(upbeat music) - Hello, and welcome to another episode of All The Hacks, a show about upgrading your life, money, and travel. I'm your host, Chris Hutchins, and joining me today is entrepreneur, author, and friend, Noah Kagan. If you don't know Noah, he runs a company called AppSumo, which is actually the seventh million dollar business he's started, and he adamantly believes that anyone that puts their mind to it can launch a million dollar business.

But not just that, he thinks you can do it in a weekend, and is gonna lay out the framework for us today. That's not to say you all need to plan on quitting your jobs right now, but it is such an incredible time in the world for entrepreneurship, and even if it's just a new side hustle you might wanna start, I feel like the opportunities are endless.

So today we're gonna cover what idea you might wanna start, how to get over some of the things that might hold you back, all the steps you actually need to follow to launch a business in 48 hours, how to apply these lessons to an existing job, even if you're not ready to be an entrepreneur yet, and a lot more.

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Is that true? Did you always think that, if it is? - Coming in hot. I love it. Let's just look at data. So do you put your money in the stock market at all? - I do. - Yeah, like a great return on the S&P 500 is like 10%.

- Wow. Yeah, if I could lock in 10%, boy, would I be happy. - If you could do that, right? But if you look at the data since 1900, that's what you get at around 10 to 12% a year. Then if you look at housing, maybe it appreciates, but generally a house, give or take, will do 5% to 7% return.

Now, I'll just give you an example. With AppSumo, I put in $50 to start it, and last year I made $3.3 million. And I'm not saying that everyone can do that within a year, but over some time, the returns and upside of entrepreneurship are unlimited, while a lot of the costs are much smaller.

And so, it's kind of maybe something I've thought about for a lot of people. It's like, you can work your butt trying to get clean an attic, and then literally my house yesterday flooded, a real estate house I have, or you can just start your own business. There's different problems, but at least the upside and the influence of it are much higher.

- Did you always think of it this way? I think you and I both share a similar background. Early careers all in startup land in Silicon Valley seemed like building tech companies is the way you make money, and then we probably had other friends that made money, and then we're like, whoa, whoa, whoa, maybe the way money is real estate.

Maybe real estate is how we make money. I keep hearing that this is the best thing ever. I have both FOMO about not buying more real estate and deep satisfaction only owning my house. - My next book is called "Rich Dad, Poor Dad, and Stepdad." And (laughs) it's like there's another dad that no one ever talked about that was just like, I don't know why these guys are working so hard.

I think what's interesting, we talked before about my YouTube channel. One of the coolest things is that there's so many different ways of getting rich. And when you grew up, I grew up a few miles from Apple. My father sold copiers, and my stepfather was a computer programmer. And I thought that's just the way to have money.

But I realized, wow, there's so many other ways, like fruit selling, (laughs) basements, this guy Larry Janeski. Michael Hudger did ships. Paul Mitchell did hair care. Hair care. And yes, there is a lot of money in the internet, too, which just came out 24 years ago, if you think about it.

And that always gets me so excited, is that there's so many different ways for people to find what they're interested in. And look, if you have a day job, I think that's even better, 'cause now you have an investor, which is your employer, to now explore all these other options that can create unlimited wealth for you.

- And do you think this is a path for everyone, or how do you think about building companies and starting side hustles for someone who maybe never thought that was for them? - Most people wanna be time millionaires. I would say that's universal. And most people would like to be a millionaire, or beyond.

And they actually realize that you probably need less money to live a very satisfied life. That's why in the book I've talked about the freedom number, 'cause you realize that number's actually a lot less than you think. What I've recognized, though, is that most people think it's this big, scary thing.

Like take my brother, for instance, he's a doctor. So he went to school for 10 years, he got a certificate to do his stuff. And what's crazy about entrepreneurship, you don't need a certificate. (laughs) Everyone has permission. And you don't even have to be tall. You know, I'm only 5'10".

You could be really short, or you could be super tall, or you could be anything. And I think that's just so amazing how accessible it can be. And the reality, though, is that we create this big, scary monster of, well, I've gotta be a talkative person, or I've gotta go be on Twitter, or I've gotta go sell, and that's just not the case.

But you do have to think, wow, I could maybe do this. Let me see how I can maybe change my life in a weekend, which I would say is possible for everyone out there. And especially if you have a day job. I don't know if you've ever been fired, Chris.

You ever been fired? - I have. - And I've been fired twice. And thank you, Mark, and thank you, Matt Kohler. Thank you, Aaron Patzer. And the beauty of getting fired is the moment I realize that I'm not in control of my livelihood. These two people at two companies, Facebook and Mint, which I was early at, I decided that I'm not good to be there anymore.

So it really sparked with me. Then got early on, like, wow, if that could happen, I need to protect myself. And so you can create a business. It could be a flower shop. And then keep your day job as well. So at AppSumo, where I work, we have this lady, Amy, she has a flower shop and a hair salon.

And she's also our head of customer support. (laughs) You have Nick Christensen, who has a teeth whitening clinic up in Dallas. And he leads our growth team. And so it doesn't mean you have to quit your day job. Ideally, maybe have both. At least have that option available to you.

- I think, and maybe it's Silicon Valley, but it felt to me for so long, maybe until this podcast, that starting a company was like, I'm gonna start a thing that's all-consuming, that's gonna be everything to me, and I'm gonna work a million hours a day and have thousands of employees, or it's a failure.

- I love the line, like, don't trade your nine-to-five for a five-to-nine, right? The whole point of being an entrepreneur is that you can then become a time millionaire as well. Like, I'm going to Spain in two weeks to have a family. And that's a lot, you know, if I had a boss who was like, no, you can't travel, you gotta come to the office, you gotta, I don't know, but entrepreneurship gives me that affordability.

And with business, the greatest part about it, which people don't recognize is that, yes, it does take some effort to get started. Yes, you have to find something people are excited to give you money for, but you can ultimately spend most of your time, if not all of it, in just the areas you like.

And guess what? There's people that like doing customer support, like Amy, which I don't know how she does it. Shout out, Amy, I love you. And there's people who like doing operational stuff. Dusty, Vanessa, thank you guys for doing that. And they're happy there, and they get to live their dream lives, and that is available.

It's not such this, like, oh, I've got to spend all night and don't have any free time around it. That's what this stuff enables you to have that option available. - And you said the freedom number people need is a lot smaller than you think. - Yeah, for me, it always seemed risky, this freedom number, that way I realized it, and I've noticed that a lot of other entrepreneurs have had, it always seems so risky to have these day jobs, like I did at Intel.

And then I thought, oh man, entrepreneurship, I don't know how much I have to make. And then I recognized, like, well, how much do I need to really be able to do the thing I want to do and have freedom? And it was way less than I expected. And it really came down to kind of three categories, which is like living, entertainment, and savings, or living, food, savings.

And for me, it was $3,000. And when I was at my day job, I was like, well, if I can get the side hustle to that number, then I can quit. And I never encourage people to actually go take a risky thing. It seemed risky to quit your job to try to hopefully start a business.

It's not what I want people to do. And when you realize how much smaller that number is than you expect, you realize it's also more attainable. And so I've twice quit jobs and then gone on once I hit my $3,000 freedom number. - And so for you, that's $3,000.

But do you think that gets a lot harder as people age, have more responsibility, family? - Yeah, it just takes longer. Everyone has their own number based on their own lifestyle. So today, I think my credit card, I don't know. By the way, the cool part about eventually getting money is that you don't have to worry about budgeting or worry about having enough for retirement.

You don't even have to think about it. And I think that's available for everyone. But I just had to do a CNBC show. I think my credit card bill, with all things, is like $25,000 a month. So it goes up over time, but then, obviously, I've built up businesses and stuff like that.

But what people are trying to do, if you have kids, and I've noticed there's a guy named Jake who ran Million Dollar Weekend. He's got three kids, he's got a wife, they got a house. So it's not something you can just quit overnight. But if you never get started, then he's never even gonna get to that number.

I think for him, my guess, I think it was around $10,000. But you have to get started so that you can even get to that point. Same as I got started with AppSumo. I started with a weekend and I made my first $12, my first sale. - And so, weekend, why a weekend?

Why not a week, why not a month? Why do people need to figure this out so quickly? - You have a family, right? You have two kids. And you have, I mean, you have this podcast, but you have a job and you have a wife to take care of.

Most people don't have a lot of time, right? It's hard. And you already got your obligations, you got commitments, and you're like, maybe it's just easier to put in the stock market. But what everyone has is a weekend. Everyone has at least one weekend they can do something. Right, maybe not every single weekend, which is everyone's got 52 of them, but maybe one a year.

And because we don't have as much time available, how do we find what's just the essence of getting started? And if you can do that in a very limited time, which creates a lot more creativity, I do believe limitation instills creation. And when you have this limitation, you're like, well, I'm not gonna mess around.

And I can't goof around and buy a bunch of ads, or I can't, I don't have time to make a YouTube channel because I only got a weekend to get this done. And especially someone like yourself, if you were in that tech job and had a family where you are today, you don't have a lot of time for that.

And so how do we focus on just the things that matter? And what I have found through myself starting businesses in a weekend and through others, this 48 hour time period is the best window to change your life. - And how far do you have to get? I look at this podcast as an example that's now my full-time job and my wife's full-time job.

But when I started it, it was like, it was just a side project that I liked. It cost money and did not make any money at the beginning. You could argue I maybe started it in a weekend, but I didn't have those ambitions. Where does stuff like that fit into this?

- How long did it take for you to quit your day? Did you quit your day job when you started this or did you? - It probably took, I started the podcast in May, 2021, and I quit my day job in December, 2022. - And how much were you making at the pod that you felt comfortable to quit your day job?

- It crossed to a point that it replaced my work income. - That's your freedom number. And so the reality is that in a weekend, you could find out if something that people want. And then the other part of success, and you asked about billionaires, which I've interviewed a lot on my YouTube channel and worked for them directly, is that you become a billionaire, but you have to do compounded action over a long period of time.

And most people are quitting too soon. So you have to initially find something people actually really want. And then you do have to stick with it for some period of time where like at AppSumo, I don't think I made my first million dollars a year salaried until year seven.

I paid myself, I think $0 first year, 40,000 next year. And frankly, if I would've just stayed at Intel or any of these other jobs, I probably would've made more most of the time, but I kept sticking with it, kept having good results promising. And then over time, it was like, wow, now we actually have enough.

I can take a little bit for myself. And then eventually it was like a lot for myself, but you have to start and then you have to stick. And you were a great example of that. - So the goal of the weekend isn't to kind of fast track your way to millionaire status.

It's to make sure you validated that the thing you're working on could really be big enough to be the thing you want to do full-time. - It's recognizing that you can create a million dollar opportunity for yourself in a very short period of time. And I think in 10 years, I believe someone will make a million dollars in a weekend, legitimately, not like through drug dealing or something shady.

- Or that app that was like $20,000 or something. - It could be that. You could sell pinball machines. This is actually, you could totally validate a pin. I love pinballs. I got an arcade at my house. You could sell $15,000 pinballs. And I walk people through business models and such in the book, one minute business models, 'cause you don't have a lot of time.

To make a million dollars selling 15,000 pinballs, depending on what the costs are like, maybe you'll need to sell 100 or two. It's not a bad business over the next few years. - Yeah. - It was actually pretty crazy. Do you know Stern Pinball? - Yeah. - So let's say you love arcades.

And this is the thing, again, you can make money in different ways. Maybe it's a podcast show. Maybe it's videos. Maybe it's lawn care. Maybe it's games. And Stern Pinball, which I don't know if they do a billion dollars in sales, but definitely in the tens, if not hundreds of millions.

It's the number one pinball maker. They showed a video about how they make pinball. And it's the same stuff I teach in Million Dollar Weekend, which I thought was so unique. Is that instead of building this whole pinball thing and making sure people like it, they literally take a piece of wood, and then they, pretty much the same day, they put pieces of metal on the wood, and they throw a ball at it.

And they see what happens is they throw the ball at this piece of wood. And then you realize, wow, pretty quickly they can see if the game that they're starting to think of is gonna be interesting. And that's the same thing you can apply in business, which is, how can I see if this is something people really want?

Maybe it's a show. Maybe it's a pinball game. Maybe it's gonna be food. Maybe it's a software product. Maybe it's lawn care. So that if I'm gonna work on it for some period of time, I know that there's at least customers who are excited to be purchasing it and be a part of it.

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It's a good investment. (laughs) But no, I'll give it to you for free. I'll give it to you for free. So if you have to break it down, there's three categories of getting a million-dollar weekend business going, which is starting it, building it, and growing it, and I would say there's so many business books out there, and especially for a lot of your audience.

You have really good-looking audience, that's a fact. You have a lot of six-figure audience, that a lot of have kids, and they're probably happy with the S&P 500 12%, or maybe they got crypto lucky, or they bought some silly NFT moon cats, which I didn't, lost a lot of money on.

I do think most people wanna have more money, and what I've seen from it, there's start it, build it, and grow it. There's a woman who was at Warby Parker named McKinsey, and she dreamed the same thing. So the first part, though, is how do you get good at starting and asking?

Those are the two biggest things holding people back from success in really entrepreneurship, but also in life. I would say this book is almost as much self-help as it is start a business in a weekend. So how do you practice starting right now? 'Cause the more that you can get started, and let's say you wanna do a podcast.

Let's put an episode out today. I have a YouTube channel, a million subscribers. My first video that I did three years ago was with an iPhone 10, and me shirtless, and it was just a video talking about COVID. Fast forward, today, each video costs $20,000 to make, but I got started, and then over time, I was able to add maybe a videographer, or a little better camera, or a little better lighting, a little better scripts, a little better thumbnails, and you stick with it, you keep improving it, and then now, the videos are more polished and so forth, but you have to practice how do you get started right now.

Second thing is asking. Everything in life is asking, like your wife. You had to ask her to marry you, right? You have to ask for a raise. You have to ask for things, and so people have a negative connotation of asking, and then they have this fear of rejection, this really strong fear of, wow, I'm not good enough, or they don't like me, and so when we can do that in silly things, like McKinsey, so she dreamed of having her own business, and so she loved connection, and so she wanted to start a greetings card company, and it's called marymakery.com.

I gotta give her a shout out. She's Red Million Dollar Weekend, and she emailed some of her coworkers at Warby Parker. She said, "I wanna do a greeting card. "Does anyone wanna buy some of my greeting cards?" And she asked, and the beauty of asking is that you can get what you want.

If you don't ask, you can't get, and you didn't have to build a big website. You didn't have to buy a domain. You didn't have to do anything, but you practice this in small things, and then in her first year of sales so far, she's done $50,000 in greeting cards.

Greeting cards, and by the way, Hallmark has a TV show or a channel, and they started the exact same way. I think people never make their million dollars 'cause they don't make their first dollar, and they're not making their first dollar 'cause they don't get started, and they don't realize it can be fun and you can't get started today.

The second section of the book is like, okay, you started things. You feel good about yourself. You got momentum. You got the skills. Now, how do you build it? And so I would say there's kind of three pieces of that. How do you find ideas? And there's more than enough, and we can go through some today.

How do you make sure it's a million dollar opportunity? How do you make sure that there's a business model there? And then the part three of the book is grow it, which is like, can we really get customers? And then how do you take it to 1,000, 10,000, million dollars, and beyond?

So let's take an example of, for me, I've found that there's three ways to get business, but let me just show people in the audience one thing right now. Let's just do a fun one. So for people listening, text someone right now, "Hey, what kind of business do you think I would start?" And that's an ask, and that's a start, right?

You're starting something right now. You're doing it, and guess what? You're gonna get a result. And that's a free business idea that you can already do for yourself. And one of the best ways to think about business ideas is what have you gotten paid for in the past, or who do you have influence around?

Who do you have in your zone of influence in your network? Make it easy on yourself. So I'll give you three other business ideas in three minutes in three ways. So number one, just think about your day-to-day and break it out, breakfast, lunch, dinner. Think of something that annoyed you.

That's a business opportunity. Every problem is a business opportunity. The other one, number two, think about something you spend money on. Look at your credit card bill. I was really annoyed with DocuSign. I keep signing up for new accounts so I don't have to pay. So I was like, "I'm tired of that." And so two weeks ago, I read "Million Dollar Weekend," and I followed the process, and I made $3,000 in one day.

And now in the next 30 days, I'm delivering a DocuSign alternative. I don't have a website. I don't have a domain. I don't know what we should call it. If people have ideas, let me know. But I have a million dollar business opportunity. And then the third one is what have you avoided doing?

What's on your to-do list that you have not done? There are other ways in the book. There's six other ways, but I'm giving some quick ones that people can start thinking about themselves. Now the two other high pieces, and again, if you go to milliondollarweekend.com, it's super broken out there.

But next up, is it a million dollar opportunity? Is there at least a million dollars of money being spent? And then what does the business model look like for you to actually make a million bucks? And so I was doing lawn care because that's what people told me to start as a business.

I wanted to prove how to do it. Now, if you do lawn care and you're selling one-off lawn care, you have to, let's say 50 bucks a lawn. That's a lot of lawns. So by just having a one-minute business model, it's like, all right, well, I need to sell monthly subscriptions.

And what I aim for in the business model and in general is how hard does this actually look? Like, do I have to sell 5,000 different lawn care things? That's tough. Now, next up, you have the idea. You've done the typical check in the business model. You have to see if you can actually get customers for it.

And I always recommend three customers in 48 hours. I found that if you cannot get three, you're not gonna be able to get beyond that after the weekend. And there's three ways you can do it. You can pre-sell it. You can post it on marketplaces. So you can post it on Etsy, Craigslist, indie hackers, Reddit, things like that, where there's people that are looking to pay.

Or the third way is landing pages and ads. I love pre-selling 'cause it's the most direct. And you could do it in a non-salesy way. You can just get feedback from people that you think you can help. That's pretty detailed about it. And then grow it is how do you set up your social media?

How do you set up your email list, which everyone should do? And then setting up your growth machine to make this stuff on repeat. That's the million dollar weekend at a high level. And you have someone like McKenzie who quit a very high-paying job. I did not recommend that.

And in one year was able to get to around $50,000. And I have a friend, he works at Amazon. He makes 400K, which is very common. I mean, okay, 400K is a lot. But let's just say 120K or something like that. And he started a side hustle. And in his first year, he made a thousand bucks, which is great.

And he quit. And the question that I always think about for myself is, what is the 10 years from now Noah gonna thank me for? And for him, if he would have stuck with that, this was a few years ago now, I promise that for him and for everyone out there, if you can find something that actually works, which it was working for him, he was making content about food.

You know, these like food cooking shows? - Yeah. - If he would have stuck with it, it was working. You know, five years from now, that could have easily surpassed the amount of revenue that he's getting in his day job. And you keep both, or he can have that option to do that full-time if he wants.

- I found firsthand, you don't have to give it up, right? I was working for 18 months while doing this. And when you talked about pre-selling, it was interesting. There are some businesses like what we're doing, we're selling, you know, the person who might pay the bill isn't the person, the audience.

But what I did when I started was I made a trailer and I was like, will anyone subscribe to this podcast after hearing just the trailer? I didn't even have to make an episode. - I love that. - I recorded a one minute trailer, two minute trailer, and was like, this is what this show's about.

And fortunately, Apple and Spotify will show you. Like, did you get followers? Did people say, I wanna see what happens next? Give that example. - So I'm guessing you follow kind of the same playbook I'm gonna recommend in the book and beyond. And again, I think people think it's so simple.

They're like, no, but I gotta make it more complicated. Right, isn't this stuff supposed to be fancy? It's like, yes, it eventually gets fancy. Right, like AppSumo now has a 20 person engineering team, 20 person plus marketing team. But it starts that you just kind of post it on there and then you tell some friends and then you kind of do that a little bit more and a little bit more.

So there's other parts of the process. But I think people wanna, not trick, but make you believe it's much more complicated and people are further away skill-wise than they think. And I've seen so many smart people stuck in jobs that are, if not better than me, and skilled just as good as me, they just have been a little bit more afraid than me.

And if they just do some small things today, I think they'll be shocked at their confidence and their abilities of what they can actually do. For yourself with your podcast, how did you get your first few listeners? I don't think you just posted it and prayed. - Basically, I had like six or seven projects that had email lists.

And I was like, okay, well, when I launched this thing, I'm just gonna email all these people. And someone was like, "Well, if you do that, "they might get upset and report you as spam." I was like, "Why do you even have a newsletter?" But they had subscribed and opted into something.

So I felt that was okay. - Exactly. - And then it started when a friend of mine, I told him, I was like, "I was thinking of starting a podcast." He was interviewing me about something random on his podcast. And he was like, "Pause." And then like kind of, he goes, "All right, I want you to go home "and record a one-minute trailer.

"And then we'll just splice it in." And so I spliced in this audio that was like, "All right, so the podcast is called this." I only had two days to name this podcast because he interviewed me about the podcast and he's like, "I need a name. "I need you to send me an audio file." So I was forced, I don't know if it was a weekend, but I was forced in like 48 hours to name the podcast and set up a website and create a trailer and put it up there.

But I hadn't lined up an interview at all. - Well, I think most people get it wrong is that that's what they believe they have to do first. They're like, "All right, well, I need to go learn "how to even set up a website. "Now I gotta waste time on that.

"And then I gotta pay for domain. "And then I need to do this and this and this." And no, just put out a trailer, send it to friends and see if anyone subscribes. If people do, great, now do all these other things. Most people just do it backwards. And I think that's been a big misconception.

Like there's a guy, Jake, who read the book and he has three kids, day job, very common. He's had the same idea for 24 months. He wanted to be a good example to his kids. That's what he told me. So I read the book and in a weekend, which he was like, "Yeah, it's worth it." I asked him what he would tell others.

He's like, "It's just worth it." He didn't want to wonder what if. And I thought that was amazing. And in one weekend, he was able to validate his golf trips for guys business. What a unique idea. And now he has five customers. They've paid $15,000, I think $3,000 each.

And he's aiming to get eight of them. And in August of this year, he's gonna take these guys on a golf trip someplace. I don't know anything about golf, but some course. (laughs) And I think he's gonna make, I don't know, 5K, give or take for himself. And guess what?

That's the start. And that's amazing. - And he didn't quit his job to do it. - No, he still has his job. And I was like, "Do you have any social media?" He's like, "No." He's like, "I have my email address." So I think it was like jakemdw.311. Anyways, message me and I'll put you in touch with Jake if you like golf trips and wanna have fun with other dudes.

- Well, one thing you didn't say, but I know you said in the book 'cause I read it, was you have to love the thing and it makes it so much easier. Maybe you don't have to, but it really helped. I often tell people they're thinking of ideas. I'm like, "What would you go do for free?" Look at your internet history.

Where did you spend all of your time? If you love going, researching X, Y, and Z, is there something that you could do there? And for me, everyone I knew was always like, "You always do all this homework. "Can you just tell me the answer?" Like, I would go to a dinner table and someone's like, "Yeah, yeah, yeah, I know you know "all the credit card stuff.

"Can you just tell me which one to get? "Or can you just tell me "what insurance is the right policy?" And I was like, "Oh, what if I just did all this research "and shared it? "Or what if instead of doing the research, "I interviewed the people while I was doing it "and shared it?" And so I think it didn't start with the ambition of being a full-time job or anything.

It just started as a thing that I liked doing. And in fact, it actually started as an idea of a parenting podcast. And one of my pieces of advice I'll give people, friends are often too nice. And so I told people, I was like, "Oh, I'm gonna start this parenting podcast." 'Cause right before we had our first child, I got really into going down all these rabbit holes of parenting research.

And I was researching strollers. I think that I have the most comprehensive stroller comparison database and spreadsheet that exists out in the world. It's about three years out of date, but for circa 2020, it's the best. And I had gotten caught up in the fact that I love doing all this research and thinking, "Wow, I'm doing it on this topic.

"I should start a podcast on this topic." And everyone I knew was like, "That's a great idea." And then I was like, "You know what?" After we had the kid and we bought the stroller and we bought all the items, I was like, "I think I liked researching things "more than I liked that topic solely." And I was like, "What if I just did it about all the hacks "and it was just me researching everything?" And all my friends said, "Oh, that's so much better.

"That's exactly who you are." And I was like, "Well, then why didn't you "tell me that before?" So I like the fact that instead of texting your friends and saying, "What do you think of X?" Ask them first. Because I've found in the past that if you tell them you wanna do something, they're often either completely dismissive or completely supportive.

And it's very hard for them to think, "Oh, well, that's great, "but this other thing might be better." - A common theme I've heard, "Find something you love, "you never work a day in your life." I think that's said by people who actually like their jobs and there's people who, I'd say 80% don't.

And then what they'll do to avoid it is like, "Well, I wouldn't wanna do that for a living. "I like researching a lot, but that's just more my hobby." And it's like, you know what happens in business as you get going, you don't do any of the actual work.

Which is counterintuitive. Like, you know the last time I got an AppSumo deal? 2011, right? Right, you know, like, it's been 13 years. And I remember someone saying that and I was like, "Oh, interesting. "So don't trade your time for money, "trade your money for someone else's time." And that's how business happens.

And if you do enjoy it, frankly, you're like, "Hey, actually, no, I like customer support. "I like all these areas." Great, but it doesn't always have to be that case. And I love your highlight of find something that you just enjoy doing. I always like the idea too, if you have a million dollars, like I send you a million dollars today, what are you doing tomorrow?

I am doing it. I'm doing it. I'm talking about a book, 'cause this is what I wish I would have had when I was getting started. I get to promote deals on AppSumo. Like, I get to make YouTube content or interview rich people and ask how they did it.

I don't know, like, I can't believe it. Most days, I can't believe this is my career. I like type on a keyboard and like money comes. And then I also recognize that it started as a hobby. I think that's a big thing people don't think of. They're like, "No, no, it's gotta be a million dollar "crazy thing." I don't know, most big billion trillion dollar businesses started as just curiosity, right?

Airbnb, one of my favorite examples, started in a weekend. They emailed people saying, "Hey, does anyone wanna stay at our couch "for this design conference in SF?" Someone did. Hmm, that's kind of interesting. They weren't setting out to change, you know, annoy everybody in the world and make the world kind of cooler.

And same thing with a lot of these other businesses. - I was talking to a mentor of mine. Well, I might get back on the show, Andy Ratcliffe, who started Wealthfront and he told me two things that are pretty relevant. One, he's like, "I've done a lot of investing in my career.

"At the earliest stage, I honestly don't even know "if the idea matters at all. "The idea might change, the idea might evolve. "People haven't really baked it. "It's really about how excited is a person about this idea "and how driven are they?" And then he said, "And the one skill I value the most "is intellectual curiosity." He just wants people that are excited about a thing and wanna learn more about it.

And he's like, "That is something I really value." And so, you know, it made me think, "Oh, we're having this conversation today. "That was a couple of days ago." What are you just curious about? Like, what are the things that you just can't stop thinking about? And how could you solve some problem?

Again, I spent a career also in product management. Forget about solutions. Just figure out what people are having problems with. Ask them what's wrong in their day. I love this exercise. Walk through a friend's day and just be like, "All right, tell me everything that sucked "in lots of details." Like, okay, you were making breakfast.

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So please consider supporting those who support us. Let's take a little turn. You mentioned you've interviewed a lot of millionaires, billionaires. What are some of the lessons you've learned from all those conversations? - I've also worked for them, right? So one thing I've noticed is that I think we all imagine that they're better than us.

And when you actually meet millionaires, or multi-millionaires, or billionaires, nope, not really. And that's beautiful, right? 'Cause that means that everyone has a chance to create whatever life they want. There are gifted people. Like Zuckerberg is definitely smarter than most people. Bill Gates, who I've worked for, is smarter than most people.

Peter Thiel, who I've gotten to hang out with a little bit, smarter than most people. But there's also a lot of billionaires, Larry Janeski. I would say he's very smart, but he's also a pretty normal guy, that I think a lot of us can do. Now, I would say some of the things in common between them is that most of them got rich off one thing, but all of us diversify.

(laughs) Right, it's actually counterintuitive. They're like, diversify, diversify, but they only really got rich one way. You know, go look at any of these rich person lists. You know, it's either real estate or it's tech. You know, outside of inheritance, it's almost exclusively one thing. They stick with it for extraordinary long periods of time.

Extraordinary. And I think, you know, especially with your show, Chris, we talk about what to choose for stocks or index funds, things like that, and investing. You know, think about compound business. So sticking with something for 20 years. Like, you've been doing your show three years? Think about it in 30 years.

Right, like how big that will be, where each year you're just like, getting a little better at your craft, getting a little more popular, and you just stick with it and stick with it. And all these guys got rich to become billionaires in around 20 years, which I think is super, super interesting.

I like John Paul DeGioia a lot. I don't know if all of them were happy. A lot of them seemed to have regret that they didn't spend more time with their family. I'm glad I got to learn that from them. But I would say John Paul DeGioia seemed like he had the right balance, where, and as I said earlier, you know, the book starts with how to get good at asking.

He said that the most important skill that he's ever had is sales, which is really asking. And I liked his approach of businesses, which he said, find the best product that you really love in a category that needs to be reordered, and just do that for a very long period of time.

And so he did tequila, Patron, sold out for three and a half billion, 'cause you keep, I guess people keep drinking, and then he did haircare, Paul Mitchell Haircare, which you keep using haircare. And then I'd say the last thing specifically, especially from him, 'cause a lot of these guys seem frustrated or seem like they're chasing still more sometimes, which I was like, oh, I don't want that.

He seemed just kind. He seemed really, really kind. I really admired that. He was kind with me, his staff was kind, he was kind to the other people that were filming. The day he sold Patron, he gave a $50 million check to charity. He seemed genuinely kind with himself and then kind with others, and that's something I've worked on in the past few years, and I love that from him.

- Yeah, I had a great conversation with Gary V. about kindness and just how he thinks it's the most underrated business skill in the market. - I think self-kindness is probably underrated. I think we're all disgusting to ourselves. I think we're really harsh on ourselves, and that's something I've definitely worked on.

I try to think of underrated skills. I'll tell you, underrated skill is gift-giving. Super underrated in business. So, so underrated. And as well, doing the work for people you want to have help from or people you want to ask. If you want to come on someone's show, I could have even done more for you, even though we just met yesterday, or we connected yesterday, but hey, let me come back with ideas for you.

Or, I was able to meet the people from CNBC, so I'm coming on the show Make It, and the guy loves his new dog. And so I asked someone who loves dogs for what's the coolest dog toy, and so it's this thing from Fable where it spits out dog food as a game.

So it's a little gift thing, like 50 bucks. Like, that's gonna create a cool relationship for life. So I think those are kind of two things that I would say are definitely underrated in a business, or frankly, in life. - Now that I'm just thinking about ways that you've changed your life, how does your routine look on a day-to-day basis in terms of when you're doing business, when you're spending time on yourself, your partner, your health?

- Yeah, I think a lot of the more morning routine content is very overrated. I think it's so overrated. It's like, oh, get up and meditate and fucking journal, sorry, freaking journal, and then drink whatever, I don't know, people don't drink Bulletproof coffee anymore, I don't know, whatever the new coffee fat is, and then, I don't know, jump in a cold shower and all that crap.

What I found is just look at the days that worked out well for you and try to have common elements between 'em. So what I have recognized is like, I do like journaling on Monday morning, that works out, and I've copied that from the book "Artist's Way," which is amazing, if you haven't read it, I highly recommend, about how to be a creative person.

So I do that on Monday mornings, and I don't eat until 12, 'cause it makes me feel like, okay, it's good to feel a little hungry sometimes, so that's Mondays. And then the rest of my week, I don't do anything else before noon. That's every day. I'm trying to think of high-level things that I can recommend for most people.

I color-code my calendar, I think that's probably one of the cooler things that people can do, and it's really just showing you your asset allocation or your time allocation, if you think about it, where, all right, how much did I spend with my family, how much did I spend in fitness, how much did I spend at work, how much did I spend myself, and a lot of my stuff is on repeat.

So I know that every Monday, I'm gonna have a journal, it's in my calendar. Every month, I have my monthly personal finance review on my Google spreadsheet. Let's say other routine stuff, maybe just high-level two other ones that people can copy that I found. I do a weekly review on Fridays, every single Friday.

That's been a game-changer, where I evaluate how did I show up as a leader, one through five, and why. How was my emotional consistency? I've noticed sometimes, like even yesterday, I was a little bully, I would say sometimes, and I was like, ooh, I don't like that. And then the last one on Fridays is, what are the three things you wanna do next week?

And then every Sunday, I take the three things I wanna do next week and work with my chief of staff to really help schedule and color-code the things I'm working on in this upcoming week. Morning routines, frankly, just don't drink too late at night, and then try to go to bed relatively early.

That, you're gonna have a pretty damn great routine in the morning. I've noticed I use the Oura Ring, and people have done a bunch of stuff, but ultimately, it really comes down to that. Counterintuitively, by the way, I think there's gonna be a big trend that wives and husbands tend to sleep in separate rooms.

'Cause I think when your partner gets you up, and you're like, oh man, I did not sleep as well. But I think there's just too much friction on that. - I did an episode on sleep, and I can't remember the interviewee, but a couple weeks ago, and I asked a question about sleeping with your partner, and she's like, I interviewed the world's expert on sleeping.

There's some book that this person wrote, and she interviewed it. I'll put a link in the show notes, but it was all about how do you optimize your sleep when you're also trying to consider the fact that you have another human in the bed, and what's the right tactic here?

I have not listened to the episode, full disclosure, so I can't endorse it. - I mean, I think the same thing for Million Dollar Weekend, the same thing about how I run AppSumo.com, and the same thing with these routines is experiment. That's all it comes down to, and experiments can fail, but experiments can work.

And so I've done 30 days of getting up at five. I've done 30 days of no caffeine. I've done meditation every day, and then noticing, 'cause everyone's different, noticing what's the formula. You're like, oh man, when I can go biking in the morning, great, or I can jump in the sauna, great, but when I have a morning meeting at 10, I'm pretty angry, 'cause I didn't create a business so that I have to do these kind of things, or I don't want to.

And then just experiment around that and seeing how you can create, frankly, the life and week you wanna live. And Jake, who read the book, he said something to me that was really powerful, and I've been thinking about it every day since a few months ago. He said, "Have stuff in your calendar you look forward to.

"Put it in the calendar. "Put a date night in the calendar. "Put a workout in the calendar. "And if you don't have anything in life "you're excited about, put it in the calendar." That really stuck with me. - I literally today just put a recurring, monthly date night on the calendar, so.

- Hell yeah. That was actually, that was a business from a buddy last week, Date Night Nannies, where they help you suggest either a date night in every month or weekly. You can subscribe to different amounts. Have that as an opportunity. Well, yeah, it's kind of an interesting business.

- A big takeaway for me, reading the book, talking to you, is just there's this, especially in the Bay Area, but this belief that entrepreneurship is a career versus an option. I don't know what the, the option's probably the wrong word, but you don't have to choose between entrepreneurship and employment.

And if you do, you can punt on that decision. There's a thousand things you can do when you want to explore an idea, as you say, in a weekend, way before you have to decide quitting your job, way before you have to raise money, build a product, and all this stuff.

And I think so many people often get turned around. And if anyone out there, just because I've taken this phone call like 10 times, so I started a company doing financial planning online, and we raised money, spent a few years, and realized that the reason why that business is so hard to build is solely that it is almost impossible to acquire customers at any fast cadence.

Because people all want to change their finances, they all want to improve their financial life, but they just don't want to do it right now. And so what we learned, in the worst way possible, but I'll come back and I'll give a lesson, is that we asked people, "Do you want to do this?

Put $100 down." And we got all these people to put $100 down. And so we were like, "Wow, there's real demand." The challenge is then we said, "All right, let's get started. Do you want to pay the rest?" And they're like, "No, not now." And we were like, "Oh, we'll give you your $100 back." And they said, "No, no, no, don't give us the $100 back.

We want to do this. We just don't want to do it now." And converting people off that wait list was almost impossible. So a lot of these founders call me and they say, "Hey, I want to start a company. We want to do online financial planning." And I'm like, "Stop everything, and just find out if you can acquire people.

Like, can you sell this in a way that you could repeat? And if not, don't go hire the engineering team. Don't go build the product." And it just got me thinking, especially reflecting on the last 24 hours of prepping for this conversation, if I had spent a weekend just validating whether there were ways to sell financial planning and close the client quickly, per se, I probably wouldn't have even needed to start the company because at the end of the day, the challenge is people aren't ready to start now.

And if you just listen to the problem, the problem is, "Oh, I need to fix this. I need to fix this." But if you don't actually take whether, I think it's step two in your process to actually validate that the thing you want to do will solve the problem and work, you kind of get lost.

- How many of your audience is in Silicon Valley? - Definitely the minority, but I'd say for sub 5%, but definitely my experience, at least. - It's interesting as a lot of people have heard that advice, you know, get going and, but then they don't. And then it's like, well, what's happening there?

And they're afraid. And so how do we do it in small, fun ways, kind of almost games where it's like, okay, if you fail, fine, at least you're starting to feel more confident. Now I saw a Silicon Valley company called Artifacts, I think it's what it's called, raised three and a half million dollars and they'll film a video of your grandma or grandpa, papi.

And I was like, I could have easily found out in a weekend that whole business, I didn't need to raise any money. I could literally, everyone's got a grandfather and grandmother or parent. You can contact people in your network. Hey, can I film your grandfather or grandfather? I'll go to their house or Zoom 'em for half the price.

And I could record and create a memory capsule for you. I could make more than $3 million in the next few years before I even have some complicated Silicon Valley website. And it was just a cool reminder that this didn't really apply in a lot of different areas. And guess what, if no one wanted it, if I called up, I don't know, maybe I can call up Chris as someone in my network, like you have, probably you have parents, see if that's a problem, see if you even want to pay for it.

And if you don't, great, I didn't go and raise money, build a pitch deck to build something that no one wants. - Also, there's a lot of companies that raise so much money that the business doesn't work at the scale. So let's pretend that this company goes out of business, might not actually mean it's a bad idea.

Someone listening to this podcast right now might be like, well, let's just start doing this. It might not work at the speed and cadence investors would want it to be, which is why that company could or could not fail. But that doesn't mean it's not a good business. Financial planning is actually a great business.

It's just not a great software business at the scale investors need. So I am happy that we haven't tried to raise money to turn this into a venture-backed podcast. - The reality, it doesn't always work. And people are so close to yeses if they just got some nos, right?

Like if they just started asking, like, hey, I'm gonna try this business, didn't work, okay, great. But people are giving up way too soon. They're all giving up way too soon. And if they could just wait till they, not even wait, keep going, keep going, keep going, eventually you will find that thing.

And I mean, it took me, I think, 20 different business ideas to finally get to AppSumo that finally worked. And I was like, all right, great, it's working. My favorite business is the one that works. I'm just gonna stick with this. And I would say year after year showing up, it's now producing great dividends.

And that's available worldwide. - Well, so one of the skills you mentioned was just getting going, right? And I think in the book, you say now, not how. Let's talk about that because I think that's a skill that applies whether you're starting a company or whether you're just working on anything.

And it's a skill I'm pretty bad at. So that's why I'm gonna ask you to coach me and people listening. When you have the mind of, oh, great, I need to do this thing, take fitness. You're like, oh, I wanna start working out. Okay, well, let's go research what the best training program is.

Let's go ask 10 of my friends. Is there maybe a coach I should hire? It's like, or just go lift some weights, go on a run. You seem like someone who also, you wrote a book, like to do some research, like to put thought behind things. How do you contrast that to just get going?

- I wanna avoid getting going really fast in the wrong direction, right? So the whole concept is how do I get going, see if it works. If it works, great, I'm gonna go fast in that direction. So what do you think is the last thing you avoided or you took longer on than maybe you think you have to, needed to or wanted to?

- I mean, I can think of a few things that I just haven't done yet. - What are examples of that? - My wife and I talk a lot about, and I get lots of emails from people like, gosh, you have such great content. Like, why aren't you posting it anywhere else?

I don't like podcasts. You can put it in a newsletter. We started doing that. And then someone was like, LinkedIn might be great. I'm like, okay, well, maybe I should go figure out what the best way to do LinkedIn is. I don't know. I'm using a little bit of an extreme, but also not.

- That's okay. - My default is like, go master the thing before doing it. And even though I know that that's the wrong path, the right path would be like, well, just write something and post it and see what people think. But sometimes I have to get out of my own head there.

And so I'm curious if you have any thoughts on encouraging people who are like, well, I wanna start this thing. I wanna think about it. I'm not sure. You could just do it. - Well, so a few things there, but let's just take this LinkedIn as a great example.

What's held you back from posting it today? - Probably not sure what the right format is. Not sure what the right topic is. Probably a little bit of, there are professional people there that know me and don't wanna look like an idiot posting something stupid in front of a professional group.

But I don't know, those are a couple. - Those are great. And that's super common, right? We're embarrassed. I remember posting on Facebook and then this person from high school, I knew they saw it and I really felt embarrassed. Like, oh, what are they thinking of me? And that's part of what this is about, right?

It's finding confidence in ourself through action. And so I guess I would also wonder, I think there's a bigger discussion about like, is LinkedIn really the most helpful in your business? I think that's a separate thing. What would happen if you posted today? Do you post anywhere? Where do you post anything?

- I'm not active on LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, anywhere. - Oh, and how do people even hear about this podcast then? - Interesting thing. Most people find out about podcasts on podcasts. So word of mouth and being a guest on other shows, maybe some newsletter stuff, but it certainly wasn't Instagram or Twitter probably for most people, though I'm sure someone listening will write back that, no, no, no, it was for me.

- And then maybe let's do a parallel. So when you finally put yourself out there on the podcast, how did it feel? - I don't know, it just felt natural. - I think you wrote something about this somewhere, but it's like, I'm not the kind of person who's like always taking pictures all the time and wanting to share them with the world.

So like Instagram seems so unnatural. It's so forced. If someone's like, just post more photos on Instagram. I'm like, I just don't wanna do that. - It's not what I do. And I also think what I would, you know, in business and same with this stuff, and we can go back to now not how, it's how do you do more of what's working?

And what's working for you is podcast. So I would say, how do you do more of that in the now? Not necessarily like something you don't really wanna do. Like, yes, I could go post on those areas, but I don't like that either. Where I see the now not how concept is mostly for people who are not starting.

They're just not getting started, right? And that's what's really holding back. You're already going. So going and starting something off in a direction isn't what makes sense. Doubling down on what's working is what makes sense for you. And that's what we encourage later in the book, in the process.

I guess the two things I would say is, you can practice not a how in really stupid things. And I've found that really helpful. Like practice it when there's something on the ground. 'Cause you'll go to your closet tonight, Chris. I don't know if you're organized, but sometimes maybe your clothes on the ground or you're in the garage and kids left something on the ground.

You're like, I'll get it tomorrow. And I tell myself, now not how. Ah, damn it. And the idea with now not how is that we are, in general, thinking about, well, if I wanna start a business, I gotta do all this stuff. It's like, no, just get going. Try to find a customer.

And I've noticed there's a guy named Rico. He just started posting online. And he said, I made $4.70. He just started posting in his Facebook groups and stuff. And I was like, what are you doing? He's like, I don't know, just now. I'm just doing it. I'm not worrying about if people really love it or not.

And you're doing it before fear catches up. And I like doing it in kind of silly ways. I live and I do this stuff. So I said, let me just do a now not how that anyone can copy. So I texted my girlfriend. I said, what's one thing right now you can tell me that I can do to improve our relationship?

And so she actually wrote a really great response. I'm not gonna share it. But she said, baby, it's a difficult question, dot dot dot. That was just 'cause right in the now, I asked for something versus, okay, now let me go to therapy or let me have a date night and then we're gonna have a sit down.

But just right now I asked for something and I got feedback. And you can do that in your job right now. You can do that in starting a business right now. You can do that in social media right now. And I think a lot of times people are like, well, how do I approach it?

How do I, and don't worry about the how, just get going on the now. How does that maybe relate to, what do you think is something that you think would actually benefit you in things going on that maybe you can consider as an experiment doing right now? - It's funny, in the last 24 hours, I did an experiment.

And so I'll share it because it was a success. And I think it's a great story. There are a handful of people that listeners have said, you should have come on the show or I'd thought would be interesting. And I wasn't quite sure what would be the perfect conversation.

And so I'll give one example of Dan Pink. So he's an author, he's been on the show in the past. And I was like, we had a great conversation. I like his reading, his writing. I was like, I should just have him back on the show as soon as I figure out what the topic is.

'Cause I don't know what the topic's gonna be. And so last night I just, we spoke yesterday about this conversation. I just sent him a note and I was like, hey, I would love to have you back on the show. We had a great conversation. I'll figure out what it'll be about.

But if you're interested, here's a link. And then this morning, he just scheduled a link and we're gonna record an episode in a week or maybe two weeks. And so I know I'm gonna find a thing and I just needed that motivation to do it. So I would say, had we not talked, that would be a great example of something I wasn't doing.

But because I've been thinking about this, I just tried to put in the action. And I would say there's like three or four guests that are coming on the show in the next month that are all as a result of outreach in the last 24 hours that I was just like, you know what, let's just do it.

Let's just, like, let's not wait for the perfect time. Maybe the hint is you just need to constantly remind yourself in practice. It's a muscle you have to build. And even though I knew I was supposed to do it all along, it was just hard. And now I just need to do it more and see the benefit.

- That's great, man. That was cool. Yeah, the things are never as scary as we think and they're never as hard. And I would say that the book, what really is the book, yes, it's business and money and changing your life for 48 hours, but it's about learning who you can become through business.

I would say it's like the Marie Kondo of business is what we aimed for, which is, yes, it has mindset, it has recipes, but it's really, how do we do things we didn't think we could do and we could live lives we didn't think we could live? Literally, the now, not how is the number one takeaway from the book.

There's definitely a lot of other things and tactics and all that other stuff, but we survey every beta reader and it was like, oh my God, I just realized I'm distracting myself from things that actually matter and I can do it much quicker than I realized. And especially if you know, someone like yourself, 'cause you've got a family, you're busy, all these things, but just getting in the now, just literally doing the now, you realize the results that can come for it.

So that was awesome to hear and inspired you in the now. It takes a while, right? Like you gave plenty examples in the book. You have the law of a hundred, like look at some of the most successful business people you talked about, like you need to start now because it can take years for things to work.

Well, the law of a hundred for people out there is just commit to a hundred of something, right? So a hundred podcasts or a hundred days or a hundred emails and it's about how to not quit too soon. And I gotta shout you out where the book starts about the power of starting in the upside of asking.

And you also said, hey, no, what about me coming on your show? You have a lot of my content is about entrepreneurship. And I was like, I thought about it a lot last night. I was like, I like that he asked. 'Cause you know, the upside of an ask, you get something that you want.

The downside is maybe a moment of a rejection. And the more that people can practice that skill, they realize like there's a lot more out there for them. And they're not just getting what they get, they're getting what they want. If you wanna go deeper, I did an episode, anyone listening with Aziz Ghazipura, we talked a lot about rejection therapy and like lots of different ways that you can practice getting rejected.

You've got one where you ask people at a coffee shop to just give you 10% discount or friends to give you a dollar, which are both great tactics. But for anyone who's like, let's double click there, we're not gonna spend 20 minutes on it. But that episode went deep there.

There's a lot of rejection out there. I know, people don't realize how much rejection happens for people that are getting the things they want 'cause they're only seeing the things they get, right? Like, oh, it must be good for her because she seems to have a great thing. But it's like, yeah, you don't know all the other things that she tried to get to where she is.

And so I do think it's good in fun ways. You know, in the book, we have a lot of these different little silly, yeah, as you called it, silly little challenges. And guess what? You kind of should be laughing. And then throughout the book, you're kind of, it should be enjoyable.

It shouldn't be this big, scary thing that you have to overcome, but you just have to face yourself. Everyone can do that. And that's what I'm out here cheerleading to encourage people to do that 'cause I don't want people living what if. And I have someone close to me where they feel like they don't have power to change their lives, and they do.

- So you talk a lot about making the ask. What about the follow-up? How do you feel about how often you should follow up? When you get a no, can you get a yes later? - I think that's when I'm named no. My future kid, my girlfriend is pregnant.

We were gonna name him C, you know, C in Spanish for Sia. But my girlfriend vetoed that name. Most people don't ever follow up. A lot of times in hiring, I'll just delete after the first email just to see who follows up. And very, very few ever follow up.

Now, just to share a story, you guys heard me talk about John Paul DeGioia earlier. But what you didn't hear is that I saw him on the streets. I just went up to him. I was bicycling, I was in spandex. And I was like, "Oh my God, "I've been dreaming of interviewing you.

"I'd love to interview you." And he said, "Cool, here's my assistant." He doesn't have a computer. He said, "Here's my assistant's number, call her." So I call her that night. She's like, "Oh cool, he's not available." I was like, "What do you mean?" I met him on the street, he said, "Yes." (laughs) I was in spandex, don't you remember?

And she's like, "Well, give me a call later. "And then here's my email." I followed up with her every week for a year. And then one Friday, she called me. And she said, "Hey, he can meet you Monday at 8 a.m. "Can you be there?" And I was like, "Hell yeah, I'll be there." One, it was amazing to meet him, but it was a great interview of him sharing his story and really inspiring a lot of people in business journeys.

But you didn't know that I got rejected 50 weeks to get to that point. And I asked her in person, I thought this was the most interesting part of that, where I recorded it. And I said, "Wasn't I annoying? "Didn't it bother you, like this guy, excuse me?" She's like, "No, I respected you.

"I admired that you really wanted it "and you were willing to follow up with that. "You didn't bug me every day, "but every week she knows I'm gonna call her or email her." And there's something about that in whatever the things we actually want in life are. And so if you can be clear on what you actually want, which is sometimes harder than we think, then it makes it much easier to then say, "All right, well, at least I need to make it easy "to follow up." 'Cause that's how you're gonna get the things you want.

My favorite quote is, "A squeaky wheel gets the grease." Which is still strange, but really it's just like, if you're making noise and you're kinda persisting, I do think eventually persistence beats resistance. Another one of my favorites. So yeah, most people are not following up. - I think you could also probably call out things that you're afraid of.

So if you're afraid that they're gonna be like, "This person's annoying," you could be like, "Hey, I'm just following up "'cause I know this interview is gonna be amazing. "Don't feel like you need to reply. "I'm gonna keep..." You could kind of couch out some of the things. But if you get someone who thinks they have to reply to the email, it might be annoying.

But if they're okay just archiving it at the end, yeah, keep going. - Yeah, there's definitely a difference between no and not yet. And what I've noticed with rejection or with asking in general, is that everyone's got things going on and it's hard to really know. Like we make these stories up about others, like, "Oh, they rejected me, they hate me." And then I followed up with people that are like, "Hey, thanks for bringing it back to my attention.

"I was really busy." Great. (laughs) And so there are tools, right? Like followup.cc, and there's Google S News, and there's your calendar, and there's frankly pen and paper. But just make sure you follow up on these things. And at AppSumo, and personally, even with my own sales over the years, I noticed about half of our sales, it's almost half come through the followup.

And I think that's so insane of a data point, where that the first time almost no one's responding, but the second time I'm getting half of the sales. Maybe it's more likely for others to think about how they can follow up. - My sister worked in sales for a long time.

She had these automated sequences, and like the fifth email was one about crocodiles. I don't know if anyone listening or you have ever gotten this email. And it was just like, "Sorry about the crocodiles." And the email said, you open the email and it's like, "Not sure what happened, haven't heard from you, "but maybe you got eaten by crocodiles.

"I'm not sure. "If so, I hope everything's okay. "Would still love to chat." And she was like, "That email killed it." It was like, after someone didn't respond five times, she would just send this like Hail Mary email that actually got people to respond and close deals. - Well, I get these emails too, and I find them kinda, I don't know, kitschy a little bit.

But I think what's powerful for me to recognize, and I always think of the acronym WIFT, is what's in it for them. And I think when most people are sending stuff, it's like, what's in it for me? It's like, here's my thing. No one's ever really making it obvious why it's such a good thing for the other person.

And what they do also is they do it in the same medium that everyone's doing it. So if you're doing it on LinkedIn, it's gonna be hard. If you're doing it on Twitter, it might be a little easier. If you're doing it on email, it might be. And so again, I think it's like, what's the medium where they're not getting harassed?

And then as you're communicating with them, how do you make sure that, hey, based on what you're doing, I know this is gonna be good for you. Like for instance, I do social media. You can check that out online. People, I get literally, I'm not joking, 30 messages a day.

Hey, can I be your editor for your content? And one out of 1,000 will actually send me something. They'll show me, not tell me. And they're thinking about what's in it for me. They're like, well, I showed you what I can do. And that guy got hired. He gets a six-figure salary working for me on the YouTube channel.

So I think there's just different other elements of, one, besides the follow-up, even the asking, by practicing it, you will get better at the ask. Yeah, I tell everyone I know who's trying to get on podcasts. I'm like, I get lots of pitches, and all of them are from people who have clearly never listened to the show ever.

And then one in 100 is someone like, hey, I listened to your show. Here's an episode that might make sense. And I'm like, I'm excited. It doesn't always work. But I get all these emails that are like, would you like to have an interview with someone who built a career out of buying storage units?

And I was like, no, I don't have an interview entrepreneurs about their story. I'm like, let's learn some tactics. So it goes so far to do a little bit of homework to make an email actually relevant to the person reading it. Anything. I mean, even, let me give you an example on day jobs, 'cause you told me that a lot of your audience has day jobs.

There's two messages I hate most in the world, or there's one message, but it could go both ways, that I hate most in the world. And it was like, no, we have to talk. And that's when I get it from someone who works with me. And I'm like, well, they're quitting today.

And I'm like, well, that's frustrating. So I got that message two days ago from Kellen. And it was like, we gotta talk. I'm like, okay. She put together a two-page document showing me, and I won't share her numbers, but showing me what she's done for AppSumo and all she's created.

And she said, I know we're gonna come up on raises. I just wanna show you what I've done. And based on also data from external raises, like, might make sense for you to give me a raise. She made it very easy. And normally, you get the opposite words of people quitting.

When you're at a company, create more value for the company. It's very easy to get paid more at that company. And it was so cool. She didn't just tell me about that. She showed that to me. - I had an au pair once, the one au pair that didn't work out well.

And she was like, I want more money. And we were like, why? And she's like, 'cause I want it. And my wife was like, from a teaching standpoint, I wanna sit down and show you that you should have come and said, here's all the things I've been doing. Here's all this work.

But it was like the most frustrating. They were just like, 'cause I want it. It didn't happen. - But just good lessons out there for all of us. And like, you know, what is it again? It's an ask, right? And it's a skill. Like I knock on doors on these videos where I knock on houses and ask what they do for a living.

It's very uncomfortable, right? And I still get a lot of anxiety, but I don't ask them, hey, what do you do for a living? 'Cause that's a weird ask. But I go to the door and compliment them. And that's something you can do for anyone you wanna ask something for.

I go to houses I love and I say, I love your house. Like, oh my God, really? Yeah, like, tell me about it. Wow, what did you do to afford this kind of house? It's so cool. And oh yeah, we're doing a documentary about houses in the neighborhood. And I think we create narratives about why people are gonna reject us and we stop before we ever start.

And that's the same reason, like, I ask people on first class seats or ask to fly in someone's private jet. And you'd be surprised at what can happen if you just ask. I feel like obliged to just make an ask then, just to demonstrate. You did, what's your ask?

You did, you asked to come on my show. I know, but you already said yes, so now I gotta keep going. Like, I'm gonna come to Austin, we'll record an episode, and then I'm gonna sit down and lay out my plan for what we're doing with the business and then get your feedback.

You up for that? Okay, now you're imposing, now you're imposing. Okay, hold on, slow your roll. One, I'm flying to Spain in two weeks, so you have to follow me out there. But again, I think with ask, people think it is an imposition, right? And they're like, but go back to what's in it for me.

Noah, I know you're trying to do this content. I saw that your most popular podcasts were on solopreneurship. I've had a day job, I've started a podcast. Here's some of the things that can make it really appealing for you, or most people send generic templates. And so if you can think about what's in it for the other person, and you put a little bit of effort into it, like this guy Jay, I just hired this guy Jay, 17 years old, lives with his parents.

He's coming to the book launch party for Million Dollar Weekend. I paid for a ticket for his dad to come with him, which is so cool. I was like, that's just cool. And Jay didn't ask me for a job. He put together a 30-point Google Slides presentation about everything in my social media and email that sucked and what he's gonna do about it.

And now Jay makes more than anyone else. He probably makes, I don't know if he makes more than all of his teachers, but pretty soon he will. Just 'cause he, he didn't make an ask to come work, but he also put in the work to show me why it was such a no-brainer for him to get this job.

- I love that. The only thing that I didn't hit on was, I know you've talked in the past about being cheap, and that you've been able to learn how to spend. I was curious if you had any advice on that. - I can still be practical. I think we shouldn't label ourselves as cheap.

- I was using your words. You've said that. (laughing) - I was pretty cheap, I would say, or practical up until COVID. And I think a lot of our society has thought about making money as no one ever talks about enjoying money. And I'll tell you, everyone should at least be rich, and then you can decide if you wanna go back to being poor.

And I grew up middle-class, and I think there's a middle-class mentality where you're trained to be stuck in that path and realizing you can actually get out of it. And spending money and enjoying money has been one of the best things the past three years. I was telling someone two days ago, if my house burned down, the first thing I'm taking is my toilet.

I've got this $6,000 Toto Japanese toilet that's just killer. I don't like leaving my house 'cause of toilet. My girlfriend now is like, "I understand." Dude, come over. When you come over, you'll try it. - This is so funny. Our last au pair, fantastic, from Spain, we asked her, "What are you gonna miss most "when you leave America and go back to Barcelona?" Or she lives near Barcelona in a town called Tarragona.

She's like, "That toilet." (laughing) - Oh, do you guys have a nice toilet? - Yeah, yeah, she's like, "I never wanna sit on a cold toilet again." Oh, the toilet, it's got water, it cleans itself. But you know, in terms of being cheap, it's easy to not be cheap if you have money.

But I've also interviewed Larry Janeski, whose company does $600 million a year in basements, who just recently, he's I think in his 50s, he just recently started flying first class. He didn't share his number exactly. I'm guessing it's at least worth $100 million, liquid. He just got a flying economy.

Now, again, for me in COVID, I realized, okay, I'm not sure how long I'm gonna live here. Let me try and experiment different things in my life and see how much of a difference it makes. 'Cause I was always taught that materialism is bad, and if you get more, you're gonna be unhappy, and then you become a victim to it.

And so I tried buying a fancy car. I hated it. I sold it for a loss after a month. And then I tried renting fancy houses. I rented like this Malibu beach house, which was insane. That was super cool. 'Cause during COVID, everything was like really cheap. And then I rented a lake house in Austin.

Then I rented a nice RV. And then I came back home to my 800 foot shack that literally just flooded last night, that has cockroaches and the floors are cracked and the walls are cracked. It has electricity and toilets. So by the way, it's not horrible, but it's pretty bad.

And because I tried fancier things and nicer things, I was like, wow, I was much happier there. And I would say my standard of happiness has been, the baseline is significantly higher since I moved into this house. - Yeah, I mean, I love this lesson. Go try out the ways to spend money because you'll never know which ones make a difference.

- You know what a rich thing for me is, buying Fiji water. I don't know why, I've actually blind taste tested them and I never choose Fiji. So I clearly don't give a crap about the taste of it, but it makes me feel rich. And it's like, okay, cool, that mattered to me.

Let's do that, or bicycles. I think the easy way to spend money is where you spend your time. I bike a lot. So I have two identical $15,000 bicycles in America and in Spain. Or your bed, you spend a lot of time there. The thing that ultimately transformed it was one line in my yearly goals.

And it's a goal every year to donate at least 1% or spend the rest of my money on myself or others. And that one goal, which I look at my goals often, transformed my own generosity to myself and others. And now it's a lot easier. Yesterday, I literally got an email.

It's like, I was donating to this camp I went to as a kid, $180 a year. And they sent me a receipt. They're like, oh, you've been donating $180 a month. I was like, oh, okay. Well, that's part of my 1%, that's fine. And so whatever I make in the year, at least be open to investing in myself, spending in others, or donating.

And that definitely has been powerful. - So you mentioned your goals. How do you set goals? - I think with goal setting, I'd break it down really simply. One, try to have goals that you stick to each year. And each year, they just get a little bit more on the goal.

So my goals every year in the past, it would be like, okay, I did X, now let me go do Y. No, just do X plus 0.1. And then next year, do X plus 0.2. So that was definitely a transformation that helped me in my goals. And then I like breaking my goals down in categories.

And I look at my goals, I'll show you. I have them everywhere. So on my phone, I have a thing called Daily that's pinned. And it's just all the goals that I have for this year. And so I'd recommend people have four categories, work, health, personal, and travel. And then try to think about what are three things in each of these things that you'd really, really like.

And the easy way that you could find this out, and this is what I like to do, I've done this on a few decades since working for me, is write your fantasy. So create a fantasy novel of the year. Just go to your journal in the morning and be like, okay, if it's the end of December 31st, 2024, this year, 2020, whatever, what does my fantasy look like?

All right, I was on Joe Rogan. All right, all the hacks finally I posted on LinkedIn. I'm a LinkedIn influencer, which LinkedIn is pretty annoying. Let's just be real, super annoying. No, I took my wife on a baby moon to the Maldives, which seems like a far flight. So let's go somewhere else.

Maybe, I don't know, Tenerife, who knows. I want to bike across the Alps. Right, and you make this crazy story of yourself. And then sit with it for a little bit. And then think about, okay, what would be really cool? What are these, do I really, am I genuinely motivated?

And then I try to have three per each of these categories. And I like sharing mine with others. I have an accountability partner, Adam Gilbert from mybodytutor.com. And then I review them every single Sunday as part of that weekly review thing I do. - Love it. All right, so we've gone through so much, and I want to inspire people to go and do something.

Doesn't have to be this weekend, but some weekend. I got a chance to read the book before it comes out, but I highly encourage people to check it out. Where do you want to send people to check out more of everything you're working on or the book? - Yeah, milliondollarweekend.com.

Take the 48-hour challenge. It's the same thing with diets. There's never a good time for a diet. (laughs) And it's easy to keep giving excuses about why it's not right. And I think if people even committed an hour this upcoming weekend, it would be surprising and amazing how far ahead they can be and what they can do in just a very short amount of time.

- I love it. Thanks for sharing it with me. Thanks for being here. - I'll see you at my house. I guess you're coming over. - Yeah, yeah. We'll see. Unannounced, knock knock. I like your house. - Yeah. (upbeat music) - That was so great. Noah is amazing. And I think I'm going to try to adopt his now not how mantra for my life and business.

I hope you all enjoyed this episode. If you're one of the few people who haven't left a review on Apple Podcasts, now would be a great time to leave one for two reasons. One, it looks like we are right on the cusp of a 4.8 rating rounding up to 4.9.

And two, we're about to launch a new website that's actually going to feature some of your reviews on the website. So thank you all in advance. That's it for this week. I will see you next week. (upbeat music) I want to tell you about another podcast I love that goes deep on all things money.

That means everything from money hacks to wealth building to early retirement. It's called the Personal Finance Podcast. And it's much more about building generational wealth and spending your money on the things you value than it is about clipping coupons to save a dollar. It's hosted by my good friend, Andrew, who truly believes that everyone in this world can build wealth and his passion and excitement are what make this show so entertaining.

I know because I was a guest on the show in December, 2022, but recently I listened to an episode where Andrew shared 16 money stats that will blow your mind. And it was so crazy to learn things like 35% of millennials are not participating in their employer's retirement plan.

And that's just one of the many fascinating stats he shared. The Personal Finance Podcast has something for everyone. It's filled with so many tips and tactics and hacks to help you get better with your money and grow your wealth. So I highly recommend you check it out. Just search for the Personal Finance Podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen to podcasts and enjoy.