researching X, Y, and Z,

00:25:31.580 | like, is there something that you could do there?

00:25:34.080 | And for me, everyone I knew was always like,

00:25:38.580 | you always do all this homework.

00:25:39.540 | Can you just tell me the answer?

00:25:40.860 | Like, I would go to a dinner table and someone's like,

00:25:44.260 | yeah, yeah, yeah, I know you know all the credit card stuff.

00:25:46.380 | Can you just tell me which one to get?

00:25:47.620 | Or can you just tell me what insurance is the right policy?

00:25:50.900 | And I was like, oh, what if I just did all this research

00:25:54.140 | and shared it?

00:25:54.980 | Or what if instead of doing the research,

00:25:57.940 | I interviewed the people while I was doing it and shared it?

00:26:00.460 | And so I think it didn't start with the ambition

00:26:03.900 | of being a full-time job or anything.

00:26:05.700 | It just started as a thing that I liked doing.

00:26:08.580 | And in fact, it actually started as an idea

00:26:11.180 | of a parenting podcast.

00:26:13.100 | And one of my pieces of advice I'll give people,

00:26:16.620 | friends are often too nice.

00:26:18.700 | And so I told people, I was like,

00:26:19.540 | oh, I'm gonna start this parenting podcast

00:26:21.300 | 'cause right before we had our first child,

00:26:23.380 | I got really into going down all these rabbit holes

00:26:25.860 | of parenting research.

00:26:27.500 | And I was researching strollers and I might have,

00:26:31.660 | I think that I have the most comprehensive

00:26:33.420 | stroller comparison database and spreadsheet

00:26:36.300 | that exists out there in the world.

00:26:38.100 | It's about three years out of date,

00:26:39.500 | but for circa 2020, it's the best.

00:26:42.140 | And I had gotten caught up in the fact

00:26:45.780 | that I love doing all this research and thinking,

00:26:47.700 | wow, I'm doing it on this topic.

00:26:49.060 | I should start a podcast on this topic.

00:26:51.820 | And everyone I knew was like, that's a great idea.

00:26:54.300 | And then I was like, you know what?

00:26:56.020 | After we had the kid and we bought the stroller

00:26:58.460 | and we bought all the items, I was like,

00:27:00.820 | I think I liked researching things

00:27:02.620 | more than I liked that topic solely.

00:27:05.140 | And I was like, what if I just did it about all the hacks

00:27:07.700 | and it was just me researching everything

00:27:09.140 | and all my friends said, oh, that's so much better.

00:27:10.980 | That's exactly who you are.

00:27:12.500 | And I was like, well, why didn't you tell me that before?

00:27:15.740 | So I like the fact that instead of texting your friends

00:27:18.740 | and saying, what do you think of X?

00:27:20.540 | Ask them first, because I've found in the past

00:27:23.700 | that if you tell them you wanna do something,

00:27:25.460 | they're often either completely dismissive

00:27:28.140 | or completely supportive.

00:27:29.700 | And it's very hard for them to think,

00:27:31.380 | oh, well, that's great,

00:27:32.620 | but like this other thing might be better.

00:27:35.580 | - Yeah, I think a common theme I've heard,

00:27:37.420 | and again, what is it?

00:27:39.540 | Find something you love,

00:27:40.380 | you never work a day in your life.

00:27:41.820 | I think that's said by people who actually like their jobs

00:27:44.540 | and there's people who, I'd say 80% don't, that they don't.

00:27:48.940 | And then what they'll do to avoid it is like,

00:27:50.900 | well, I wouldn't wanna do that for a living.

00:27:52.980 | I like researching a lot, but that's just more my hobby.

00:27:54.900 | And it's like, you know what happens in business

00:27:56.140 | as you get going?

00:27:56.980 | You don't do any of the actual work,

00:27:58.580 | which is counterintuitive.

00:28:00.340 | Like, you know, the last time I got an AppSumo deal?

00:28:03.260 | 2011, right?

00:28:06.100 | You know, like it's been 13 years.

00:28:08.500 | And I remember someone saying that and I was like,

00:28:10.060 | oh, interesting.

00:28:10.900 | So don't trade your time for money,

00:28:12.100 | trade your money for someone else's time.

00:28:14.500 | And that's how business happens.

00:28:16.220 | And if you do enjoy it, frankly, you're like,

00:28:17.860 | hey, actually, no, I like customer support.

00:28:19.580 | I like all these areas, great.

00:28:21.540 | But it doesn't always have to be that case.

00:28:22.660 | And I love your highlight of find something

00:28:24.460 | that you just enjoy doing.

00:28:26.020 | I always like the idea too, if you have a million dollars,

00:28:28.020 | like I send you a million dollars today,

00:28:29.140 | what are you doing tomorrow?

00:28:31.420 | I am doing it.

00:28:33.380 | I'm doing it.

00:28:34.220 | I'm talking about a book

00:28:35.060 | 'cause this is what I wish I would have had

00:28:36.780 | when I was getting started.

00:28:37.620 | I get to promote deals on AppSumo.

00:28:39.660 | Like I get to make YouTube content

00:28:41.460 | or interview rich people and ask how they did it.

00:28:43.420 | I don't know, like, I can't believe it.

00:28:45.060 | Most days, I can't believe this is my career.

00:28:46.460 | I'd like type on a keyboard and like money comes.

00:28:49.060 | And then I also recognize that it started as a hobby.

00:28:51.580 | And I think that's a big thing people don't think of.

00:28:54.260 | They're like, no, no, it's gotta be,

00:28:55.940 | it's gotta be a million dollar crazy thing.

00:28:57.220 | It's like, no, no, no.

00:28:58.380 | Most big billion trillion dollar businesses

00:29:00.540 | started as just curiosity, right?

00:29:03.900 | Airbnb, one of my favorite examples, started in a weekend.

00:29:06.780 | They emailed people saying, hey,

00:29:07.860 | does anyone want to stay at our couch

00:29:08.820 | for this design conference in SF?

00:29:10.780 | Someone did.

00:29:11.620 | That's kind of interesting.

00:29:14.180 | They weren't setting out to change,

00:29:15.580 | you know, annoy everybody in the world

00:29:17.300 | and make the world kind of cooler.

00:29:18.980 | And same thing with a lot of these other businesses.

00:29:22.180 | - I was talking to a mentor of mine.

00:29:25.340 | Well, I might get back on the show,

00:29:26.340 | Andy Ratcliffe, who started Wealthfront.

00:29:28.340 | And he told me two things that are pretty relevant.

00:29:30.260 | One, he's like, I've done a lot of investing in my career.

00:29:33.260 | At the earliest stage,

00:29:35.220 | I honestly don't even know if the idea matters at all.

00:29:38.180 | Like, it's, the idea might change, the idea might evolve.

00:29:42.300 | People haven't really baked it.

00:29:43.540 | It's really about, is the person,

00:29:45.260 | how excited is the person about this idea

00:29:47.260 | and how driven are they?

00:29:48.940 | And then he said, and the one skill I value the most

00:29:52.660 | is intellectual curiosity.

00:29:54.300 | He just wants people that are excited about a thing

00:29:57.460 | and want to learn more about it.

00:29:58.980 | And he's like, that is something I really value.

00:30:01.940 | And so, you know, it made me think,

00:30:04.420 | oh, we're having this conversation today.

00:30:06.180 | That was a couple of days ago.

00:30:07.700 | What are you just curious about?

00:30:08.980 | Like, what are the things

00:30:09.820 | that you just can't stop thinking about?

00:30:11.700 | And how could you solve some problem?

00:30:15.140 | I mean, again, I spent a career also in product management.

00:30:18.740 | It's like, forget about solutions.

00:30:20.700 | Just figure out what people are having problems with.

00:30:22.860 | Ask them what's wrong in their day.

00:30:24.580 | Walk through a friend.

00:30:25.580 | I love this exercise.

00:30:26.500 | Walk through a friend's day and just be like,

00:30:28.780 | all right, tell me everything that sucked.

00:30:30.820 | Like, in lots of details.

00:30:32.980 | Like, okay, you were making breakfast.

00:30:34.820 | Like, what would have made breakfast less frustrating?

00:30:37.100 | Oh, this, I don't know.

00:30:39.300 | My cast iron skillet's always hot.

00:30:41.300 | I don't know what the idea is right now.

00:30:43.580 | - I forgot to turn the stove off, which I did this morning.

00:30:45.660 | - Yeah.

00:30:46.500 | And so, I like solving problems.

00:30:49.900 | But let's take a little turn.

00:30:51.340 | You mentioned you've interviewed a lot of millionaires,

00:30:53.900 | billionaires.

00:30:54.780 | What are some of the lessons you've learned

00:30:56.180 | from all those conversations?

00:30:58.620 | - It's been, I've also worked for them, right?

00:31:01.380 | So, one thing I've noticed is that I think we all imagine

00:31:06.380 | that they're better than us.

00:31:08.220 | And when you actually meet millionaires

00:31:09.980 | or multi-millionaires or billionaires, you're,

00:31:12.940 | nope, not really.

00:31:14.540 | And that's beautiful, right?

00:31:16.100 | 'Cause that means that everyone has a chance

00:31:18.540 | to create whatever life they want.

00:31:20.060 | There are gifted people.

00:31:20.900 | Like, Zuckerberg is definitely smarter than most people.

00:31:23.380 | Bill Gates, who I've worked for, is smarter than most people.

00:31:25.580 | Peter Thiel, who I've gotten to hang out with a lot.

00:31:27.180 | I've gotten to hang out with a little bit.

00:31:28.020 | Smarter than most people.

00:31:29.300 | But there's also a lot of billionaires.

00:31:30.820 | Larry Janeski, I would say he's very smart,

00:31:32.700 | but he's also a very, pretty normal guy

00:31:34.940 | that I think a lot of us can do.

00:31:37.020 | Now, I would say some of the things in common between them

00:31:41.420 | is that most of them got rich off one thing,

00:31:43.980 | but all of us diversify, right?

00:31:48.580 | It's actually counterintuitive.

00:31:49.540 | They're like, "Diversify, diversify."

00:31:50.580 | But they only really got rich one way.

00:31:53.100 | You know, go look at any of these rich person lists.

00:31:54.860 | You know, it's either real estate or it's tech.

00:31:57.220 | Now, outside of inheritance,

00:31:59.260 | it's almost exclusively one thing.

00:32:01.220 | They stick with it for extraordinary long periods of time.

00:32:04.780 | Extraordinary.

00:32:06.780 | And I think, you know, especially with your show, Chris,

00:32:08.740 | we talk about, you know, what to choose for stocks

00:32:10.980 | or index funds, things like that, and investing.

00:32:13.300 | You know, think about compound business.

00:32:15.220 | So, sticking with something for 20 years.

00:32:17.260 | Like, you've been doing your show three years.

00:32:18.900 | Think about it in 30 years, right?

00:32:21.660 | Like, how big that will be where each year,

00:32:23.060 | you're just like, getting a little better at your craft,

00:32:24.500 | getting a little more popular,

00:32:25.460 | and you just stick with it and stick with it.

00:32:27.060 | And all these guys got rich to become billionaires

00:32:29.140 | in around 20 years.

00:32:30.380 | Which I think is super, super interesting.

00:32:33.660 | I like John Paul DeGioia a lot.

00:32:35.740 | I don't know if all of them were happy.

00:32:37.780 | A lot of them seemed to have regret

00:32:39.820 | that they didn't spend more time with their family.

00:32:41.540 | And that was, I'm glad I got to learn that from them.

00:32:44.100 | But I would say John Paul DeGioia seemed like

00:32:45.380 | he had the right balance, where,

00:32:47.540 | and as I said earlier, you know,

00:32:48.660 | the book starts with how do you get good at asking.

00:32:50.100 | He said that the most important skill

00:32:51.580 | that he's ever had is sales,

00:32:53.140 | which is really asking.

00:32:54.900 | And I liked his approach of businesses,

00:32:57.060 | which he said, find the best product

00:32:59.260 | that you really love in a category

00:33:00.980 | that needs to be reordered.

00:33:02.340 | That needs to be reordered.

00:33:05.900 | And just do that for a very long period of time.

00:33:08.660 | And so he did tequila, Patron,

00:33:10.780 | sold that for three and a half billion,

00:33:11.860 | 'cause you keep, I guess people keep drinking.

00:33:13.740 | And then he did haircare, Paul Mitchell Haircare,

00:33:15.300 | which you keep using haircare.

00:33:17.860 | And then I'd say the last thing specifically,

00:33:19.300 | especially from him,

00:33:20.500 | 'cause a lot of these guys seem frustrated

00:33:23.380 | or seem like they're chasing still more sometimes,

00:33:25.900 | which I was like, oh, I don't want that.

00:33:27.820 | He seemed just kind.

00:33:29.620 | He seemed really, really kind.

00:33:32.140 | And I really admired that.

00:33:33.500 | Like he was kind with me, his staff was kind.

00:33:36.020 | He was kind to the other people that were filming.

00:33:38.140 | The day he sold Patron,

00:33:39.740 | he gave a $50 million check to charity.

00:33:41.940 | He seemed genuinely like kind with himself

00:33:43.820 | and then kind with others.

00:33:44.700 | And that's definitely something I've worked on

00:33:46.660 | in the past few years, and I love that from him.

00:33:49.500 | - Yeah, I had a great conversation with Gary Vee

00:33:52.220 | about kindness and just how he thinks

00:33:53.980 | it's like the most underrated business skill in the market.

00:33:57.580 | - I think self-kindness is probably underrated.

00:34:01.500 | I think we're all disgusting to ourselves.

00:34:04.940 | I think we're really harsh on ourselves.

00:34:07.180 | And that's something I've definitely worked on.

00:34:09.460 | I'll try to think of underrated skills.

00:34:10.740 | I'll tell you, underrated skill is gift-giving,

00:34:13.860 | super underrated in business, so, so underrated.

00:34:16.900 | And as well, like doing the work for people

00:34:18.620 | you want to have help from or people you want to ask.

00:34:21.060 | Like if you want to come on someone's show,

00:34:22.540 | like I could have even done more for you,

00:34:24.180 | even though we just met yesterday,

00:34:25.580 | or we connected yesterday,

00:34:27.060 | but hey, let me come back with ideas for you.

00:34:29.900 | Or I was able to meet the people from CNBC,

00:34:32.860 | so I'm coming on the show Make It,

00:34:34.620 | and the guy loves his new dog.

00:34:37.180 | And so I asked someone who loves dogs

00:34:38.900 | for what's the coolest dog toy.

00:34:40.300 | And so it's this thing from Fable

00:34:42.100 | where it spits out dog food as a game.

00:34:44.860 | So it's a little gift thing, it's like 50 bucks.

00:34:47.820 | Like that's going to create a cool relationship for life,

00:34:50.420 | that for $50.

00:34:52.300 | So I think those are kind of two things

00:34:53.380 | that I would say are definitely underrated

00:34:55.060 | in a business or frankly in life.

00:34:57.860 | - And what about, I mean, now that I'm just thinking

00:35:00.220 | about ways that you've changed your life,

00:35:03.460 | how does your routine look on a day-to-day basis

00:35:06.580 | in terms of when you're doing business,

00:35:08.460 | when you're spending time on yourself,

00:35:10.380 | your partner, your health?

00:35:12.500 | - I think a lot of the morning routine content

00:35:17.300 | is very overrated.

00:35:18.540 | I think it's so overrated.

00:35:21.260 | It's like, oh, get up and meditate and fucking journal,

00:35:24.300 | sorry, freaking journal, and then drink whatever.

00:35:26.740 | I don't know, people don't drink Bulletproof coffee anymore.

00:35:28.340 | I don't know whatever the new coffee fat is.

00:35:30.180 | And then, I don't know,

00:35:31.420 | jump in a cold shower and all that crap.

00:35:33.420 | What I found is just look at the days

00:35:36.380 | that worked out well for you

00:35:37.220 | and try to have common elements between them.

00:35:39.980 | So what I have recognized is like,

00:35:41.780 | I do like journaling on Monday morning, that works out.

00:35:44.180 | And I've copied that from the book "Artist's Way,"

00:35:45.740 | which is amazing if you haven't read it.

00:35:47.900 | Highly recommend about how to be a creative person.

00:35:50.540 | So I do that on Monday mornings.

00:35:51.580 | And I don't eat until 12 'cause it made me feel like,

00:35:54.580 | okay, it's good to feel a little hungry sometimes.

00:35:56.180 | So that's Mondays.

00:35:57.260 | And then the rest of my week,

00:35:58.180 | I don't do anything else before noon.

00:36:00.620 | That's every day.

00:36:01.460 | Try to think of high-level things

00:36:04.340 | that I could recommend for most people.

00:36:05.580 | I color code my calendar.

00:36:06.820 | I think that's probably one of the cooler things

00:36:08.860 | that people can do.

00:36:09.700 | And it's really just showing you your asset allocation

00:36:12.620 | or your time allocation.

00:36:14.100 | You think about it where,

00:36:15.380 | all right, how much did I spend with my family?

00:36:16.860 | How much did I spend in fitness?

00:36:17.940 | How much did I spend at work?

00:36:18.940 | How much did I spend with myself?

00:36:20.100 | And a lot of my stuff is on repeat.

00:36:21.940 | So I know that every Monday, I'm gonna have journal.

00:36:24.140 | It's in my calendar.

00:36:24.980 | Every month, I have my monthly personal finance review

00:36:27.060 | on my Google spreadsheet.

00:36:28.900 | Let's say other routine stuff,

00:36:30.540 | maybe just high-level two other ones

00:36:31.900 | that people can copy that I found.

00:36:33.700 | I do a weekly review on Fridays, every single Friday.

00:36:36.860 | That's been a game changer.

00:36:38.380 | Where I evaluate, how did I show up as a leader,

00:36:40.780 | one through five, and why?

00:36:42.420 | How was my emotional consistency?

00:36:44.140 | I've noticed sometimes, like even yesterday,

00:36:45.700 | I was a little bully, I would say sometimes.

00:36:48.820 | And I was like, ooh, I don't like that.

00:36:50.540 | And then the last one on Fridays is,

00:36:52.340 | what are the three things you wanna do next week?

00:36:54.540 | And then every Sunday,

00:36:55.740 | I take that three things I wanna do next week

00:36:58.020 | and work with my chief of staff to really help schedule

00:37:01.380 | and color code the things I'm working on

00:37:02.820 | in this upcoming week.

00:37:03.900 | But I think the morning routines,

00:37:07.060 | yeah, morning routines, frankly,

00:37:08.100 | just don't drink too late at night

00:37:10.380 | and then try to go to bed relatively early.

00:37:12.580 | That, you're gonna have a pretty damn great routine

00:37:14.580 | in the morning.

00:37:15.420 | I've noticed, I use the Oura Ring

00:37:17.220 | and people do a bunch of stuff,

00:37:18.700 | but ultimately, it really comes down to that.

00:37:21.340 | I think counterintuitively, by the way,

00:37:22.740 | I think there's gonna be a big trend

00:37:23.940 | that husbands and husbands, or wives and husbands,

00:37:26.740 | tend to sleep in separate rooms.

00:37:28.540 | But I think when your partner gets you up,

00:37:30.780 | and you're like, oh man, I did not sleep as well.

00:37:32.060 | But I think there's just too much friction on that.

00:37:35.100 | - Yeah, there was, I did an episode on sleep,

00:37:38.020 | and I can't remember the interviewee,

00:37:40.420 | but a couple weeks ago,

00:37:41.580 | and I asked a question about sleeping with your partner,

00:37:43.460 | and she's like, I interviewed the world's expert on sleeping.

00:37:47.500 | There's some book that this person wrote,

00:37:49.740 | and she interviewed it.

00:37:50.660 | I'll put a link in the show notes,

00:37:51.900 | but it was all about how do you optimize your sleep

00:37:55.420 | when you're also trying to consider the fact

00:37:57.420 | that you have another human in the bed,

00:37:58.620 | and what's the right tactic here?

00:38:00.780 | I have not listened to the episode full disclosure,

00:38:02.820 | so I can't endorse it. - It's crazy.

00:38:04.460 | I mean, I think the same thing for Million Dollar Weekend,

00:38:06.260 | the same thing about how I run AppSumo.com,

00:38:08.460 | and the same thing with these routines is experiment.

00:38:11.820 | That's all it comes down to,

00:38:12.700 | and experiments can fail, but experiments can work,

00:38:14.860 | and so I've done 30 days of getting up at five.

00:38:17.740 | I've done 30 days of no caffeine.

00:38:19.260 | I've done meditation every day,

00:38:20.940 | and then noticing, 'cause everyone's different,

00:38:22.980 | noticing what's the formula.

00:38:24.980 | You're like, oh man, when I can go biking in the morning,

00:38:27.220 | great, or I can jump in the sauna, great,

00:38:29.580 | but when I have a morning meeting at 10, I'm pretty angry,

00:38:32.000 | 'cause I don't feel like I didn't create a business

00:38:34.100 | so that I have to do these kind of things,

00:38:35.620 | or I don't want to,

00:38:37.100 | and then just experiment around that

00:38:38.540 | and seeing how you can create, frankly,

00:38:40.140 | the life and week you want to live,

00:38:42.300 | and Jake, who read the book,

00:38:45.460 | he said something to me that was really powerful,

00:38:47.420 | and I've been thinking about it every day

00:38:49.660 | since a few months ago.

00:38:51.380 | He said, "Have stuff in your calendar you look forward to.

00:38:54.100 | "Put it in the calendar.

00:38:55.100 | "Put a date night in the calendar.

00:38:56.200 | "Put a workout in the calendar,

00:38:57.880 | "and if you don't have anything in life

00:38:58.880 | "you're excited about, put it in the calendar."

00:39:00.820 | That really stuck with me.

00:39:02.120 | - I literally today just put a recurring monthly date night

00:39:05.940 | on the calendar, so.

00:39:07.540 | - Hell yeah.

00:39:08.380 | That was actually, that was a business

00:39:09.980 | from a buddy last week, Date Night Nannies,

00:39:13.180 | where they help you,

00:39:14.220 | suggest either a date night every month or weekly.

00:39:16.580 | You can subscribe to different amounts.

00:39:18.820 | Have that as an opportunity.

00:39:20.580 | Really kind of interesting business.

00:39:22.340 | - Yeah.

00:39:23.300 | Yeah, I mean, I think a big takeaway for me,

00:39:25.500 | reading the book, talking to you,

00:39:26.940 | is just there's this, especially in the Bay Area,

00:39:31.040 | but this belief that entrepreneurship is a career

00:39:36.040 | versus an option.

00:39:38.660 | I don't know what the,

00:39:39.500 | the option's probably the wrong word,

00:39:40.900 | but you don't have to choose between

00:39:42.440 | entrepreneurship and employment.

00:39:44.480 | And if you do, you can punt on that decision.

00:39:47.880 | Like, there's a thousand things you can do

00:39:50.040 | when you want to explore an idea, as you say, in a weekend.

00:39:54.680 | Like, way before you have to decide quitting your job.

00:39:57.260 | Way before you have to raise money,

00:39:58.600 | build a product, and all this stuff.

00:40:00.840 | And I think so many people often get turned around.

00:40:05.320 | And if anyone out there,

00:40:07.280 | just because I've taken this phone call like 10 times,

00:40:09.920 | so I started a company doing financial planning online,

00:40:12.840 | and we raised money, spent a few years,

00:40:16.380 | and realized that the reason why that business

00:40:19.120 | is so hard to build is solely that it is almost impossible

00:40:23.720 | to acquire customers at any fast cadence.

00:40:27.520 | Because people all want to change their finances,

00:40:31.160 | they all want to improve their financial life,

00:40:33.300 | but they just don't want to do it right now.

00:40:35.440 | And so, what we learned, in the worst way possible,

00:40:39.240 | but I'll come back and I'll give a lesson,

00:40:40.720 | is that we ask people, "Do you want to do this?

00:40:43.920 | "Put $100 down."

00:40:44.960 | And we got all these people to put $100 down.

00:40:47.040 | And so we were like, "Wow, there's real demand."

00:40:49.320 | The challenge is then we said, "All right, let's get started.

00:40:51.080 | "Do you want to pay the rest?"

00:40:52.000 | And they're like, "No, not now."

00:40:53.560 | And we were like, "Oh, we'll give you your $100 back."

00:40:55.200 | And they said, "No, no, no, don't give us the $100 back.

00:40:57.060 | "We want to do this, we just don't want to do it now."

00:40:59.240 | And converting people off that wait list

00:41:00.880 | was almost impossible.

00:41:02.440 | And so, a lot of these founders call me and they say,

00:41:04.840 | "Hey, I want to start a company.

00:41:05.880 | "We want to do online financial planning."

00:41:07.940 | And I'm like, "Stop everything,

00:41:10.040 | "and just find out if you can acquire people.

00:41:12.120 | "Can you sell this in a way that you could repeat?

00:41:15.840 | "And if not, don't go hire the engineering team.

00:41:18.040 | "Don't go build the product."

00:41:19.420 | And it just got me thinking,

00:41:21.800 | especially reflecting on the last 24 hours

00:41:24.900 | of kind of prepping for this conversation.

00:41:27.660 | If I had spent a weekend just validating

00:41:29.940 | whether there were ways to sell financial planning

00:41:33.300 | and close the client quickly, per se,

00:41:36.480 | I probably wouldn't have even needed to start the company

00:41:39.120 | because at the end of the day,

00:41:40.820 | the challenge is people aren't ready to start now.

00:41:43.740 | And if you just listen to the problem,

00:41:45.740 | the problem is, "Oh, I need to fix this.

00:41:47.360 | "I need to fix this."

00:41:48.440 | But if you don't actually take whether,

00:41:50.480 | I think it's step two in your process

00:41:52.160 | to actually validate that the thing you wanna do

00:41:54.360 | will solve the problem and work, you kind of get lost.

00:41:58.880 | - Especially in Silicon.

00:42:00.640 | I mean, I don't know how many of your audience

00:42:02.160 | is in Silicon Valley.

00:42:03.800 | - Probably not.

00:42:04.720 | Definitely the minority, but I'd say sub 5%,

00:42:07.600 | but definitely my experience, at least.

00:42:10.560 | - Yeah, I saw this.

00:42:11.800 | You know, it's interesting

00:42:12.640 | 'cause a lot of people have heard that advice.

00:42:13.760 | Like, "Yeah, just go get going."

00:42:15.680 | But then they don't, and then it's like,

00:42:16.840 | "Well, what's happening there?"

00:42:17.760 | And they're afraid.

00:42:18.960 | And so how do we do it in small, fun ways?

00:42:20.760 | Kind of almost games where it's like,

00:42:22.400 | "Okay, if you fail, fine,

00:42:23.280 | "but at least you're starting to feel more confident."

00:42:26.200 | Now, I saw a Silicon Valley company called Artifacts.

00:42:29.080 | I think it's what it's called.

00:42:30.240 | Raised three and a half million dollars,

00:42:32.000 | and they'll film a video of your grandma or grandpa.

00:42:35.560 | Pappy.

00:42:36.640 | And I was like, "I could have easily found out

00:42:38.300 | "on a weekend, that whole business.

00:42:39.560 | "I didn't need to raise any money."

00:42:40.640 | I could literally, everyone's got a grandfather

00:42:42.960 | and grandmother or parent.

00:42:44.880 | You can contact people in your network.

00:42:47.120 | "Hey, can I film your grandfather or grandfather?

00:42:49.120 | "I'll go to their house or Zoom 'em for half the price,

00:42:51.700 | "and I could record and create a memory capsule for you."

00:42:54.680 | I could make more than $3 million in the next few years

00:42:56.940 | before I even have some complicated Silicon Valley website.

00:42:59.960 | And it was just a cool reminder

00:43:02.760 | that this didn't really apply in a lot of different areas.

00:43:05.260 | And guess what?

00:43:06.100 | If no one wanted it, if I called up,

00:43:07.320 | I don't know, maybe I can call up Chris,

00:43:09.320 | as someone in my network.

00:43:10.280 | Like, you have, probably you have parents.

00:43:13.080 | See if that's a problem.

00:43:14.120 | See if you even want to pay for it.

00:43:15.640 | And if you don't, great.

00:43:16.640 | I didn't go and raise money, build a pitch deck

00:43:19.000 | to find out someone, build something that no one wants.

00:43:22.180 | - Yeah.

00:43:24.960 | Also, there's a lot of companies that raise so much money

00:43:26.760 | that the business doesn't work at the scale.

00:43:29.920 | So let's pretend that this company goes out of business.

00:43:32.880 | Might not actually mean it's a bad idea.

00:43:34.840 | Someone listening to this podcast right now

00:43:36.600 | might be like, "Well, let's just start doing this."

00:43:38.760 | It might not work at the speed and cadence

00:43:41.200 | that investors would want it to be,

00:43:43.400 | which is why that company could or could not fail.

00:43:46.360 | But that doesn't mean it's not a good business.

00:43:47.600 | Financial planning is actually a great business.

00:43:49.680 | It's just not a great software business

00:43:51.440 | at the scale investors need.

00:43:53.080 | So, I'm happy that we haven't tried to raise money,

00:43:57.360 | you know, to turn, you know,

00:43:59.840 | this into a venture-backed podcast.

00:44:02.320 | - I mean, the reality, they just, they don't,

00:44:05.800 | it doesn't always work.

00:44:07.080 | And people are so close to yeses

00:44:09.360 | if they just got some nos.

00:44:11.280 | Right, like if they just started asking,

00:44:12.600 | like, "Hey, I'm going to try this business."

00:44:13.600 | Didn't work.

00:44:14.440 | Okay, great.

00:44:15.440 | But people are giving up way too soon.

00:44:17.320 | They're all giving up way too soon.

00:44:18.760 | And if they could just wait till they,

00:44:20.400 | not even wait, keep going, keep going, keep going,

00:44:22.160 | eventually you will find that thing.

00:44:23.520 | And, I mean, it took me, I think,

00:44:26.080 | 20 different business ideas to finally get to AppSumo.

00:44:28.400 | That finally worked.

00:44:29.240 | And I was like, "All right, great, it's working."

00:44:30.560 | My favorite business is the one that works.

00:44:31.880 | I'm just going to stick with this.

00:44:32.960 | And, you know, I would say year after year showing up,

00:44:36.440 | it's now producing, you know, great dividends.

00:44:38.240 | And that's available worldwide.

00:44:39.960 | - Well, so one of the skills you mentioned

00:44:42.480 | was just getting going, right?

00:44:44.080 | And I think in the book you say, "Now, not how."

00:44:46.640 | Let's talk about that

00:44:47.480 | because I think that's a skill that applies

00:44:50.600 | whether you're starting a company

00:44:51.880 | or whether you're just working on anything.

00:44:53.920 | And it's a skill I'm pretty bad at.

00:44:55.160 | So that's why I'm going to ask you

00:44:58.240 | to kind of coach me and people listening.

00:45:01.240 | When you have the mind of,

00:45:03.140 | "Oh, great, I need to do this thing.

00:45:05.040 | "Let's take fitness."

00:45:06.400 | You're like, "Oh, I want to start working out.

00:45:07.960 | "Okay, well, let's go research

00:45:09.040 | "what the best training program is.

00:45:12.260 | "Let's go ask 10 of my friends.

00:45:13.980 | "Is there maybe a coach I should hire?"

00:45:15.360 | It's like, or just go lift some weights,

00:45:17.960 | like go on a run.

00:45:19.060 | How do you, you seem like someone who also,

00:45:24.120 | you wrote a book, like to do some research,

00:45:26.040 | like to kind of put thought behind things.

00:45:28.820 | How do you contrast that to just get going?

00:45:32.580 | - I want to avoid getting going really fast

00:45:37.600 | in the wrong direction, right?

00:45:40.400 | So the whole concept is how do I get going?

00:45:42.400 | See if it works.

00:45:43.240 | "Great, I'm going to go fast in that direction."

00:45:45.440 | So what do you think is the last thing you avoided

00:45:47.760 | or you took longer on

00:45:48.600 | that maybe you think you have to,

00:45:51.000 | needed to or wanted to?

00:45:52.480 | - I mean, I can think of a few things

00:45:53.480 | that I just haven't done yet.

00:45:55.240 | - What are examples of that?

00:45:56.640 | - My wife and I talk a lot about,

00:45:58.920 | and I get lots of emails from people like,

00:46:00.120 | "Gosh, you have such great content.

00:46:01.700 | "Why aren't you posting it anywhere else?"

00:46:03.760 | If I don't like podcasts, you can put it in a newsletter.

00:46:08.760 | We started doing that.

00:46:10.000 | And then someone was like, "LinkedIn might be great."

00:46:11.720 | I'm like, "Okay, well, maybe I should go figure out

00:46:13.760 | "what the best way to do LinkedIn is."

00:46:17.400 | I don't know.

00:46:18.240 | I'm using a little bit of an extreme, but also not.

00:46:20.720 | - That's okay.

00:46:21.600 | - My default is go master the thing before doing it.

00:46:26.600 | And even though I know that that's the wrong path,

00:46:30.840 | the right path would be like,

00:46:31.980 | "Well, just write something and post it

00:46:33.220 | "and see what people think."

00:46:34.600 | But sometimes I have to get out of my own head there.

00:46:37.360 | And so I'm curious if you have any thoughts

00:46:39.880 | on encouraging people who are like,

00:46:41.600 | "Well, I wanna start this thing.

00:46:42.720 | "I wanna think about it."

00:46:44.120 | Like, you could just do it.

00:46:45.880 | - Well, so a few things there,

00:46:47.640 | but let's just take this LinkedIn as a great example.

00:46:49.640 | What's held you back from posting it today?

00:46:51.840 | - Probably not sure what the right format is.

00:46:59.600 | Not sure what the right topic is.

00:47:03.880 | Probably a little bit of like,

00:47:05.520 | there are professional people there that know me

00:47:07.680 | and don't wanna look like an idiot

00:47:08.940 | posting something stupid in front of a professional group.

00:47:12.040 | But I don't know, those are a couple.

00:47:15.560 | - Those are great.

00:47:16.400 | And that's super common, right?

00:47:18.000 | We're embarrassed.

00:47:18.820 | I remember posting on Facebook

00:47:20.560 | and then this person from high school,

00:47:22.080 | I knew they saw it and I felt,

00:47:24.200 | I really felt embarrassed.

00:47:25.680 | Like, "Oh, what are they thinking of me?"

00:47:27.560 | And that's part of what this is about, right?

00:47:29.320 | It's finding confidence in ourself through action.

00:47:32.320 | And so I guess I would also wonder,

00:47:35.800 | I think there's a bigger discussion about like,

00:47:37.360 | is LinkedIn really the most helpful in your business?

00:47:40.160 | I think that's a separate thing.

00:47:41.560 | What would happen if you posted today?

00:47:43.560 | Like you take, do you post anywhere?

00:47:45.800 | Where do you post anything?

00:47:47.860 | - I'm not active on LinkedIn, Twitter,

00:47:51.480 | Facebook, Instagram, anywhere.

00:47:53.560 | - Oh, and how do people even hear about this podcast then?

00:47:55.840 | - The interesting thing,

00:47:57.920 | most people find out about podcasts on podcasts.

00:48:00.360 | So, you know, word of mouth

00:48:03.560 | and being a guest on other shows,

00:48:07.120 | maybe some newsletter stuff,

00:48:09.660 | but it certainly wasn't Instagram or Twitter,

00:48:12.160 | probably for most people.

00:48:13.200 | Though I'm sure someone listening will write back that,

00:48:15.000 | "No, no, no, it was for me."

00:48:17.220 | - It is.

00:48:18.060 | And then maybe let's do a parallel.

00:48:19.420 | So when you finally put yourself out there on the podcast,

00:48:21.640 | how did it feel?

00:48:22.480 | - I don't know, it just felt natural.

00:48:25.400 | Like for me, some of these things feel so unnatural.

00:48:29.400 | Like, I think you wrote something about this somewhere,

00:48:32.040 | it's like, I'm not the kind of person

00:48:33.680 | who's like always taking pictures all the time

00:48:35.740 | and wanting to share them with the world.

00:48:37.220 | So like Instagram seems so unnatural, it's so forced.

00:48:41.160 | If someone's like, "Just post more photos on Instagram."

00:48:43.080 | I'm like, "I just don't want to do that."

00:48:45.320 | - It's not what I do.

00:48:46.160 | And I also think what I would, you know,

00:48:47.960 | in business and same with this stuff,

00:48:49.280 | and we can go back to now not how,

00:48:50.800 | it's how do you do more of what's working, right?

00:48:54.280 | And what's working for you is podcasts.

00:48:55.560 | So I would say, how do you do more of that in the now?

00:48:57.760 | Not necessarily like something you don't really want to do.

00:49:00.480 | Like, yes, I could go post on those areas,

00:49:02.560 | but I don't like that either.

00:49:04.040 | Now, where I see the now not how concept

00:49:07.000 | is mostly for people who are not starting.

00:49:09.760 | They're just not getting started, right?

00:49:11.360 | And that's what's really holding back.

00:49:12.280 | You're already going.

00:49:13.840 | So going and starting something off in a new direction

00:49:15.480 | isn't what makes sense.

00:49:16.360 | Doubling down on what's working is what makes sense for you.

00:49:18.200 | And that's what we encourage later in the book,

00:49:20.120 | in the process.

00:49:21.360 | I guess the two things I would say is,

00:49:24.260 | you can practice not a how in really stupid things.

00:49:26.880 | And I've found that really helpful.

00:49:27.920 | Like practice it when there's something on the ground

00:49:30.360 | and you're living in your,

00:49:31.280 | 'cause you'll go to your closet tonight, Chris.

00:49:32.560 | I don't know if you're organized,

00:49:33.400 | but sometimes maybe your clothes on the ground

00:49:34.760 | or you're in the garage and kids left something

00:49:36.560 | on the ground and you're like, I'll get it tomorrow.

00:49:38.980 | And I tell myself, now not how.

00:49:41.280 | Ah, damn it.

00:49:42.240 | And the idea with how and now not how

00:49:44.120 | is that we are in general thinking about,

00:49:46.400 | well, if I want to start a business,

00:49:47.240 | I got to do all this stuff.

00:49:48.080 | It's like, no, just get going.

00:49:48.920 | Try to find a customer.

00:49:49.740 | And I've noticed there's a guy named Rico.

00:49:52.900 | He just started posting online.

00:49:54.080 | And he said, I made $4.70.

00:49:55.940 | He just started posting in his Facebook groups and stuff.

00:49:57.760 | And I was like, what are you doing?

00:49:58.880 | He's like, I don't know, just now.

00:50:00.000 | I'm just doing it.

00:50:00.840 | I'm not worrying about if people really love it or not.

00:50:02.720 | And you're doing it before fear catches up.

00:50:05.320 | And I like doing it in kind of silly ways.

00:50:06.880 | Something I literally, I was,

00:50:09.020 | I wanted to live, you know, I live and I do this stuff.

00:50:11.960 | So I said, let me just do a now not how

00:50:13.320 | that anyone can copy.

00:50:14.200 | So I texted my girlfriend.

00:50:16.380 | I said, what's one thing right now you can tell me

00:50:19.720 | that I can do to improve our relationship?

00:50:22.600 | Right now.

00:50:24.000 | And so she actually wrote a really great response.

00:50:26.720 | I'm not going to share it.

00:50:28.760 | But she said, baby, it's a difficult question.

00:50:31.160 | Dot, dot, dot.

00:50:32.480 | And that was just cause right in the now

00:50:33.680 | I asked for something versus, okay,

00:50:36.040 | now let me go to therapy or let me have a date night.

00:50:38.280 | And then we're going to sit down.

00:50:39.560 | But just right now I asked for something

00:50:41.180 | and I got feedback.

00:50:42.020 | And you can do that in your job right now.

00:50:43.000 | You could do that in starting a business right now.

00:50:44.680 | You can do that in social media right now.

00:50:46.840 | And I think a lot of times people are like,

00:50:48.040 | well, how do I approach it?

00:50:49.120 | How do I, don't worry about the how,

00:50:50.440 | just get going on the now.

00:50:52.520 | So I guess, how does that maybe relate to,

00:50:54.560 | what do you think is something that you think

00:50:56.240 | would actually benefit you and things going on

00:50:58.440 | that maybe you can consider as an experiment

00:51:00.560 | doing right now?

00:51:01.720 | I mean, it's funny in the last 24 hours,

00:51:07.360 | I did an experiment.

00:51:08.880 | And so I'll share it because it was a success.

00:51:11.200 | And I think it's a great story.

00:51:13.320 | There are a handful of people that listeners have said,

00:51:15.760 | you should have come on the show

00:51:17.120 | or I'd thought would be interesting.

00:51:19.440 | And I wasn't quite sure

00:51:21.680 | what would be the perfect conversation.

00:51:24.000 | And so I'll give one example is Dan Pink.

00:51:26.800 | So he's an author, he's been on the show in the past.

00:51:29.760 | And I was like, people wanna, we had a great conversation.

00:51:32.680 | I like his reading, his writing.

00:51:33.920 | And I was like, I should just have him back on the show

00:51:36.920 | as soon as I figure out what the topic is,

00:51:40.080 | 'cause I don't know what the topic's gonna be.

00:51:41.960 | And I was like, you know what?

00:51:44.760 | So last night I just,

00:51:45.840 | we spoke yesterday about this conversation.

00:51:48.120 | I just sent him a note and I was like,

00:51:49.040 | hey, I would love to have you back on the show.

00:51:50.760 | We had a great conversation.

00:51:52.200 | I'll figure out what it'll be about.

00:51:53.320 | But if you're interested, here's a link.

00:51:55.560 | And then this morning he just scheduled a link

00:51:57.040 | and we're gonna record an episode in a week

00:51:58.840 | or maybe two weeks.

00:52:00.020 | And so I know I'm gonna find a thing

00:52:02.960 | and I just needed that motivation to do it.

00:52:04.920 | So I would say, had we not talked,

00:52:09.080 | that would be a great example of something I wasn't doing.

00:52:11.000 | But because I'd been thinking about this,

00:52:12.920 | I just tried to put in the action.

00:52:14.680 | And I would say there's like three or four guests

00:52:17.440 | that are coming on the show in the next month

00:52:20.200 | that are all as a result of outreach in the last 24 hours.

00:52:23.520 | That I was just like, you know what?

00:52:24.360 | Let's just do it.

00:52:25.200 | Like, let's not wait for the perfect time.

00:52:27.300 | And maybe the hint is you just need

00:52:32.160 | to constantly remind yourself in practice.

00:52:33.960 | Like, it's a muscle you have to build.

00:52:37.000 | And even though I knew I was supposed to do it all along,

00:52:40.880 | it was just hard.

00:52:41.720 | And now I just need to do it more and see the benefit.

00:52:44.720 | - That's great, man.

00:52:47.280 | That was cool.

00:52:48.100 | Yeah, the things are never as scary as we think

00:52:50.440 | and they're never as hard.

00:52:51.840 | And I would say that the book, what really is the book,

00:52:54.760 | yes, it's business and money

00:52:55.960 | and changing your life in 48 hours,

00:52:57.640 | but it's about learning who you can become

00:53:00.400 | through business.

00:53:02.200 | I would say it's like the Marie Kondo of business

00:53:05.240 | is what we aimed for, which is, yes, it has mindset,

00:53:08.040 | it has recipes, but it's really how do we do things

00:53:11.200 | we didn't think we could do and we could live lives

00:53:12.840 | we didn't think we could live.

00:53:14.480 | And that's great that this is that literally

00:53:16.720 | the now not how is the number one takeaway from the book.

00:53:19.000 | There's definitely a lot of other things

00:53:20.200 | and tactics and all that other stuff,

00:53:21.360 | but we survey every beta reader and it was like,

00:53:24.040 | oh my God, I just realized I'm distracting myself

00:53:27.280 | from things that actually matter

00:53:28.240 | and I can do it much quicker than I realized.

00:53:30.360 | And especially if you know, someone like yourself,

00:53:31.760 | 'cause you've got a family, you're busy, all these things,

00:53:33.880 | but just getting in the now, just literally doing the now,

00:53:36.780 | you realize the results that can come from it.

00:53:39.320 | So that was awesome to hear.

00:53:40.320 | I'm glad that it inspired you in the now.

00:53:43.040 | - Yeah, and it takes a while, right?

00:53:44.520 | Like you gave plenty of examples in the book.

00:53:47.240 | You have the law of a hundred,

00:53:48.360 | like look at some of the most successful business people

00:53:52.120 | you talked about.

00:53:53.240 | You need to start now because it's gonna take,

00:53:55.600 | it can take years for things to work.

00:53:58.440 | - Well, the law of a hundred for people out there

00:54:00.040 | is just commit to a hundred of something, right?

00:54:01.800 | So a hundred podcasts or a hundred days or a hundred emails.

00:54:05.440 | And it's about how to not quit too soon.

00:54:08.400 | The other, you know, and I got to shout you out

00:54:11.240 | where the book starts about the power of starting

00:54:13.600 | in the upside of asking.

00:54:14.960 | And you also said, hey, no,

00:54:16.040 | what about me coming on your show?

00:54:16.960 | You have a lot of my,

00:54:17.780 | a lot of my content is about entrepreneurship.

00:54:20.160 | And I was like, I thought about it a lot last night.

00:54:21.840 | I was like, I liked that he asked.

00:54:23.480 | 'Cause you know, the upside of an ask,

00:54:24.480 | you get something that you want.

00:54:25.520 | The downside is maybe a moment of a rejection.

00:54:28.160 | And the more that people can practice that skill,

00:54:31.400 | they realize like there's a lot more out there for them.

00:54:34.000 | And they're not just getting what they get,

00:54:35.600 | they're getting what they want.

00:54:37.360 | - Yeah, if you want to go deeper,

00:54:38.520 | I did an episode, anyone listening with Aziz Gazipura,

00:54:42.600 | and we talked a lot about rejection therapy

00:54:45.400 | and like lots of different ways

00:54:47.200 | that you can practice getting rejected.

00:54:50.260 | You've got one where you ask people at a coffee shop

00:54:52.500 | to just give you 10% discount

00:54:53.860 | or friends to give you a dollar,

00:54:55.100 | which are both great tactics.

00:54:56.880 | But for anyone who's like, let's double click there.

00:55:00.260 | We're not going to spend 20 minutes on it.

00:55:01.900 | But that episode went deep there.

00:55:03.760 | - There's a lot of rejection out there.

00:55:07.300 | I think people don't, I think, I know,

00:55:10.260 | people don't realize how much rejection happens

00:55:12.060 | for people that are getting the things they want.

00:55:13.740 | 'Cause they're only seeing the things they get, right?

00:55:16.820 | Like, oh, he must be, it must be good for her

00:55:18.800 | because she seems to have a great thing.

00:55:19.860 | But it's like, yeah, you don't know all the other things

00:55:21.180 | that she tried to get to where she is.

00:55:23.340 | And so I do think it's good in fun ways.

00:55:25.940 | You know, in the book, we have a lot of these different

00:55:27.140 | little silly, yeah, as you called it,

00:55:28.260 | silly little challenges.

00:55:29.480 | And guess what?

00:55:30.320 | You kind of should be laughing.

00:55:31.540 | And then throughout the book, you're kind of,

00:55:32.700 | it should be enjoyable.

00:55:33.540 | It shouldn't be this big, scary thing

00:55:35.000 | that you have to overcome,

00:55:36.420 | but you just have to face yourself.

00:55:38.380 | And everyone can do that.

00:55:39.420 | And that's what I'm out here cheerleading

00:55:42.260 | to encourage people to do that.

00:55:43.300 | 'Cause I don't want people living what if.

00:55:45.660 | And I have someone close to me

00:55:46.840 | where they feel like they don't have power

00:55:49.800 | to change their lives.

00:55:50.640 | And they do.

00:55:51.480 | - So you talk a lot about making the ask.

00:55:56.460 | What about the follow-up?

00:55:57.480 | How do you feel about how often you should follow up?

00:56:00.780 | What, would you get a no?

00:56:02.120 | Can you get a yes later?

00:56:03.800 | - I think that's when I'm named no.

00:56:06.960 | My future kid, my girlfriend is pregnant.

00:56:10.200 | We were gonna name him C, you know, C in Spanish for Sia.

00:56:13.440 | But my girlfriend vetoed that name.

00:56:16.520 | Most people don't ever follow up.

00:56:18.060 | A lot of times in hiring,

00:56:19.680 | I'll just delete after the first email

00:56:21.480 | just to see who follows up.

00:56:22.640 | And very, very few ever follow up.

00:56:24.860 | Now, just to share a story,

00:56:26.640 | you guys heard me talk about John Paul DeGioia earlier.

00:56:28.900 | But what you didn't hear is that I saw him on the streets.

00:56:32.100 | I just went up to him.

00:56:33.200 | I was bicycling.

00:56:35.320 | I was in spandex.

00:56:36.140 | And I was like, oh my God,

00:56:36.980 | I've been dreaming of interviewing you.

00:56:37.940 | I'd love to interview you.

00:56:39.440 | And he said, cool, here's my assistant.

00:56:41.600 | He doesn't have a computer.

00:56:42.440 | He said, here's my assistant's number, call her.

00:56:44.060 | So I call her that night.

00:56:45.040 | She's like, oh, cool, he's not available.

00:56:47.520 | I was like, what do you mean?

00:56:48.360 | I met him on the street.

00:56:49.180 | He said, yes.

00:56:50.020 | I was in spandex, don't you remember?

00:56:53.000 | And she's like, well, give me a call later.

00:56:55.920 | And then here's my email.

00:56:57.600 | I followed up with her every week for a year.

00:57:00.220 | And then one Friday, she called me.

00:57:04.100 | And she said, hey, he can meet you Monday at 8 a.m.

00:57:07.240 | Can you be there?

00:57:08.080 | I was like, hell yeah, I'll be there.

00:57:09.280 | And now that's, you know, that one,

00:57:11.080 | it was amazing to meet him,

00:57:11.900 | it was a great interview of him sharing his story

00:57:15.620 | and really inspiring a lot of people in business journeys.

00:57:17.480 | But you didn't know that I got rejected 50 weeks

00:57:20.340 | to get to that point.

00:57:21.180 | And I asked her in person,

00:57:22.020 | I thought this was the most interesting part of that,

00:57:23.500 | where I recorded it.

00:57:25.500 | And I said, wasn't I annoying?

00:57:28.220 | Didn't that bother you?

00:57:29.260 | Like this guy, excuse me.

00:57:31.460 | She's like, no, I respected you.

00:57:33.000 | I admired that you really wanted it

00:57:34.600 | and you were willing to follow up with that.

00:57:36.380 | And you didn't bug me every day,

00:57:38.660 | but every week she knows I'm gonna call her or email her.

00:57:41.060 | And there's something about that

00:57:43.100 | in whatever the things we actually want in life are.

00:57:46.140 | And so if you can be clear on what you actually want,

00:57:48.300 | which is sometimes harder than we think,

00:57:50.840 | then it makes it much easier than say, all right,

00:57:52.380 | well, at least need to make it easy to follow up

00:57:54.740 | 'cause that's how you're gonna get the things you want.

00:57:56.740 | My favorite quote is, you know,

00:57:57.860 | squeaky wheel gets the grease, which is still strange,

00:58:01.300 | but really it's just like,

00:58:02.140 | if you're making noise and you're kind of persisting,

00:58:04.220 | I do think eventually persistence beats resistance.

00:58:07.620 | Another one of my favorites.

00:58:09.020 | - Yeah.

00:58:09.860 | I think you can also probably call out things

00:58:14.140 | that you're afraid of.

00:58:15.300 | So if you're afraid that they're gonna be like,

00:58:16.820 | this person's annoying, you could be like,

00:58:19.140 | hey, I'm just following up

00:58:20.900 | 'cause I know this interview is gonna be amazing.

00:58:23.180 | Don't feel like you need to reply.

00:58:24.780 | I'm gonna keep, you know,

00:58:25.620 | like you could kind of couch out some of the things,

00:58:28.540 | but if you get someone who thinks they have to reply

00:58:31.620 | to the email, it might be annoying,

00:58:33.340 | but if they're okay, just archiving it at the end,

00:58:36.080 | yeah, keep going.

00:58:37.460 | - Yeah, there's definitely a difference

00:58:38.420 | between no and not yet.

00:58:40.340 | And what I've noticed with rejection

00:58:42.860 | or with asking in general is that everyone's got things

00:58:46.260 | going on and it's hard to really know.

00:58:47.860 | Like we make these stories up about others,

00:58:49.460 | like, oh, they rejected me, they hate me.

00:58:51.580 | And then I followed up with people that are like,

00:58:52.820 | hey, thanks for bringing it back to my attention.

00:58:54.340 | I was really busy.

00:58:55.760 | Great.

00:58:56.600 | And so there are tools, right?

00:58:59.260 | Like followup.cc and there's Google snooze

00:59:02.260 | and there's your calendar and frankly pen and paper,

00:59:05.100 | but you know, just make sure you follow up on these things.

00:59:08.840 | And at AppSumo and personally,

00:59:11.940 | even with my own, you know, sales over the years,

00:59:14.020 | I noticed about half of our sales for, you know,

00:59:16.300 | AppSumo as well for myself,

00:59:17.140 | it's almost half come through the followup.

00:59:19.740 | And I think that's so insane of a data point

00:59:22.240 | where that the first time almost no one's responding,

00:59:24.300 | but the second time I'm getting half of the sales,

00:59:26.740 | hmm, maybe more likely for others

00:59:29.220 | to think about how they can follow up.

00:59:31.380 | - My sister worked in sales for a long time

00:59:33.940 | and she had these automated sequences.

00:59:36.620 | And like the fifth email was one about crocodiles.

00:59:40.400 | I don't know if anyone listening

00:59:41.460 | or you have ever gotten this email.

00:59:42.940 | And it was just like, sorry about the crocodiles.

00:59:46.100 | And the email said, you open the email and it's like,

00:59:49.700 | not sure what happened, haven't heard from you,

00:59:51.860 | but maybe you got eaten by crocodiles.

00:59:54.460 | I'm not sure.

00:59:55.420 | If so, I hope everything's okay.

00:59:57.620 | Would still love to chat.

00:59:59.020 | And she was like, that email killed it.

01:00:01.500 | Like we did, it was like,

01:00:03.260 | after someone didn't respond five times,

01:00:06.020 | she would just send this like Hail Mary email

01:00:08.860 | that actually got people to respond and close deals.

01:00:13.100 | - Well, I get these emails too.

01:00:14.760 | And I find them kinda, I don't know, kitschy a little bit.

01:00:17.540 | But I think what's powerful for me to recognize,

01:00:19.540 | I always think the acronym WIFT is what's in it for them.

01:00:23.060 | And I think when most people are sending stuff,

01:00:24.360 | it's like, what's in it for me?

01:00:26.660 | You know, it's like, here's my thing.

01:00:28.600 | No one's ever really making it obvious

01:00:31.260 | why it's such a good thing for the other person.

01:00:32.740 | And what they do also is they do it in the same medium

01:00:34.900 | that everyone's doing it.

01:00:36.380 | So if you're doing a LinkedIn, it's gonna be hard.

01:00:38.660 | If you're doing it on Twitter, it might be a little easier.

01:00:41.020 | If you're doing it on email, it might be.

01:00:42.580 | And so again, I think it's like,

01:00:43.460 | what's the medium where they're not getting harassed?

01:00:45.800 | And then as you're communicating with them,

01:00:47.020 | how do you make sure that, hey, based on what you're doing,

01:00:49.300 | I know this is gonna be good for you.

01:00:50.460 | Like for instance, I do social media.

01:00:52.340 | You can check that out online.

01:00:54.080 | People, I get literally, I'm not joking,

01:00:55.780 | 30 messages a day.

01:00:56.620 | Hey, can I be your editor for your content?

01:01:00.100 | And one out of 1,000 will actually send me something.

01:01:02.900 | They'll show me, not tell me.

01:01:04.340 | And they're thinking about what's in it for me.

01:01:06.460 | They're like, well, I showed you what I can do.

01:01:09.180 | And that guy got hired.

01:01:10.740 | He gets a six-figure salary

01:01:11.900 | working for me on the YouTube channel.

01:01:14.420 | So I think there's just different other elements of,

01:01:17.300 | besides the follow-up, even the asking,

01:01:18.620 | by practicing it, you will get better at the ask.

01:01:21.060 | - Yeah, I tell everyone I know who's trying

01:01:24.300 | to get on podcasts, I'm like, I get lots of pitches

01:01:27.920 | and all of them are from people

01:01:29.840 | who have clearly never listened to the show ever.

01:01:32.600 | And then one in a hundred is someone like,

01:01:34.460 | hey, I listened to your show.

01:01:35.300 | Here's an episode that might make sense.

01:01:37.400 | And I'm like, I'm excited.

01:01:39.080 | It doesn't always work.

01:01:40.400 | But I get all these emails that are like,

01:01:41.800 | would you like to have an interview

01:01:42.880 | with someone who built a career out of buying storage units?

01:01:47.440 | And I was like, no, I don't have an interview

01:01:51.040 | entrepreneurs about their story.

01:01:52.560 | I'm like, let's learn some tactics.

01:01:54.200 | So I don't know.

01:01:56.200 | - I think it goes so far to do a little bit of homework

01:01:59.960 | to make an email actually relevant to the person reading it.

01:02:03.560 | - Anything.

01:02:04.400 | I mean, even, let me give you an example on day jobs.

01:02:05.600 | 'Cause you told me that a lot of your audience is day jobs.

01:02:07.240 | I got, there's two messages I hate most in the world,

01:02:10.120 | or there's one message, but it could go both ways

01:02:12.320 | that I hate most in the world.

01:02:14.120 | And it was like, no, we have to talk.

01:02:16.160 | And that's when I get it from someone who works with me.

01:02:18.480 | And I'm like, well, they're quitting today.

01:02:20.520 | And I'm like, well, that's frustrating.

01:02:22.760 | So I got that message two days ago from Kellen.

01:02:25.880 | And it was like, we got to talk.

01:02:27.480 | I'm like, okay.

01:02:28.880 | She put together a two page document showing me,

01:02:31.800 | and I won't share her numbers,

01:02:32.840 | but showing me what she's done for AppSumo

01:02:34.680 | and all she's created.

01:02:35.520 | And she said, I know we're going to come up on raises.

01:02:38.120 | I just want to show you what I've done.

01:02:39.360 | And based on also data from external raises,

01:02:41.960 | like might make sense for you to give me a raise.

01:02:44.920 | She made it very easy.

01:02:46.560 | And normally you get the opposite words, people quitting.

01:02:50.080 | When you're at a company, create more value for the company.

01:02:52.560 | It's very easy to get paid more at that company.

01:02:54.520 | And it was so cool.

01:02:55.360 | She didn't just tell me about that.

01:02:56.840 | She showed that to me.

01:02:57.920 | - I had an au pair once,

01:03:03.880 | the one au pair that didn't work out well.

01:03:05.720 | And she was like, I want more money.

01:03:07.120 | And we were like, why?

01:03:07.960 | And she's like, 'cause I want it.

01:03:10.120 | And my wife was like, I want, from a teaching standpoint,

01:03:14.000 | I want to sit down and show you

01:03:16.360 | that you should have come and said,

01:03:17.400 | here's all the things I've been doing.

01:03:19.000 | Here's all this work.

01:03:20.040 | But it was like the most frustrating.

01:03:22.840 | They were just like, 'cause I want it.

01:03:25.160 | - Oof, yeah.

01:03:27.480 | - It didn't happen, but.

01:03:31.000 | - No, but just good lessons out there for all of us.

01:03:33.200 | And like, you know, what is it again?

01:03:34.840 | It's an ask, right?

01:03:36.200 | And it's a skill.

01:03:37.080 | Like I knock on doors on these videos

01:03:38.640 | where I knock on houses and ask what they do for a living.

01:03:41.440 | It's very uncomfortable, right?

01:03:42.800 | And I still get a lot of anxiety, but I don't ask them,

01:03:45.080 | hey, what do you do for a living?

01:03:45.920 | 'Cause that's a weird ask.

01:03:47.440 | But I go to the door and compliment them.

01:03:49.720 | And that's something you can do

01:03:50.560 | for anyone you want to ask something for.

01:03:52.200 | I go to houses I love and I say, I love your house.

01:03:55.000 | Like, oh my God, really?

01:03:55.840 | Yeah, like, tell me about it.

01:03:57.120 | Wow, what did you do to afford this kind of house?

01:03:59.000 | It's so cool.

01:03:59.840 | And oh yeah, we're doing a documentary

01:04:00.760 | about houses in the neighborhood.

01:04:02.400 | And I think we create narratives

01:04:04.900 | about why people are gonna reject us

01:04:06.440 | and we stop before we ever start.

01:04:08.960 | And that's the same reason, like,

01:04:09.880 | I ask people on first class seats

01:04:11.400 | or ask to fly in someone's private jet.

01:04:13.840 | And you'd be surprised at what can happen if you just ask.

01:04:16.960 | - Yeah.

01:04:18.480 | Well, I feel like obliged to just make an ask then,

01:04:20.680 | just to demonstrate it, so.

01:04:21.520 | - You did.

01:04:23.000 | What's your, you did.

01:04:24.120 | You asked to come on my show.

01:04:25.040 | - I know, but you already said yes,

01:04:26.640 | so now I gotta keep going, right?

01:04:28.500 | (laughing)

01:04:29.840 | Like, I'm gonna come to Austin, we'll record an episode,

01:04:33.080 | and then I'm gonna sit down and lay out my plan

01:04:35.420 | for what we're doing with the business

01:04:37.380 | and then get your feedback.

01:04:38.520 | You up for that?

01:04:39.360 | - Okay, now you're imposing.

01:04:40.180 | Now you're imposing.

01:04:41.180 | Okay, hold on.

01:04:42.240 | Slow your roll.

01:04:43.080 | One, I'm flying to Spain in two weeks,

01:04:44.360 | so you have to follow me out there.

01:04:45.920 | But again, I think with ask,

01:04:47.120 | people think it is an imposition, right?

01:04:49.320 | And they're like, but go back to what's in it for me.

01:04:51.800 | Noah, I know you're trying to do this content.

01:04:53.460 | I saw that your most popular podcast

01:04:55.080 | were on solarpreneurship.

01:04:56.520 | I've had a day job.

01:04:57.620 | I've started a podcast.

01:04:58.720 | Here's some of the things

01:04:59.560 | that can make it really appealing for you,

01:05:00.960 | where most people send generic templates.

01:05:04.060 | And so if you can think about what's in it

01:05:05.240 | for the other person,

01:05:06.080 | and you put a little bit of effort into it,

01:05:07.800 | like this guy Jay.

01:05:08.760 | I just hired this guy Jay, 17 years old,

01:05:10.520 | lives with his parents.

01:05:12.240 | He's coming to the book launch party

01:05:13.720 | for Million Dollar Weekend,

01:05:14.880 | and I paid for a ticket for his dad to come with him,

01:05:18.220 | which is so cool.

01:05:19.060 | I was like, that's just cool.

01:05:20.440 | And Jay didn't ask me for a job.

01:05:22.800 | He put together a 30 point Google Slides presentation

01:05:25.520 | about everything in my social media and email that sucked,

01:05:27.960 | and what he's gonna do about it.

01:05:29.640 | And now Jay makes more than anyone else in it.

01:05:31.240 | He probably makes,

01:05:32.080 | I don't know if he makes more than all of his teachers,

01:05:33.040 | but pretty soon he will.

01:05:34.920 | Just 'cause he,

01:05:36.240 | me didn't make an ask to come work,

01:05:37.880 | but he also put in the work to show me

01:05:39.320 | why it was such a no brainer for him to get this job.

01:05:41.960 | - I love that.

01:05:42.800 | All right, so I know you've talked in the past

01:05:46.120 | about being cheap,

01:05:47.520 | and that you've been able to learn how to spend.

01:05:51.240 | I was curious if you had any advice on that.

01:05:53.760 | - I can still be practical.

01:05:55.560 | I think we shouldn't label ourselves as cheap.

01:05:57.960 | - I was using your words that you've said that.

01:06:00.520 | (laughing)

01:06:02.760 | - I was pretty cheap, I would say,

01:06:05.440 | or practical up until COVID.

01:06:08.040 | And we're so focused on,

01:06:09.640 | I think a lot of our society is taught about making money

01:06:11.480 | as no one ever talks about enjoying money.

01:06:14.080 | And I'll tell you, everyone should at least be rich,

01:06:16.760 | and then you can decide if you wanna go back to being poor.

01:06:19.320 | And I grew up middle class,

01:06:20.640 | and I think there's a middle class mentality

01:06:22.440 | where you're trained to be stuck in that path,

01:06:25.880 | and realizing you can actually get out of it.

01:06:27.880 | And spending money and enjoying money

01:06:30.200 | has been one of the best things the past three years.

01:06:32.120 | Like I have, I was telling someone two days ago,

01:06:35.160 | if my house burned down,

01:06:36.280 | the first thing I'm taking is my toilet.

01:06:38.440 | I've got this like $6,000 Toto Japanese toilet

01:06:41.240 | that's just killer.

01:06:42.240 | Like I don't like leaving my house 'cause of toilet.

01:06:43.960 | Like my girlfriend now is like, I understand.

01:06:46.640 | And-- - That's so funny.

01:06:48.720 | - Dude, when you come over, you'll try it.

01:06:51.040 | - Fantastic, from Spain.

01:06:53.080 | We asked her, what are you gonna miss most

01:06:54.800 | when you leave America and go back to Barcelona?

01:06:57.040 | Or she lives near Barcelona in a town called Tarragona.

01:06:59.440 | She's like, that toilet.

01:07:01.320 | - Oh, do you guys have a nice toilet?

01:07:03.960 | - Yeah, yeah, she's like,

01:07:06.000 | I never wanna sit on a cold toilet again.

01:07:07.920 | - Oh, the toilet, it's got water, it cleans itself.

01:07:10.800 | But you know, in terms of being cheap,

01:07:12.440 | it's easy to not be cheap if you have money.

01:07:15.080 | But I've also interviewed Larry Janeski,

01:07:16.920 | whose company does $600 million a year in basements,

01:07:19.600 | who just recently, he's I think in his 50s,

01:07:22.040 | he just recently started flying first class.

01:07:24.200 | This guy, he didn't share his number exactly.

01:07:26.160 | I'm guessing it's at least worth $100 million, liquid.

01:07:29.680 | And he flies, he just got a flying economy.

01:07:32.120 | Now, again, for me in COVID, I realized,

01:07:36.200 | okay, I'm not sure how long I'm gonna live here.

01:07:39.240 | Let me try and experiment different things in my life

01:07:41.720 | and see how much of a difference it makes.

01:07:43.600 | 'Cause I was always taught that materialism is bad.

01:07:45.640 | And if you get more, you're gonna be unhappy

01:07:47.120 | and then you become a victim to it.

01:07:49.640 | And so I tried buying a fancy car.

01:07:52.120 | I hated it, I hated it.

01:07:54.000 | I sold it for a loss after a month.

01:07:56.120 | And then I tried renting fancy houses.

01:07:57.520 | I rented like this Malibu beach house, which was insane.

01:08:00.760 | That was super cool.

01:08:01.600 | 'Cause during COVID, everything was like really cheap.

01:08:03.920 | Then I rented a lake house in Austin.

01:08:05.240 | Then I rented a nice RV.

01:08:06.480 | And then I came back home to my 800 foot shack

01:08:09.000 | that literally just flooded last night,

01:08:11.200 | that has cockroaches and the floors are cracked

01:08:13.680 | and the walls are cracked.

01:08:15.880 | It has electricity and toilets.

01:08:16.920 | So by the way, it's not horrible, but it's pretty bad.

01:08:19.760 | And because I tried fancier things and nicer things,

01:08:24.520 | I was like, wow, I was much happier there.

01:08:26.680 | And I would say my standard of happiness has been,

01:08:29.640 | the baseline is significantly higher

01:08:31.120 | since I moved into this house two and a half years ago.

01:08:34.280 | - Yeah, I mean, I love this lesson.

01:08:36.880 | Go try out the ways to spend money

01:08:39.080 | because you'll never know which ones make a difference.

01:08:42.080 | - Yeah, I mean, you know what a rich thing for me

01:08:43.840 | is buying Fiji water.

01:08:45.440 | I don't know why I've actually blind taste tested them

01:08:47.840 | and I never choose Fiji.

01:08:49.320 | So I clearly don't give a crap about the taste of it,

01:08:52.360 | but it makes me feel rich.

01:08:53.360 | And it's like, okay, cool.

01:08:54.200 | That mattered to me.

01:08:55.360 | Let's do that.

01:08:56.200 | Or bicycles.

01:08:57.120 | I think the easy way to spend money

01:08:58.360 | is where you spend your time.

01:08:59.440 | I bike a lot.

01:09:00.280 | So I have two identical $15,000 bicycles

01:09:02.800 | in America and in Spain.

01:09:04.080 | Or your bed, you spend a lot of time there.

01:09:05.960 | The thing that ultimately transformed it was one line

01:09:09.840 | in my yearly goals.

01:09:10.760 | And it's a goal every year to donate at least 1%

01:09:15.000 | or spend the rest of my money on myself or others.

01:09:18.080 | And that one goal, which I look at my goals often,

01:09:20.720 | transformed my own generosity to myself and others.

01:09:24.760 | And now it's a lot easier where, okay, I'm donating.

01:09:29.280 | There was a donate yesterday.

01:09:30.240 | I literally got an email.

01:09:31.080 | It's like, I was donating to this camp

01:09:32.680 | I went to as a kid, $180 a year.

01:09:35.120 | And they send me a receipt.

01:09:36.120 | They're like, oh, you've been donating $180 a month.

01:09:39.800 | I was like, oh, okay.

01:09:41.160 | Well, that's part of my 1%, that's fine.

01:09:43.360 | And so whatever I make in the year,

01:09:44.440 | at least be open to investing in myself,

01:09:47.080 | investing, spending in others or donating.

01:09:49.640 | And that definitely has been powerful.

01:09:52.600 | - Okay, so you mentioned your goals.

01:09:54.880 | How do you set goals?

01:09:55.920 | - I think with goal setting,

01:09:57.360 | I'd break it down really simply.

01:09:58.520 | One, try to have goals that you stick to each year.

01:10:00.520 | And each year, they just get a little bit more on the goal.

01:10:02.720 | So my goals every year in the past, it would be like,

01:10:05.200 | okay, I did X, now let me go do Y.

01:10:06.960 | No, just do X plus 0.1.

01:10:09.160 | And then next year, do X plus 0.2.

01:10:11.480 | So that was definitely a transformation

01:10:13.200 | that helped me in my goals.

01:10:14.040 | And then I like breaking my goals down in categories.

01:10:16.160 | And I look at my goals, I'll show you.

01:10:17.720 | I have them everywhere.

01:10:19.000 | So on my phone, I have a thing called daily that's pinned.

01:10:21.880 | And it's just all the goals that I have for this year.

01:10:25.040 | And so I recommend people have four categories,

01:10:27.160 | work, health, personal, and travel.

01:10:29.400 | And then try to think about what are three things

01:10:31.840 | in each of these things that you'd really, really like.

01:10:33.640 | And the easy way that you could find this out,

01:10:36.360 | and this is what I like to do.

01:10:38.320 | I've done this on a few decades since work for me,

01:10:40.080 | is write your fantasy.

01:10:41.760 | So create a fantasy novel of the year.

01:10:43.640 | Just go to your journal in the morning and be like,

01:10:44.960 | okay, if it's the end of December 31st, 2024,

01:10:47.400 | or this year, or 2020, whatever,

01:10:49.160 | what does my fantasy look like?

01:10:50.760 | All right, I was on Joe Rogan.

01:10:52.440 | All right, all the hacks finally I posted on LinkedIn.

01:10:55.800 | I'm a LinkedIn influencer, which LinkedIn is pretty annoying.

01:10:58.600 | Let's just be real, it's super annoying.

01:11:00.600 | I took my wife on a baby moon to the Maldives,

01:11:03.720 | which seems like a far flight.

01:11:04.880 | So let's go somewhere else.

01:11:05.720 | Maybe, I don't know, Tenerife, who knows.

01:11:08.920 | I want to bike across the Alps, right?

01:11:11.960 | And you make this crazy story of yourself,

01:11:13.640 | and then sit with it for a little bit,

01:11:15.360 | and then think about, okay, what would be really cool?

01:11:17.840 | What are these, do I really, am I genuinely motivated?

01:11:20.480 | And then I try to have three per each of these categories.

01:11:23.880 | And I like sharing mine with others.

01:11:25.640 | I have an accountability partner,

01:11:26.880 | Adam Gilbert from mybodytutor.com.

01:11:28.960 | And then I review them every single Sunday

01:11:31.080 | as part of that weekly review thing I do.

01:11:33.240 | - Love it, so helpful.

01:11:35.640 | We've gone through so much,

01:11:37.560 | and I want to inspire people to go and do something.

01:11:41.040 | Doesn't have to be this weekend, but some weekend.

01:11:44.120 | I got a chance to read the book before it comes out,

01:11:46.240 | but I highly encourage people to check it out.

01:11:48.120 | Where do you want to send people to check out more

01:11:50.800 | of everything you're working on or the book?

01:11:53.040 | - Yeah, milliondollarweekend.com.

01:11:54.480 | Take the 48-hour challenge.

01:11:55.840 | Like, there's never a good, you know,

01:11:57.240 | it's the same thing with diets.

01:11:58.160 | There's never a good time for a diet.

01:12:00.160 | (laughing)

01:12:01.400 | And it's easy to keep giving excuses

01:12:04.080 | about why it's not right, and you know,

01:12:05.680 | I think if people even committed an hour

01:12:07.280 | this upcoming weekend, it would be surprising

01:12:09.880 | and amazing how far ahead they can be, you know,

01:12:12.200 | and what they can do in just a very short amount of time.

01:12:14.720 | - I love it.

01:12:16.800 | Thanks for sharing it with me.

01:12:17.640 | Thanks for being here.

01:12:18.920 | - I'll see you at my house.

01:12:20.240 | I guess you're coming over.

01:12:21.840 | - Yeah, yeah, we'll see.

01:12:23.760 | Unannounced, knock, knock.

01:12:25.240 | I like your house.

01:12:26.320 | - Hey, we have a new video.

01:12:27.320 | I'm like, oh.

01:12:28.160 | [BLANK_AUDIO]

Start a Million Dollar Business in a Weekend with Noah Kagan

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