We often talk about on our show this idea of the deep life where you intentionally craft an ideal image of what your life is like, what all the different attributes are, the values, your day-to-day experience, and then you work backwards to get there. For a lot of people, work is not at the center of that.

So what they're looking for is work that they enjoy that also gives them financial flexibility, that gives them the autonomy to help fulfill maybe a more remarkable vision of their life. And so what we wanna learn from you today is we're gonna learn a lot about the reality, the myths and the reality of trying to create a flexible, autonomous business that really is successful but is not the all-consuming, we have huge venture capital investment and the lights are on all night.

How do we find that sweet spot of entrepreneurship unlocking depth? So first of all, is my premise gonna match, am I correct in saying that my, the premise matches what I've read in your book? Are we gonna be on the same, we're on the same wavelength here? - Yeah, the only thing I would call out is you can build Facebook in a weekend.

It was actually started in a weekend. And Airbnb, I think you mentioned that too, that also started in a weekend with just an email. And it doesn't take people that have PhDs to do that. There's also a lot of ordinary companies and businesses. And I think to your original premise, that's exactly right, where you can start something really quickly, which people find surprising and is a common myth you can't, and create these amazing dream lives.

And really, through entrepreneurship, find out who you are. And that's been the biggest surprise and amazement for myself. - So what, before we get into what works, what is it that people, people like me get wrong, but like me, I mean, we're navel gazing, we over rationalize, we don't take action, we draw out like a 17 step plan, like I'm gonna figure out, when we think about using entrepreneurship to unlock more options in our life, what do people like me, what are the traps?

What do we get, what have you seen we get wrong? - So the first trap is the certificate life. - I have a lot of those, Noah. (laughing) - I only have one. I'm like so ashamed to even talk to you. I only went to one college with, I did get two majors, but my brother's a doctor.

- That's two more than Mark Zuckerberg though, right? He has no major, so it's all, let's be honest, it's all relative. - That's true, that's true. And I think certificate life, my brother's a doctor and he graduated and he's got hundreds of thousands of debt and he's like, damn it, you didn't have any debt and you like just started stuff and now you're rich and I'm having to stuck to this nine to five thing that I don't really care for all the time.

And what's interesting about it is that you don't need a certificate to succeed in life anymore. I think if you wanna do certain things like be a doctor, probably need a certificate, but there's just such a cool life regardless if you follow that path or not. And I think that's just something that people think they need permission for or they need to get certified and you just don't, which is so amazing.

- Just to jump in real quick, would you say certificate life also really biases you towards trading time for money, which can become a trap, especially for more remarkable things. So that's just the path there. I'm a doctor, I'm trading my time for money. I'm a lawyer, I'm trading my time for money, which can only get you so far because you have to up stress up income.

- You can. I mean, I think that that's also another myth of trading time for money. You can trade your money for someone else's time though at some point. I think that people don't realize that like, all right, well, I'm getting paid $1,000 an hour. Why don't I pay someone 500 bucks an hour and I'll pay for their time to go do that work and make 500 bucks on it.

That's entrepreneurship. And everyone out there, if you haven't hired an assistant, I recommend a site called hiremymom.com or if you hire like a house cleaner. Those are practices of how am I using money to have time to either make more of it or frankly just chill and spend time doing the things you really wanna enjoy.

So a lot of times when you go to college and you're taught to stay in the lane, like I grew up in the middle-class lane and the middle-class lane loves health insurance. - They're very worried about health insurance. - Very worried about health insurance. My parents are terrified. Like when I was at Intel, I worked at a cubicle, just very standard, like most people, like I didn't know how people figured out their careers.

And when I was leaving to go to this little company called Facebook, they're like, you're leaving health insurance? You are crazy, my friend. I was like, Facebook has health insurance, don't worry. So number one, I think that just the reality that you don't need permission to be successful in these areas, you can do it anywhere.

Like there's no physical discrimination. Like you can be short and succeed in business. You could be looking any color, any gender and succeed. And I think that's really cool. That's amazing. Like what other things in this world can ordinary people succeed like that? Like you can't do it in no sports, excuse me.

- Yeah, that's for sure, right? Yeah, you can't be a basketball player just because you want to. - But you can be an entrepreneurship if you want to. And the beauty is that you can start it today. And that's one of the things I tell people to do it right now, like today, don't worry how it works.

And I think that sometimes people are too smart, right? And a lot of non-smart people have a lot of success as well just 'cause they get started. - Yeah. - And so they're realizing like, huh, what could I do today? Especially if maybe you're an educated, significantly educated person, maybe you're good at research.

That's a cool business to do. Maybe you have expertise in certain areas. That's a cool business. And realizing you can actually get those things going a lot quicker than you realize and cheaper than you expect is kind of as an eye-opener for most people when they think it's supposed to be this hard, complicated, long process, similar to the education maybe they've had.

- So if that's the first trap, that they just don't think it's possible, what's the, what happens for those, what goes wrong when someone says, you know what? I'm convinced and I'm just gonna, I'm gonna jump into it. And then it goes awry. So when you see the cases of like, okay, I'm quitting my job, let's rock and roll.

My business is gonna kill it and it doesn't. What's tripping people up there as well for those who like the idea of making the move but maybe don't think it through or have the evidence, what goes wrong? - Well, I always thought risky was having a day job. And I never think that it has to be this big thing that you like quit your job and try this thing and it has to work.

It's gonna take time and it doesn't work. Like I've tried 20 businesses to finally get to the one AppSumo over a decade that eventually worked but you gotta keep trying and trying and trying and starting. Like there's a story in college. I went to Cal and I had a history of economics class and I was like, you know, I'm smart.

I didn't try very hard on this midterm. And I got a C plus, I've never got a C plus. I was like a 3.8 GPA, I was really proud of myself. And I go to the teacher and I was like, how did I get a C plus? She's like, well, you didn't try that hard.

You didn't really put in the work. And I was like, you're right. Yeah, I tried to just get by doing minimal work for maximum return. That's how I got to Berkeley. And, but it was great and when you think about that story, it made me recognize, okay, well, yeah, I didn't put in the work and that's okay.

Let me go put in the work and see what happens. And I ended up getting, I think a B plus in that class and it was just more of the valuable lesson. And that same thing applies in business. It's not gonna work right away. And all of these failures, you're a professor.

You know, when you're doing professing or you're doing new ideas, you have hypothesis and then you test them. So think of yourself as an experimenter or a scientist and you experiment on these things. Like I wanted to try a business blogging today or I wanted to try this weekend doing a research business or this weekend I wanted to try a consulting business.

Hmm, that's my hypothesis. It failed. Okay, what did I learn from that? And now I'm gonna use that in my next experiment next weekend. And all these failures are actually getting you closer to where you wanna be. So looking at them as more positives and what am I growing out of this experience versus I would say most people, like look at YouTube or podcasts as a great example, they do one show and they stop.

And there's really no difference between the people who win and succeed except the winners really, besides finding something people want, they stick with it. - Yeah, see, I love this idea because I think people get this wrong. I've seen this even myself is when it comes to doing something that has an interesting or desirable reward like a business that takes off and is successful, they're hard to find.

You have to explore the space of the adjacent possible, right, so new ideas that are possible that build on things that exist before, and it's hard to find what actually works, but too often, this is what I think about people I know who have failed at entrepreneurship, when they're looking at case studies, they don't realize that you're seeing a sampling of how many tries it took to succeed.

So a lot of people, the average might be seven or eight businesses, but you're like, let's look at the tail. So like Mark Zuckerberg's first idea or second idea, that did really well. Steve Jobs' second idea, oh, so my first site, that's how it works. Hey there, I wanna take a quick moment to tell you about my new book, "Slow Productivity, The Lost Art of Accomplishment Without Burnout." If you like the type of things I talk about on this channel, you're really gonna like this book.

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So to find out more about the book and how to redeem your pre-order bonuses, check out calnewport.com/slow. Everything you need, you can find there. All right, thanks, let's get back to it. You come up with an idea, and if it's good enough, it's really successful. And if it's not, then you shouldn't be an entrepreneur, so you might as well go all in.

Where you're saying, which is my experience from academia, by the way, researchers, you're always exploring this adjacent possibility. We publish a lot of papers, 'cause you're trying to seek what's really going to take off, what's really gonna change the field. If you knew it in advance, you would only need like three researchers.

They could just write, here we go. This is like the paper we need this year. So I love this mindset. But then that means though, if exploration is key, you probably shouldn't be making the really grandiose, I'm just gonna quit everything. This first idea, our mortgage depends on, it's definitely gonna work tomorrow.

You need to have more of an experimentalist mindset. That seems like a shift for a lot of people. - It is, and I've seen this in Million Dollar Weekend, where people realize it could be fun. And again, it doesn't have to be this big, scary monster, like, oh, I've got to make all this money.

It's like, can you get one customer today? Really, just one, yeah. Or can you do one thing that you're maybe a little bit afraid of and realizing that the life you want to live and engineer is just on that a little bit of that other side of discomfort. And I'm seeing it, like there's a guy who read Million Dollar Weekend, and he emailed me and he's like, yeah, I read the book and I just went and did stand up this week.

I was like, go you. And he's like, wow, I didn't realize there's so much more I can do. And I think that's been almost the interesting part of entrepreneurship about it being fun, but also finding out who you can really become and who you are and realizing it's actually accessible to everyone.

I think there's this intimidation that, oh, I'm not a business person. I'm not that. It's like, great, embrace that. How do we take that? And what I think, especially if you're an academic or if you're at a day job, have you ever been fired, Cal? - I've never not been in academia.

My entire adult life. Never not been in academia. - Out in the non-academic world, we get fired. I've been fired twice. - I don't know about this. My ivory tower doesn't have this word. We just have your tenure case was declined and then you very quietly leave academia and get a job in industry.

That's as close as we get to firing people. - Yeah, when you've been fired, you kind of realize like, oh wow, this one person decided my livelihood. And I think entrepreneurship is a great way to explore creativity in a lot of different areas. And if someone ever is saying like, hey, you're losing your mortgage payments and your food and all these things, like you at least have a backup plan and you can have both.

I think people are surprised. I'm like, yeah, you can have both. And it's such a fun outlet. Like there's a woman who had a day job at Warby Parker. You know that eyeglass company? - Sure. - Yeah, and she was just like, her name is Mary and she dreamed of having her own business.

She's like, I don't want to wonder what if. And I will say, if you want to engineer a great life, be an entrepreneur. Like you can literally take off forever. It has you get it going at some point. You can literally just take off forever or you can live wherever you want.

Like I spent half the year in Spain. And so this married woman wanted that life and it's accessible for her. And she just sent an email to friends and family. And I guess people want to make it complicated. And there is more in the book that I break down exactly how you can do it with scripts and all these things.

But she sent an email to friends and family and said, hey, I've got this idea for greeting cards. Does anyone want greeting cards? Just hit reply. Yeah. Fast forward in 2023, she sold $50,000 of greeting cards. Wow. And it's not-- that was not just one rich uncle bought a lot of greeting cards or I spent $50,000.

It's all-- and then you start realizing there's a process. Just like there is an academia, you can create-- there is a million dollar weekend process you can do over and over. Then eventually you find something like that that does work. And now she has $50,000 and I would be surprised this year if it's not a six figure business.

And now she's able-- she did actually quit her job and is now doing that full time. Yeah. Well, and I'm excited to get into this process. Let me ask you to confirm something you changed my mind about. And I want you to confirm if I got this right. Your book changed my mind about this.

So something I've always noticed is that entrepreneurs seem to live cooler lives outside of their work too. They tend to have more interesting hobbies or interest or the travel habits. I always used to think that's just directly because they have flexibility and autonomy. Like, oh, it's just hey, if you have more flexibility and autonomy, you're your own boss, you can finally go explore other things.

My new belief on this that I want to check with you, that's part of it. But it's also the entrepreneurial mindset is one that is open to, as you were just saying, why not try this? This could be really interesting. Why don't we take up this sport? I don't know.

We live near the ocean. What's surfing like? It's actually the mindset itself opens you more to-- there's a lot in life. What if? Let's try it. It's a more open mindset. So did I correctly have my mind changed by you on that one? Yes. Yes, professor. I would say so.

I mean, I think what I've noticed about entrepreneurs is they're willing to fail and then get feedback. Just like when you do a paper, you submit a paper and research and then you get feedback and then you improve it. And they're more willing to do that. I'm more willing to do that because it's cool.

I get it better. And you could do this in all aspects of your life. And especially in business, that's how you can keep making your business better and better and better. Hey, you didn't buy? How come? Hey, you did buy? How come? And then you make your product better and better and better.

The other thing I've noticed about entrepreneurs and successful people I admire is they're very curious. And they're willing to be wrong with their curiosity, too. So one of my best friends, Tynan-- I think you're familiar with tynan.com. He's here. He's upstairs actually playing pinball right now. And Tynan's just curious.

He's curious about this. Yesterday, we were researching yachts that could cross the Atlantic. But you don't need staff on them. And they're solar paneled. And it was just a fun curiosity to think, what if? And then I think that's part of the entrepreneurship thing. You're curious about it. And then you're like, maybe that can be a reality.

And then if you're wrong, you're OK with being wrong or change your mind. If you're right, you're like, wow, that's amazing. We could actually do that. And I think that's probably outside of the certificate life where you're going outside maybe some of the lines that are set for what other people think.

Right. And you and I were talking about this offline. But there's a small group of us who are full-time just normal professors who also podcast for large audiences. And no one understands what we do. It's a constant-- the certificate world doesn't understand. So if you get-- I was just talking to Adam Grant about this yesterday.

He's in that club. Huberman's in that club. Our colleagues are like, what? What's-- is that-- can you publish this? How does this work? So you're right. I think you're absolutely right. The certificate life is not-- it does close off possibilities instinctually. But OK, let's get into it now, though.

So now my odds are like, great, I want to now experiment. And I understand that I don't have to quit my job tomorrow. Because if I do, I'll lose my health insurance. And Noah's mom's going to get really mad at me. And so no, I can have an experimentalist mindset to it.

What I love about the book is it's nuts and bolts, which I like. And you build the conceit around roughly a weekend. So you're trying to make it clear, don't take too long. Let's go. Let's get after it. And you can right away experiment with an idea. I like early on your idea of a freedom number as a source of courage or for inspiration.

You want to unpack that a little bit? Yeah. Yeah, so the freedom number is the minimum number you need to actually do the things you want and live the life you want to live. And I have a best friend who works at Amazon. Makes half a million dollars a year.

And it's very hard when you have a day job at that amount because he's got a wife. He's got a kid. He's got obligations. So that's why also in a weekend, because everyone's got at least an hour free in a weekend to change their life. Yeah. But the reality with the freedom number for him and for so many people why it's empowering is realizing, all right, well, how much do I actually need to make if I start my own business to be able to go and work on the thing I like?

Which turns out that actually is how you can make a lot of money. And when you calculate it-- and I generally think it breaks down to the three areas, which is your savings, your living, and then entertainment. And for me, when I was started, it was 3,000. Now for my best friend, because he's got a family kid, mortgage is about 10,000.

And what's powerful and empowering about the freedom number is once you found yours-- and I encourage everyone to just write theirs down right now in their phone or on paper. One, it's actually more attainable than people realize. Like, huh, I only need-- most people I've seen, depending on where they're at the stage of life, between 5,000.

I'm like, that's actually more reasonable than I thought. And most people never become millionaires because they don't even make a dollar. And now the other part of this is now that you're like, wow, that's not that hard to actually get to a monthly number. The second thing is when you start businesses, it's not going to work right away.

And when it does start, you make your first dollar or $100 in a weekend, you're like, well, dude, I make $20,000 a month or $10,000 a month or $5,000 a month already in my day job. Like, this sucks. It's like, hold on. Like, this is the success part. Even if you get one customer, which everyone can get three customers-- I would recommend three customers or 48 hours.

And when you have this freedom number, again, you're just realizing, like, wow, OK, so I can get it. And maybe if I just stick with this for a little bit, maybe a year, two years, three years, you will get to that number, I promise you. And if you see it getting closer, yeah, that motivates.

100%. And for me, I am never this entrepreneur. I know people are like, jump off cliffs without a parachute, which seems silly. I don't know anyone who has ever done that. I think that's like a silly maxim. I think the reality for me is have your day job be your investor, create these side hustles, get to your freedom number, and then make the choice.

I even had someone recently who messaged me and was like, I have a day job that I like, and I have a freedom number that I hit. What do you think I should do? I was like, keep both. You don't have to. You don't have to make it binary.

Yeah. Well, two points on this. One is, I assume something people get wrong often with freedom numbers, 'cause I've seen this, is they use the wrong heuristic, which is, okay, what is my current salary? Right. And that's missing a lot of, it's missing a lot of options when you just think, okay, how do I replace my Amazon salary?

That's the wrong way to do it, right? Because your freedom number is not just reflecting, I'm in my exact same circumstance. Your freedom number is also reflecting, you can really re-engineer a lot about your life, including how much your life actually cost. - And that, I think what's crazy, and let me just give my own example, is that my freedom number is $3,000.

So I had a day job, started AppSumo, got obsessed with the problem, not necessarily the solution, which is I think most smart people get backwards. My freedom number is 3,000. After about, I think it was three months, I hit my freedom number, quit my job. So I'm making $3,000 a month, living my dream life already, which was amazing.

Now here's where it's interesting, fast forward 14 years, I'm now, I don't know what this is monthly, but I made around $3 million last year. And that's not to brag, it's just to show you that, yeah, just because I got to my $3,000 and I could do what I really wanted, and then there's ways, like how do I not quit?

How do I stick with things? 14 years later, it's now, I don't know, 100, $200,000 a month number. And doing the thing you want, one, even if you're not making crazy amounts of money, at least you're making as much as you need, and you're living the life you wanna live.

- Yeah, well, and once you're able to go full-time to what you're doing, now you're amplifying. You're accelerating, right? So it's not surprising if you got to the $3,000 while working at Intel, or whatever the day job was at the time, what happens when you now get to give all of your energy to it?

Like, well, obviously it's gonna grow faster. So you have some sort of acceleration, which I love about it. I also just wanna put a pin in something you just said there as well, problem not solution. I mean, assuming what you're getting out there is, again, the experimentalist mindset. The good problem is great, because you know if you solve it, you're gonna have an audience.

Finding solutions is hard. So if you just fix on a solution, maybe that's a good solution. Like, you don't know. Like, you have to put it on the market and see, and you don't wanna just be chasing a terrible idea. I mean, if your original solution for AppSumo was, for the problem was, yeah, we're gonna fax people these recommendations.

And if you really stuck to that, like, well, we gotta make the faxing work. We just need better advertising. Like, you know, you're gonna be in trouble. But if you have the, no, we're trying to solve this problem. The technology might change. - Yeah. - That wasn't a side, but I think that's a really smart aside.

A great problem is easier to find than the correct solution. - Oh, yeah. So at AppSumo, I was obsessed with the problem of how do I get software creators, customers? That's what I just wanted to solve. And my first two experiments did not work. One of them was called Software Taco, which was software reviews.

No one came. - Yep. - And then I built another thing called Reward Level, which I can't even explain what we did. And then I did AppSumo where I was like, all right, it's like a group on for software. And I launched it in a weekend on Reddit and instantly people bought this deal.

I was like, oh, well, that's cool. - Yeah. - The other parts I got a comment on problem versus solution is that a lot of smart people are solution oriented, which is great, but your customers don't care about your solutions. They care about their problems. And so the most obvious example that most people are getting backwards today is AI.

Everyone's like, AI, it's gonna replace Cal Newport. Noah Kagan's gone. All of us are gone. But people still wake up. You woke up today, Cal, and you have your family. You have the show. You have your book. Those are problems that are going on in your life. And everything that's inconveniencing you, everything that takes your time, everything that annoys you are all actually business opportunities that you can actually create businesses around.

And one of the ways I know your audience and what you focus on is how do you engineer great lives? How do you work backwards from this? And one of the easiest ways is think about your problems and experiment around it. When I was experimenting on how to create my dream life, I don't know, everyone, I guess when you get rich, they buy Ferraris.

And so I like rented one on Turo and it sucked. I was like, I'm so stressed out. So I was like, I'm pretty good with my Tesla and Miata. And so, and again, just the same thing. You think about the problem you have, like, hey, I wanna figure out where I wanna live.

All right, go experiment living different places and see if there's places that actually solve that problem for you. And with AI, coming back to that example, people are like, how do I fit AI into different stuff? It's like, no one cares about it, but they do care about how do you help them do their travel plans?

Then maybe AI can support it. And I just, especially with AppSumo, I'm seeing literally hundreds of thousands of people build things and then try to go find people to convince to use it versus the other way around, which is who else has problems? What's your problem? Let me try to solve it and then see if this AI or technology can then support it.

Yep, yeah, you get the feedback. Okay, well, let me try this. Well, let me try this. I mean, when it comes to courage, sticking with this a little bit too, what I've seen with courage is people get, not addicted to, but what they're really seeking is the drug hit of the immediate aftermath of doing something big.

And that becomes a substitute for actually executing successfully something big. What they get excited about is not this new life I could probably create if I had a business that could support me. They get excited about if I quit everything, this could be so dramatic, that's gonna feel really exciting and I want that hit.

The problem is that hit wears off in about a day and you still have to create a business. I wrote about this in 2012 in So Good They Can't Ignore You where I was saying, oh, you have to be very careful about courage culture, I called it, that lionizes the feeling of making a courageous decision.

That that's a trap. That yeah, that feels good and then it wears off. So like what you need to focus on is execution. Entrepreneurship is rife with that, right? The people that they really just want the hit of I'm doing my own thing and just calling themselves entrepreneur, which is fine, but it blinds them to it.

How do I actually, what do I do day two? What do I do day three? How do I actually execute? So I'm assuming you see a lot of that as well. Courage feels good for like 24 hours. And what I believe is that everyone can be an entrepreneur and everyone is courageous.

And what I found through myself, putting this book together in the past four years is how afraid I was of putting the book together. And then realizing that what's the hard thing we're avoiding for everyone out there. And most of us know that reality. We know that answer. Like, hey, I don't like my job.

I don't like my partner. I don't like where I live. I don't like that I'm not consistent. I like that I'm too consistent. And then being mindful, aware that, okay, if I can face this problem, what's on the other side of that? And that was this book experience for me.

And that's what this book to me is for other people. It's like, what is the life that you want to be engineering and what are you afraid of that we can face? And I think you brought up a great point. I don't think it has to be some, I got to quit my job today thing.

I think today you could literally right now, not how, post on social media, hey, I'm looking for one person to talk about gardening. You could text your WhatsApp friends or Discord or Slack or whatever. Hey, I was thinking about starting a newsletter about AI for 10 bucks a month.

Does anyone want to join that? And that's courageous, you know, in the book, there's so many books about entrepreneurship. There's only a place called Harvard. I don't know if you've heard of it that teaches entrepreneurship. - I know. - But then how come everyone's not being entrepreneurs? - Yeah.

- And it's because they're scared, right? And they're led to believe it's this thing that there's a big gap that they can't do it. And you have to listen to more things or be prepared. But the reality is that everyone can start today. And then the other part of it that we've talked about in courageous is that you have to practice the fear of asking.

- Yeah. - And both these things of starting and asking are really what hold most people back. And when they do it, they realize like, holy crap, confidence is built through courage. And it doesn't have to be a big thing, but it can be small things that compound over significant periods of time.

- Yeah. Well, this is real courage versus fake courage maybe, right? The real courage is the thing that people really need courage for is I'm gonna do something where I could get negative feedback right away. I could fail right away. It could be clear. I'm gonna ask someone, would you like to subscribe to my newsletter?

Like that's where you need real courage. It's almost like fake courage where it's I'm gonna make a big grandiose gesture, but I can just do that. Like I'm not gonna say I'm quitting my job to start a company. And then the universe says, you know, you're not allowed. Like, oh, I failed at it.

There's no real courage in it in the sense that you're not getting, it's not something you can fail at in the moment. So yeah, you're right. We have the fake courage of let me make a big declaration on social media about how I'm quitting my job. But the real courage is, let me put this out here.

Will you actually buy this? I get this a lot. I don't know if you've seen this when you were thinking about writing a book. A lot of nonfiction writers come to me like this where they wanna do the big gesture. I'm gonna write a book. But as soon as you give them the real steps you have to do, which all involve you having to put yourself or your idea out there and try to get someone to sign off on it, they do anything they can to avoid that.

It's like, no, I don't wanna try to talk to an agent. The agent could say no. I don't wanna like pitch this book to a publisher. They could say no. So what I've done is I've invested a lot of money into this PR firm and I'm gonna build up a following for my self-published book and it's gonna become so successful that the publishers are gonna beg me to sell.

There's a real conversation I had. I was like, you've just engineered every point of acute failure out of your plan. That's what you're doing there. You've invented a path to publishing a book that does not really exist so that you never have to have real courage of an agent saying, you know what, this idea is not there.

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That's Maui Nui, M-A-U-I-N-U-I, venison.com/deepquestions, and make sure to use that promo code deepquestions. All right, let's get back to it. Oh, you're not the right person to ride, yeah, keep trying. Yeah, people go a long way to get away from that type of real courage. So maybe we've coined a new term here.

Yeah, real courage requires I might fail right away. - Yeah, and everyone can do it. I truly believe that. And it's really just facing yourself. And if you think about driving, like when you went to your office today, or you're driving somewhere, you have a destination and you plan a route.

And most people, it's very fun to plan the route, but when you start driving, the route might change, but that only happens when you start driving. And same with swimming, same with cooking, same with everything in life, is that you can't learn it not being in the kitchen. You're not gonna swim sitting outside the pool.

And when people post something today, or ask one person today, and realize they can get started today, huh? Like when you were talking about this fake courage, it made me think through therapy, and I found I have a lot of anxiety when I'm home alone. And my therapist would always kind of say, "The only way in is through." And I was just like, "What are you talking about?" Like, "I don't appreciate your in is through.

I'm trying to go through, man." So I would do this grandiose things where I'm like, "I'm gonna go in the woods alone for a week." And that's what I would do. And I would just be alone, I turn my phone, and I come home and I'm like, "Okay, I did it.

I'm not afraid of being alone." And he was like, "Dude, life still goes on. What about today?" And my reality, I don't really share this, but it's like, yeah, now when I'm home on a Saturday, there's a moment where it hits and I'm afraid, and I'm anxious, what am I doing today?

And it's like, "Oh, cool. This is a chance for me to learn who I can become." Yes, it's still hard, but it's something that we're now with positive self-talk and experiencing it, that is going through it on an ongoing basis. And it's available worldwide for free for everyone to face these things and do things.

Again, today, I think that's the myth entrepreneurship. Like, "Ah, I don't know, I need to wait for my domain. I need to wait for this patent thing." No, you need to talk to one person, put yourself out there just a little bit, and see what happens. I think you'll be shocked.

All right, so let's get back now to the nitty-gritty. So I caught my attention here, I think it's a cool idea. You recommend getting your first one to three customers way earlier in the process than people think. People think, "Customers come after I've perfected everything and have my idea figured out." You say you should be getting one to three customers in the first 48 hours, you get your freedom number, and almost the next thing you should do is be trying to get customers.

Walk us through this inversion here. - Yeah, the inversion here is that most people are founder first, so they're like, "I got this problem," which is good, you should always be your first customer and make things that you're excited to make. But then they're like, "I'm gonna go build it, and then I'm gonna try to find problems to then eat my solution." And they're like, "Damn, this is hard." But the reality, which is actually a lot easier of a path, if people wanna make it easier on themselves, is just really thinking customer first.

So what's the expertise you have or areas you're interested in, and who are in your zones of influence? So someone emailed me yesterday, and he said, "I wanna do stuff in real estate, I know two people, I wanna do stuff in kidneys, I know one person, but I think I'm gonna try to do something online in this area, I know no one." - Yeah.

- I was like, "Okay, why don't you try both?" Again, it doesn't have to be binary, and see what happens. And what I'm encouraging people to do is work backwards from how to make it easier on yourself. Like, I've been in tech this world since I was a little kid, and so it's easier for me to understand it and succeed in it, doesn't mean you can't.

Well, why would people wanna make it harder on themselves? - Yeah, okay, so excellent. So then you have a customer too, or you've learned in failing to get a customer for this idea, like, okay, there's like something not going on, like this general area I'm exploring, I'm not getting friction.

Over here though, like someone's interested in it. So you get to a point where you have a few people buying your greeting cards, right? Now what's the growth? Now we're thinking about the growth. And you talk about zero to one is probably the hardest. One to 100, 100 to 1,000, 1,000 to a million, like these steps are no harder than zero to one.

But how do you now that we're at one, what's the right way to think about those next growth steps? - Yeah, most people don't become millionaires 'cause they never make a dollar, is what I've noticed. As I asked you, I'm like, "Oh, how much money have you made in your business?" Zero.

"How long have you been doing it?" 12 months. Okay, maybe there's another way to approach it. And so again, coming back to the customer first approach, how do we get three customers this weekend? And guess what? If you didn't get any, awesome. You didn't waste money. You didn't buy Shopify.

You didn't get a domain. You didn't hire people and spend all this money. And then all these people that weren't interested in what you are doing, you can ask them why not. Hey, how come you weren't interested? Because I don't care about lawn care. Because I don't wanna buy a greeting card because I don't need consulting on this thing.

Okay, well, tell me more what you're doing. And if you start listening to people, listen to yourself and listen to others, they'll just tell you their problems. And those are all business opportunities. And so the scale is generally not the harder part. It's getting going and then practicing the skills of starting and asking, right?

Because that's what all business is. It's just like this show. It's like, you're asking me questions and I'm answering. And if you wanna ask for a raise, if you wanna ask for a husband or wife, and you have to do the same thing in business, you have to ask for customers.

And that is something that everyone can practice. And then you've heard me talk about the coffee challenge. It's in "Million Dollar Weekend." And it's practicing asking at a coffee shop for a discount. And then ideally you get rejected. You ask for 10% off, you get rejected. And you're like, oh, that's not so scary.

What's next? And then when you get to a customer, you can ask them to buy your service. You're rejected or not. And then you find out, wow, have you been practicing it? This is a lot easier. Now, the two things I would say, once you've gotten your three customers is delivering for those three people.

The best businesses are the ones that work. And people in life stop doing the things that got them successful. I don't know if you've noticed that. A lot of times in life, it's like, hey, how'd you get to this point? Well, I did therapy, I worked out. Maybe I have this morning routine.

Maybe I've read all Cal Newport's books. I'm good with my technology. Well, how's it going today? Yeah, I'm not really doing that much. Okay, just go back and do more of what works. And so the two kind of frameworks that have helped AppSumo and myself, and I think now tens of thousands of other people.

One is this law of 100 concept. And literally, we have a website, we're gonna have a free app around this. But it's like, do the thing 100 times and then quit. - Interesting, interesting. Not before. - No, so once you've had success, so let's say, and what I mean by success is customers.

People are like, yeah, this woman, what was her name? Stephanie, email me. She's like, yeah, I got my first customer five bucks. I'm like, hell yeah, you did. I'm like, you don't think AppSumo first sale, $12? - Yeah. - Yesterday sales, $333,000 in a day. But I started with 12 bucks.

That's how every business starts. That's how everything starts, just one. And so the concepts I would say is do this law of 100, which is like do 100 posts on social media if that's it. Do 100 calls, do 100 clients, do 100 days, and then have a checklist just each day.

And then at the end of it, then you quit. And what happens is people, by the end of the hundreds, they're like, actually, this is working. I'm like, I know. Just keep doing it. And then the other part that people need to really think about in business and frankly in life for engineering is how do you just keep doubling down what's working?

- Yes. - And that's one of these annoying maxims and cliches that we all hear but we don't actually embrace. Let me tell you an example literally from 7 a.m. today. We built this thing called a business idea generator at AppSumo. We spent like two months, and I don't know, with soft developers and stuff, it was probably like 30,000, maybe 20 to 40, to build it.

We've never launched it, never finished it. And someone on the team's like, oh, we should launch it. And another person's like, yeah, it'll only take 10 hours. I was like, okay, well, what's already working in the business? It's like, oh, we have this product, tidycal.com. It's a Calendly alternative.

It's growing like a weed. - I like tidycal, by the way. It's a great product. - Oh, yeah, like AppSumo. We hate subscriptions. - Yep. - Down with subscriptions on software. We built this anti-subscription calendar tool called TidyCal. I'm like, all right, well, 10 hours in TidyCal, I know is working.

Why don't we just keep doing that? And I just, I used to try all these things. We're like, okay, this is working, but I'm gonna go off and play on these other areas. And I've seen, like, if you just kept doing more of what works, and that's why we always use that phrase, just double down, keep doing more of what works, you keep getting the success that you got.

So in business, really, in life, just look backwards. How'd you get your first three customers? Ah, I just DM'd people on Twitter. How many of you DM'd today? None, okay, do that. How'd you get first three customers? Referrals. Have you done that? No, do more of that. And people get really obsessed, and I will tell you, we have a two-person business intelligence team.

We spend a million dollars a year just on data. At AppSumo, just on data. Like, we do very complicated stuff. And people kind of laugh sometimes when I'm telling them, like, yeah, you just DM, 'cause that's what worked. Like, no, no, no, tell me the secret stuff. I'm like, you don't need the secret stuff.

Yeah, that doesn't help for you right now. - Yeah, I love the double-down idea, by the way, when I came across that, because it seems like everyone I know who's doing something entrepreneurial, very successful, this is a real common thread. This is working. Like, we found a fitness peak in the fitness landscape that we're moving up the slope.

Let's just pick up our pace. Like, we know this is actually working, acquiring customers this way, offering them this type of thing. Why don't we keep pushing that till that thing is no longer going? - You know, I think a weird, and tell me if this is wrong, but to me, like, an interesting, isolated, purified example of that is, like, in the YouTube world, this is what, like, MrBeast did.

He sort of figured out, like, what's working on videos that the algorithm is recommending on YouTube? And they just kept doubling down. Like, let's clarify that. Let's make that even bigger. Let's spend more money. Let's get rid of more of the stuff that's not working. We don't need to invent a new format.

We don't need to do what we think is gonna work. This is working. Let's double the amount of money. Let's double the stakes. Let's, you know, it was just this continual doubling down, and they end up in this interesting place where you might spend $20 million on a video and get 200 million views on the video, just everything scaled up, but it's probably the same template he had when it was 100,000 views and they were spending $10,000 on a video.

They just kept pushing, right? This, let's keep going. I see that all the time. It's weird, though, because people don't wanna do that. I don't know why you would think that would be our instinct, but people like the platform you're working on, they have this idea of there's gonna be some other idea that's gonna really take things up.

I mean, look, this is Steve Jobs returning to Apple in '97. What's working? Like, people like these Macs, so get rid of all the junk. Let's make it much clearer what we sell. We have two groups. Let's just be as clear as possible. This is what we are doing for you and just push those things.

You know, it's just clarity. But I'm also self-assessing here, though, Noah, because I should be doing this in parts of my life, and I know, I know I'm not. I know I should be doing this with my podcast or there's elements I know that really worked I really should be doubling down on, but it's hard.

I don't know why that psychology is so hard, but hey, this is working. This did better than this. Do more of this. It's interesting why that's so hard. - Yeah, there's a, I don't know which woman said it, but there's a famous quote that I like, which is like, if you want variety in dating, date one person.

And you know, you're married, and I'm in a committed relationship, about to have a child, and the idea that people need to consider is like, how do I find the thing I'm enjoying and that I can just keep going deeper and deeper and deeper and on, because success is boring.

'Cause it's working. And I remember I went to my business partner, Chad, who's a CTO, he's one of my best friends. I'm like, Chad, you like doing all the boring stuff. And I like starting new stuff. I'm the new guy. And he's like, shut up, dude. I like new stuff too, everyone does.

And you know, in my forties, I would say what's exciting to me is things that work and just making them work better. And I joke about this. I bought this house from an NFL kicker, the one I live in. And I just joke, I texted this guy. I was like, dude, what's your work week like?

(both laughing) Think about his days, eight to five. He's like, what'd you do to kick the ball? And then his job is like 10 seconds on a Sunday for a few months. And it's something we've all stuck with things for long periods of time. I think people don't give themselves enough credit.

Like you've probably stuck with brushing your teeth, ideally twice a day. Or you've stuck with certain habits and you maybe haven't given yourself enough credit for it. And then thinking about, okay, what are these elements in my personal life as well in professional life, ideally in entrepreneurship or in your job?

And how can I replicate that? And in terms of engineering your life, like you can replicate the ones that generally haven't been as much work for you. Right, so with YouTube content, we found this video where I knock on doors works. I just go knock on people's doors. Every one of our videos was me knocking on doors.

Now the reality there is over time, it's just, it's very stressful for me. It's very anxiety and it's not sustainable. And in terms of success, what I find very sexy is longevity. And so you have to find the Venn diagram in success, which is what do you like and what does the world want?

And so now with content, and I'd even say with AppSumo is how do I do these things for 10 years? How do I do it for 10 years? So if I'm doing content like knock on doors, I cannot do that for 10 years. - Yep. - And there's a lot more, I want more glorification.

I want more sexification on sustainability 'cause there's a lot of glory. And like you made, you got rich this year off crypto or you got rich off some, like this YouTube is big all of a sudden. It's like be big over 20 years. - Yeah. - And you know, I've worked for billionaires and I've interviewed a lot of them on my channel and they find things they're excited to work on and they get rich after 20 years.

And those are really interesting nuances. It's like, ah, find something that works. Find something I enjoy that works for me and my lifestyle. I think that's missed out upon, especially on Silicon Valley and then stick with that for a long period of time and live a great life. Yeah.

And finally be happy that there's enough with it. Really, I can do it that way? Yeah, you can. - Yep. Well, you know who I think personifies that often? Is novelist. It's something I've studied and it's actually, there's two categories of novelist and I call them the Michael Crichton's and the John Grisham's because they capture the two different mindsets.

Crichton was all about I want to do everything, right? Oh, my novel's doing well, I want to direct, I want to screen write, I want to start my own production company, I want to do television. He saw I have my foot in the door, now I want to do everything.

Grisham on the other hand said, great, The Firm did well, his second book, The Firm did well, great. I can quit my job, I can move to some property and I can just write for six months a year and then the other six months a year, I'm going to be the commissioner of my kids' little league.

He bought a bunch of fields and built a really nice little league complex and loves baseballs, I want to coach baseball. And a lot of novelists follow the Grisham approach, which is this is great. I hope no one notices but I'm making a living just writing a book every year and it's all I have to do and I have to do publicity for like three weeks because fiction writer publicity, what can you do, right?

I mean, there's only so much you can do and you have a name and they're just happy with it and they live in cool places. They tend to live in cool places and have really cool offices. So I think there's a whole cadre of fiction writers that are great at this.

I can do this well, I want to do this for the rest of my life. I hope no one takes away my ability to just write and I don't do anything else but you don't see these fiction writers with seven business ideas and they own a bunch of car dealerships and they're just like, I write books, it's great.

Isn't this crazy? Like people are paying me to do this. So we can all learn from John Grisham, I guess, even though our temptations to be Michael Crichton. - Well, I think your comment here is what I've observed from tens of thousands of people and talking with them in Million Dollar Weekend and meeting them.

Most people don't believe they can actually live these dream lives and the dream life, it doesn't have to be what people imagine. That's where even the freedom number comes in. It could be literally, so my buddy Tynan's here, his dream life is getting up at 10, drinking tea from 10 to 12.

- Playing pinball for the next three hours, is that what? - Well, no, no, so pinball's at night. So he does a pinball tournament with his wife, but from like 12 to five, he'll do like house projects. And then he has a cruise site, cruisesheet.com. And then from like seven to 10, he'll do a pinball tournament with his wife, hot tub, steam room, which he built his own steam room and built his own secret pinball room.

And that's his dream life. And guess what? He's living it. And it's not as expensive as people think, but that's his. And I don't think people realize that their dream life is possible and it's actually not as far away as they imagine. Like my dream life is not, I get anxiety, I like working.

I like it, I love it. I was up at 6 a.m. working today. I'm so excited about this book. I'm so excited promoting software deals. I like making content. Tynan doesn't, and he's okay with that too. He's okay, he puts out a blog post every month. That's great. And I think when people think about how do they wanna end the year, that's a really like fixed good timeframe, I think, for people to have clarity on.

You can write out how that dream life looks like. And then, huh, maybe like when you talk about lifestyle engineering, you can work backwards from that. Maybe, what can I start today that actually gets me a little closer to that? - Yeah. - And for me, it took me, I don't know, man, 15 years to finally get it.

It takes time, and so be patient and kind along the way. And one kind of hack that I've done the past five years, give or take five years, is just review my week at the end of each week. - Yeah. - And you start doing these things, you're like, oh, this week sucked because of this meeting.

This week sucked because of this, or here's what sucked because of me. And then you say, well, how can I make next week better? And you start doing that week after week after week after week. And like I have it every week. I have my review later today. I just have this automatic review on Slack notification.

- Well, this is part of what I liked about your book and why I wanted you on the show, is you're almost unique, I think, among people, especially Silicon Valley people, talking about entrepreneurship and how congruent you are with the way we talk about this on the show, which is we always are emphasizing.

You need to picture your ideal lifestyle holistically. It's everything about your life. What does your day look like? Are you walking outside into the woods or are you walking down like a cool city street to like an interesting coffee shop? Are you like a master of the universe, making moves and things, or at least that kind of appeal to you?

Or is it the like, I'm having tea and there's gonna be like the hot... Don't get specific about like, this is the specific city where I live, specific job, but like what are the attributes of your day? Do you imagine like sitting outside? I'm on my back patio and we have cafe lights and like my family and friends are over and we're just kind of like shooting the breeze just out like having something, just like a real social aspect.

What resonates? Non-specific in terms of I live exactly here, I do exactly this, and then figure out how I get there. And for a lot of people, this leads them to places that they didn't think about before because what we tend to do without that holistic type of assessment, which your book really pushes, and I wanna touch here in a second on your last chapter, which like gets systematic, let's get into color-coded calendars here.

When people don't do that, they overprice the feeling of pride that comes with elite professional accomplishment. And they say this is the thing that's gonna matter most. Like so in Silicon Valley, I'm assuming there's a real pressure for, yeah, but imagine that feeling when you're king of the roost, you just had the billion dollar IPO.

And like that's gonna feel really good. And I'm sure it does kind of feel good and you have some pride with that. But how valuable is that compared to everything else? How long does, I mean, versus all of these other things are important to your life, don't overprice that as if that's gonna be the most important thing.

Or if you're a writer, if my book is like number one in the New York Times bestseller, like that'll feel good, but also then like you're doing the dishes, right? And the day-to-day of your reality matters. So I love how you have this holistic approach as well. You're building a life.

Your work is part of it because you need money and also you're gonna spend a lot of time on it. But you're building a life and there's a lot of different aspects of your life like pinball tournaments and doing hot tub pie. - Hot tub tournament. Well, we're not gonna turn them hot tub, but we're gonna pinball hot tub sauna, cold plunge after this.

But the thing I would say just to kind of give people suggestions is it's possible and you have to start it 'cause it's not gonna happen overnight. It's gonna happen today. Like when I worked at Intel, if other people feel this way, let me know. I remember dreading Sundays.

I was like, oh my God, please no. Just let me not have to work Monday ever again. And I think it's such an interesting thing to reflect on how you're feeling about your week. And if you have a job, you can't change your meetings necessarily. Like it's very hard to get out of that, but you can start making changes that can get you out of them over time.

And I left Silicon Valley 'cause I noticed people were so obsessed with this external validation. Oh, you want a lifestyle business? I'm like, yeah, I want a life and a style and a business. Oh, you're not changing the world? Guess what? Changing the world is by changing yourself and then maybe just change one person.

And I think a lot of people, you know, it's this external validation, how many subs, how much money. And then when you actually take a step back, how you wanna live, like, okay, maybe I don't actually care about all that stuff. Maybe I can, like for me, my dream and I wrote it down is to live half the year in Spain, half the year in America, in Texas, have a dog, have some kids, be able to work on promoting things, making content, talking to smart people like yourself, promoting your books.

Like that's my dream, that's my life. I think most people, like they're one, our lives are already pretty great. And I think that's a good way to already be happy with our lives. 'Cause it's not like if I finally get there, I'm gonna be happier or my life will be complete.

You'll still be yourself. But you can't get to a point, I promise you everyone out there. And I think about it, I'm like, I can't believe this is my life. And I'm like, wow, you know what? Everyone else can do this too. It's not some exclusive club. And you know, I think about people that are like, and I know them, they're like, oh, you know, I can't do it.

And I'm like, take your power and do something today. - Yeah. - 'Cause maybe you don't like where you live, maybe you don't like your job, maybe you don't like hate. But guess what? If you start today, in five years, you're gonna thank yourself for listening to Cal Newport, I know, and then you tried it today, you got going, maybe didn't work, but you tried again and again and again, and then it started working.

In five years from now, where could you be? And even your work could you be? - So it's something people get paralyzed by is they say, I don't have the full vision yet. Okay, I agree. Like, I don't wanna just get the external validation. I don't have the full vision yet, so I can't start.

But one of your ideas is your vision for what matters gets refined as you start paying more attention and trying to do more that matters. It's like for you, for example, and maybe we'll use you as a case study. What was the path from you're at Intel, you know you don't like it, to your current situation where you've engineered, you just explained it to us.

It's an intentional life that has a lot of very intentional specific aspects to it. I'm assuming at Intel, you did not write down on a piece of paper all of these aspects that you wanted in your life. So tell us a little bit about how you evolved from I don't like this to I really have a good sense of what I like.

- It takes time and I would encourage everyone positive self-talk, consistent positive self-talk. Like when you say a negative thing about yourself, say something positive and be patient with yourself. Because I made it very hard on myself and very, and I think if you're an academic, if you're an entrepreneur, if you're an intelligent person, I think you have high standards.

And so it's constantly like, kind of for me, being like the worst, and I'm like the worst coach of myself for so long. And I've really worked on how do I just be more positive about who I am to myself, separate if the book sells well, separate if I come on a show or not.

And then that's a practice. And so when I was at Intel, I think there's categories of our life, right? So there's your work life, there's your friends, there's your living, there's your relationships. And really, I think most people are actually pretty self-aware of what part of their life isn't satisfactory.

I don't think there's a secret out there. I think most people understand it, but it's a little hard. And so at Intel, I was like, I hate this job. - Yeah. - I hate this job. And that was great motivator. And then I hated being at Facebook to some of it, even though it was a great experience.

And over time, I just kept, then I finally got to start my own business and I hated my partners, or they probably hated me too. And I hated making Facebook games. But each of these things encourage, you take a little bit of courage, that builds your confidence, and that happened through action.

- Yep. - That happens through action. Like you can only plan for so long, but then traffic accidents happen. You didn't plan for that. And so you have to adjust. And so all these steps, Intel, then Facebook, then Mint, then this gaming company, I hate games. I only play chess, that's the only game I like.

And then I didn't like these partners. And then I was like, I also wanted to have a company that I'd love to do all day for the rest of my life. That's why I don't care to go IPO or sell this business. - Yeah. - And that's what AppSumo started as.

And that was just one aspect. And I think it took time in each of these categories, even relationships. You know, in the book, we talk very deeply about how the power of asking is so important, and it's a skill everyone needs to get better at. Because in relationships, in terms of life intentionality, having a great partner is the number one life upgrade.

If number one is yourself, I'd say it's tied for improving yourself and how you feel about yourself and having a partner, number one life in the world. And I would just get what I was getting. And my business partner is like, if you got to ask and you can get what you want, and you have to think about what you want, and then you have to ask for it.

And I would say that was another really key thing intentionally where it was like, well, she doesn't have a job. I want someone with a job. She really criticizes me a lot for doing social media and YouTube. Okay, that's not really working. She, you know, each one, you know, these failures are learning opportunities where they keep getting better and better and better until I finally met someone where it's like, oh my God.

And I think I had the misconception though, you meet someone and then it's over, you don't have to do anything. But no, it's like still work every day. It's still showing up. And in all these aspects of my life, I finally got to a part where one, I think I could have been happier with myself all along.

I think that's an important message. But then now being at a place where I'm very content with it, also just being like, okay, you actually are content. You don't have to keep chasing. Just be good with internal. - All right, let's take another quick break here. I'm proud to say that the show is sponsored by BetterHelp.

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ZocDoc is one of these services that just makes so much sense. I can't believe it didn't exist before, right? I need a doctor for whatever's going on. I need a particular type of doctor. How do I find a doctor? Well, up until now, this has been very difficult. You Google or you just talk to random friends.

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They use it as well as an easy way to fill out paperwork ahead of appointments so you can move quicker when you get there. ZocDoc is really using technology to make the healthcare process much easier and smoother. So it's a fantastic idea. So go to ZocDoc.com/deep and download the ZocDoc app for free.

Then you can go ahead and find a book at Top Rated Doctor today. That's Z-O-C-D-O-C.com/deep. ZocDoc.com/deep. All right, let's get back to it. And it's just through recognizing these different areas. And there's still stuff. I got super mad at someone this week. It was just, it was kind of silly.

And I was really frustrated with myself all week about it. And I was mad that this person I thought cheated me. And I was talking with my friend and he was like, "Hmm, you know, what would your daughter think "about this behavior that you're doing?" I was like, "Oh, that's a good one." - That's a good one.

- I was like, "Well, I'd want to show her "that I could be the better man and let this go "and then move on to more positive things." I was like, "Oh, damn, that's good, but I'm still angry." So I let it go. And then, yeah, but again, I'm saying that it's still, there's still problems, there's still different challenges, but it's just being content across all these different areas yourself, your work, your relationship, probably where you're living.

I was living in a shitty house or cheap houses for, I don't know, 20 years. I lived on floors. Like literally, I lived on floors for a year 'cause it was so cheap. And then I finally bought like a multimillion dollar house during COVID 'cause I was like, "I finally, let me try." I tried it out, I experimented.

I was like, "Yo, this is amazing." My previous house is 800 square feet, it's cracked. Floors are literally cracked as well as the walls, it's got cockroaches, it's pretty bad. And then during COVID, I tried out nice houses and I was like, "Oh my God, I can actually, "I think I can deserve this for myself and I can afford it." And then as I tested it, I loved it, bought it, and I'm so blessed.

I love this house. And that's all the different kind of pieces and that's your schedule, calendar as well. I don't think any of these are secret elements, but it's being mindful across the spectrum and then making those adjustments and being patient that it can take some time. - Well, I like that calendar advice you have because, so later this last chapter of the book, chapter nine, where you're talking about integrating this into a bigger picture of your life, you're suggesting being pretty systematic about making sure there's time being invested to different aspects of your life that's important.

- Yes. And part of that, I'm assuming, based on this conversation, is that also makes sure not just that you're spending time on the different parts of your life that are important, you're continuing to learn about each of those parts. So you have a relationship part. Now you're learning about what you want or how to succeed in a relationship.

You have a part just for yourself, non-professional. If you're not regular spending time now, you don't know what it is that you wanna do when something else is doing better. I love that idea of, and you use colors, right? You said, "Use different colors "for the events on your calendars." You can just see, hey, there's no blue on the calendar this week.

This is out of whack. But I love thinking about that as a curriculum almost. It's a self-learning curriculum as much as it is trying to build a balanced schedule. - Yeah, so just for the people out there, if you had, you know, I break it down in the book, at a high level, it's, you know, most people have 24 hours in a day.

I don't know, maybe you're a different Cal. Then why is it that some people seem to get more done and seem to be more satisfied with what gets done? And it's because they're working backwards from clarity. That's the only difference. It's the only difference. They're very clear where they're trying to go, and then they're prioritizing accordingly.

So the way that's worked for me, I've done this at the same method, the color coding and stuff is definitely involved in the past decade. But have a clear goal where you're gonna end the year. Have clear weekly outcomes that you wanna do, and those weekly outcomes, which should match to your yearly ones, then break those down on a daily basis.

And I like a lot of, the best things in my calendar are almost always audio, or auto, excuse me. So I mean that they're automatically, they're color coded. So I can see, hey, I've like, even this week, I don't have, I hurt myself, so I'm not doing as much green, and my green is my workouts.

- Yep. - Huh, that's interesting, or relationship. So each week I have a relationship goal, like things I wanna do with my girlfriend, then wow, there's relationship activities that I then scheduled. So it's intentional about what's gonna happen versus surprised. And it doesn't mean that every single second of every day has to be allocated, but at least in these areas, you know you're going towards the directions that you wanna do.

So being on shows, yeah, I'm hanging out with Cal Newport. And I wanna make sure I have some light green, which is being and talking about the book, and being, connecting with people. And so it's a very quick way that I can literally just glance right now and see where am I spending more time, and where am I spending less.

- I mean, it sounds simple, but people don't do it. It's, well, I don't know. I worked a lot, I did a lot of phone time, right? If you could go back and auto color code people's calendars, they'd be not very happy by how out of whack that is.

I know we're short on time, but I just wanted to ask you, just because I have you here, unrelated to the book, I'm just curious, Facebook employee 30, what was it like there at that time? What year was that? What was it like there? I'm just curious. - Man, it was the best.

It was the best. It was 2005. - 2005, ooh. - Right, so just when it got started. - Early, yeah. - It's super early. Even at Million Dollar Weekend, I have the story about the day I got fired, which was traumatic. And if you haven't gotten fired, I recommend it to everyone.

It's a good learning lesson. And what was beautiful about it though, Cal, there was a lot of, I feel so lucky that I got to have so many learnings being at Facebook, like working directly for Mark and seeing how big of a vision he had, that he hired coaches early on, that his focus is actually a focus.

He's like, we're only trying to grow the site. I don't care about making money. And I'd always bring him money-making ideas. (laughs) He got really annoyed. He's like, and he wrote on a whiteboard, billion. - Yeah. - And he's like, we're gonna get to a billion people. That's it.

Don't talk to me if you're not helping me get to a billion people. And I was like, oh, that was good. And he just had a great vision. Like most people, your vision doesn't have to be, doesn't have to be anything, but it has to be exciting for yourself.

And he's like, hey, I'm gonna connect every single person on this planet. 24 years old, saying stuff like that? And let me be clear. One, he did try two other businesses you've never heard of, Facemash and Wirehog. So he's trying. And by the way, he started a weekend copying someone else.

- Yep. - So don't innovate, just iterate. That's what he did. Look, it's a $2 trillion business, not bad. - I was gonna say, by the way, I love this vision of like 2005, Noah Kagan going up to Mark Zuckerberg and be like, Mark, if we sold t-shirts, we could make a million dollars, all right?

So I think this is what we need to focus on. I just love that idea. - Do you realize we have 100,000 subscribers on this site? If we sold t-shirts to just 10% of them. - Well, I think that was a good teaching moment from him about focus, but also his strategy at that point, which I thought was smart, and subsequently, was that if we get a bigger distribution channel, then monetization is a lot easier versus focusing on monetization.

This is all coming back to doubling down. Like we do monetization, we're gonna probably be sacrificing the distribution channel. - Yeah. - Yeah, okay, that's good. Being around excellence, being around people with exceedingly high standards where everyone had already high standards and then there's people that have even higher, and just having that on a regular basis.

And then the level of urgency and the fact that we're working on something that was just critical. And that was special. I hope everyone gets to experience these hyper growth kind of, wow, doing something that people really want, and those are great businesses to be a part of. And they don't have to be as size of Facebook, but they can be, like Mint did it, AppSumo did it, this book seems to be doing it.

You can do it at whatever size you want. I would say, though, if you can find ways, either through earbuds, like we're doing with the podcast and the show, find yourself, how can you be around other people like this? People that are saying, "Hey, I think you could be a little better here." Or even asking people for that feedback.

Right now, today, there was a lot of great things that I was fortunate to be able to get there. Did you also, oh, sorry. At Mint and Facebook, did you also learn the negative advice of, "Oh, hyper growth is not really what I want to do." Like you also got to see, this is what hyper growth venture-backed companies are like.

Okay, great, now I know that's not what I want to do. Like IPO is not what I, which is valuable, right? Negative insight is also valuable, I assume. - Yeah, ooh, I like that a lot. I think people have heard that, but I don't know if they ever do it.

They're like, "Yeah, try a lot of things "you don't like to find out what you do." You know, at Facebook, I've read my old journals, and I just remember when we got larger, which sounds ironic, we were only 150 people, which is almost the size of AppSumo today, I remember really being frustrated that we'd have a lot of meetings.

(laughing) And I was like, "Can we just do work?" And so I learned that. I felt very insecure at that time. I was like, man, these guys are, there's MIT, Caltech, Harvard, Stanford. It was like elite of the elite. And I just, it was a very insecure feeling daily, which also probably means you're growing.

And yeah, I learned a lot of good things about how to run a company. And also, one day there was a guy named Dan who died on a freak bike accident, and everyone just went back to work. And I was like, that's frickin' bullshit. Like this guy died, and he was special to us, and he mattered, and he helped, and we're just going back to work.

There's definitely a lot of negative things that I didn't admire that I wanted to do better in my own company, and that was cool. That's all that you're teaching people, Cal, which is great. You can create the life you wanna live, and it's not as hard as you think it is.

- Yeah, and it's also not easy. It's just take persistent effort. It's easy, there's no one step that's impossible that you might not succeed with. But there's also just no one step that makes the whole thing happen. This seems to be the takeaway from this, is yeah, there's not some impossible obstacle at some point where you're gonna get stuck, but there is like 1,000 steps.

So if you're not, like start walking and have a pretty good map for the trail you're following, you're not gonna get there. But you know how to walk, and if you keep walking, eventually you will get there. Yeah, so it's no step is hard, but there's a lot. So you better start racking them up, metaphor time.

- Exactly, man. I mean, I think you're a great example for writing books. Like you write a book, and then you write a book, and then you write a book, and I'm assuming you enjoy it. And for everyone out there, what's this first step they can take today? - Yeah, I mean, I decided when I was 20 years old, this is what I wanna do, I wanna write books.

And whatever book I could write, I wrote that first. And then I tried to make the next one better, and the next one better, and that's all I've done. 20 years later, this is all I've done. It's like, I just wanna keep writing books, just clarity on that. Keep doing something, you learn about it, you learn how to direct, and how to avoid the pitfalls, and it's funny how that unfolds.

Like I was talking to someone, a well-known person, a lot of subs, a big online personality, and I was like, oh, that's really cool what you're doing. And he was like, no, no, my dream is what you're doing. So you never know, they write books, you know, like they write books, and people know your ideas, and you can just sit there, and yeah.

And it was just execute, let me write another. That was always my thing, write another, sell another, work it out, sell another, just keep going. - You know, and I think one of the important lessons that I looked on lifestyle engineering was, I was talking with Charlie Hoenn, he was an editor of this book, and he's got great stuff out there.

- I know Charlie, yeah. - Yeah, I love Charlie, he's been a good longtime friend. One of my guardian angels. I have a few of these guardian angels in my life. And I remember talking to him, like, you know, Jeff Bezos, who I think is so cool, and he's built this company, he doesn't have a podcast.

And he's like, Noah, you're not Jeff Bezos, you're Noah Kagan. And you could do it the Noah Kagan way. I was like, oh, that's spicy. And that's for everyone, that's the Cal Newport way, that's your way, whatever your name is, listening, and embracing that. Like you can have a podcast and a YouTube and a family and all these things, or you can have just one thing, and that's great too.

And recognizing that that's how it can be was also very liberating for me, that I was like, ah, I can have a YouTube and podcast, and Cal, I'm only writing one book. I don't know how you did multiple. I'm one and done, my man. This is what I'm gonna be talking about for the next decade.

But that works for me, and I'm very satisfied with that. - Well, I love it. Well, Noah, I know I've held you over, but I just love talking about this. Thanks for coming on. Million Dollar Weekend, look, I recommend this book for all you deep lifers out there. This is not just about, though it is, what actually works in making a successful business.

I really do think it is a blueprint for how do you explore the adjacent possible, the configurations of what your life could and couldn't be, and systematically navigate towards something better. That's the key, systematic. This is the long game, not the I solve it all with one big idea that I have tomorrow or with one big moment of courage.

So no, I'm not surprised your book is doing really well because I've learned from my listeners, people want this. So thanks for coming on and talking to us about it. - Thanks for having me. - You might also like episode 272, where I did an interview with the writer David Epstein.

It was a great conversation. I think you'll enjoy it. Check it out. The goal for today's deep dive is to go through four essential tools that you need to build your productivity toolkit.