I I was in the sauna this morning thinking about you guys. That's how we liked it. And I was just I I was just thinking of how grateful I am. Just there's so many cool people that have,

I don't know, just crossing our paths across our whole life. Just made me kinda a little emotional, but also just happy. We're supposed to get touchy feely at the end. Not not not at the beginning.

YouTube stats show that touchy feely at the end works, but at the beginning, people just bounce.

Alright. Noah, we're live. We've got Noah Kagan, one of my dearest friends, one of the OGs of internet marketing of entrepreneurship on on on the on the internet.

One of my,

inspirations. You run this company called, appsumo. It does, like, eighty million in revenue. Now you're a YouTuber. You have, what, one point something million subscribers.

And you're here to promote a book, which you've clearly placed right in front of you.

I didn't even see that there.

Give us some of the the sort of wisdom bombs or insight bombs from the book. So give me give us some of the the the key ideas or highlights that you think, you know, you want people to take away when they read the book. Alright, Sean. I have a quote of you in the book. I don't know if you actually said this, though.

Oh, that's great.

Good to ask you a while. Alright.

But

but so we we kinda read this book like a tech startup where we did surveys and beta testing and all this stuff. And so one of Sean's quotes, Sean, I hope you said this. Yeah. I'm saying yes either way more. I got you back.

Show Munich spare winner. And over the long run, I'll show you a future winner.

That's true. I did say that. Yes. Thank god. I was gonna have to, like, have to reprint and tie tens of thousands of books

from the you know what? I will say from the surveys that we've done and what people said, the results that they got.

Number one thing is this now, not how idea?

And it just means just fucking start right away. But people get so especially with you guys see so many people listen to your show, and they're like, I don't know. I wanna listen to more shows. I need to go listen to these fake YouTube gurus that are out there that don't even run real businesses.

But realizing they can actually do things like right now. Like, I don't get a buck right now. Go get a dollar. Venmo noah at Noah Kagan. Go get it from a friend. Go get it from your uncle.

And I think people are waiting to be ready and they're just never ready. And people like yourselves, me who ultimately have gotten to somewhere of wealth,

we're just doing shit. You used to have this course called the monthly one k. I I tell people there's two courses that I paid for that changed my life. And it was, Neville's copywriting course, and then it was your monthly one k course. I remember I bought those when I was twenty twenty three years old. I think it was three hundred dollars, and it was, like, a really big deal for me to buy that.

And I started a a a business based off of it. That was, like, making thousands of dollars a month, and then I shut it down. And one of the first lessons in the book was to go to a coffee shop and ask for a discount.

And I was petrified

to do that. I remember I was so afraid to do that. But I did do it. And then you talked about,

emailing people or calling people and getting customers before you even build the thing, which at the time, now everyone about that. But at the time, I was like, that would it kinda blew my mind.

And during that period of my life, it was all about action. And so I don't know if I could show my feet here because I don't I don't know if I could move I won't even try it. But I got I

I went and bought, I,

basically a sewing needle. Do you guys know what stick and poke is? Do you know what a stick and poke is, Sean? Sounds like a jail cell tat. It is. Listen, you get a sewing needle and you get the thread and you wrap it around the edge of a pencil. So just the needle is me out. And then you go and buy India ink for five bucks, and you dip it in the the the the needle, and you just put all these little dots And I've got the word act on my left foot and the word now on my right foot. And this was when I was still partying and drinking a lot. So I was a little I was inebriated when I did this. But I and I was like, every day, this I was like, this course is so good every day when I wake up in bed and my and I could see my feet and I put my feet down at, you know, at the end of bed, at the edge of the bed, when I get up in the morning, I'm gonna see act now, and that's my whole, like, life, you know, for business, at least my mantra for business. And I remember it, like, taking your course, and I was like, it's all about action, fuck planning,

business plans are stupid. Business cards are stupid. LLCs are stupid. It's all about action. Social media. Yeah. That's the ROI, Sam. That's ROI right there. He made you get tatted up. That's the ROI. Dude, I thought he was gonna say his tattoo is act Noah. I thought I was gonna say Noah, not now. Dude, those are some feet. Yeah. Dude, some people some people would would look at it and they're like, what's ACT? And I was like, yeah. I got SAT on the other foot. I just love to.

G mad on his ass? Yeah. No. I mean, so number one for the book now, not how. Just what can you do today? And I don't think people realize how much more due to date. The second thing is what you just said, which is the power of asking. Like, the upside of asking is, like, I got on a private jet. The upside of asking, when we teach it through the coffee challenge and other examples, coffee challenge is what you did, which is yes, for discount.

So I did it I did the coffee challenge last week. I did a a YouTube video, where I tried to do the coffee challenge. I got rejected a ton.

And then you know what? You get rejected. You're like, oh, shit. Guess what? That's okay. Let's go forward. Dude, this is such an immigrant mentality, and this is why I love our children of immigrants,

No. You're you're you've got immigrants, your your father, and then Sean is, an immigrant family. Most of my best friends do. They all have this energy where they ask for shit that I was so embarrassed to do. And then I hang out with Sean for a little while. I see how he negotiates. I hang out with Nivel for a little while. It's just like this this shameless ability to go and ask for stuff, and it totally changed my perspective. I would I used to be so embarrassed. Like, I would go out to eat. And if you if I ordered a pizza and you brought me, like, chicken parmesan, I'd be like, nah, fuck it, whatever. Just give it to me. I'm I'm not gonna say shit to this person. I'm not I'm not gonna complain at all. And then I started hanging out with these guys.

And, it totally changed my perspective on just being, like, ruthless about asking for things and it, and it one hundred percent worked. I mean, that's all business is. Right? Business is, Will you be my sponsor for your guys show up necessarily? Or will you be my customer? Will you be my partner? Or will you be my employee? It's an ask? So at Camp m f m,

So this is a slide. I don't know if you can see it. So this is Joe Gabby, the founder of Airbnb, and he's he gave us a a impromptu presentation, office phone. So he had a he basically had, like, some old presentation he had given that he kinda, like, found slides on his phone. He started he basically started screen sharing from his phone onto the TV.

And he goes, he was he was like, oh, this was our sales formula.

So this is the Airbnb founder's sales formula, and it's

s w squared

plus

w c equals m o. So I don't know if you can if you've ever heard that. He's like, everybody heard this before. Like, no. He goes, No. So here's what it stands for. Some will, some won't.

Who cares? Move on.

And he's like, this is a sales formula.

Once she realized that some will say yes. Some won't. Who cares? Move on. He's like, now you have the entrepreneurial

sales formula, the ultimate formula that will serve you. Yeah. But did he tattoo that on his ass? No.

Do you know the Airbnb Airbnb is, like, it's it's featured in the book. It's also a great example of how to get started super fucking quickly. You guys know how they started?

On, Craigslist. Right? They they they they had, like, a designer's conference was in town. So they had a designer's conference. They sent an email to the designer's conference saying, hey, does anyone wanna stay on their couch? That was how they tested the business. That's now worth a hundred billion dollars. And I think that when you start realizing, like, there's other ways of doing this. You don't have to do, like, some Silicon Valley funded weight. Wasn't like, oh, and Facebook started that way in a weekend, Airbnb did. A lot of other companies can too. Alright, everyone. A quick break to tell you about HubSpot. And this really easy for me to talk about because I'm gonna show you a real life example. So I've got this company called Hampton. Join Hampton dot com. It's a community for founders doing two million all the way up to, like, two hundred fifty million dollars a year in revenue. And one of the ways that we've grown is we've created these cool surveys. And so we have a lot of founders who have high net worth, and we'll ask them all of questions that people typically are embarrassed to ask, but provide a lot of value. So things like how much the founders pay themselves each month, how much money they're spending each month, what their payroll looks like, If they're optimistic about the next year and their business, all these questions that people are afraid to ask, but, well, we ask them anyway. And they tell us in this anonymous survey, And so what we do is we've created a landing page using HubSpot's landing page tool. And it basically has a landing page that says, here's all the questions we asked. Give us your email if you want to access it. And then I shared this page on Twitter, and we were able to get thousands of people who gave us their email and told us they want this survey. And I could see did they come from social media. I can see did they come from Twitter from LinkedIn. It's basically everywhere else that they could possibly come from. I'm able to track all of that. And then I'm able to see over the next handful of weeks How many of those people actually signed up and became a member of Hampton. In other words, I can see how much revenue came from this survey, how much revenue came from each traffic source, things like that. But the best part is I can see how much revenue came from it. And a lot of times, it takes a ton of work to make that happen. HubSpot made that super, super easy. You're interested in doing this, you could check it out HubSpot dot com, the links in the description, and I'll also put the link to the survey that I did so you can actually see the landing page and how it and everything like that. I'm just gonna do that call to action then.

And it's free. Check it out in the description. Alright. Now back to MFM.

So Sean and I lived in San Francisco for a long time. He's still there. We've had

I probably have had ten Silicon Valley friends, and I imagine Sean has had more and they message us and they're like, hey, you know, I used to invest in VC stuff. You know, I I invest in startups, and they'll see what Sean's doing a little bit about investing in cash flowing businesses, and they're like, can you teach me how to do that? That is so much better or, like, they they wanna just make profits now as opposed to, you know, waiting twelve years to sell business. And it there there is definitely the shift. It seems like that's happening. Have you had that sean where a bunch of your friends are hollering at you about that?

Now they're not, like, me how to do it. It's pretty straightforward how to do it. I don't think that's the question. I think, but you are right. That a bunch of basically, it's the losers of the Silicon Valley lottery Right? The winners are like,

you know, you you hang out with Joe Gabby. He's not asking me about how to invest in cash flowing businesses. Right? He's He's not he's not trying to find, you know, the next,

ten percent compounded or whatever.

It's but it's the rest of us. It's the ninety nine percent of the population who played the Silicon Valley three for ten, twelve, fifteen years. And then we're like, alright. I am smart, but,

can I play a game with a little bit higher odds of success? Because guess what? I don't actually need three trillion dollars to be happy. You know, I I'd actually just like to be financially free, and I'd like to use all this business knowledge I have, but in a way that's not

ninety five percent based on luck and variance, which is what I would call most Silicon Valley startups.

And so, yeah, there's definitely a shift to doing things that just work

maybe buying companies that already work and making them work better. And also, people realizing that it's a lot more funny to have it's a lot more fun to have money now than it is to maybe have money on an IPO ten years from now. And so, sure. The all those are definitely on trend as far as I can tell. You said most of these companies succeed by luck and variance?

Yeah. I think if you put if I put a hundred,

of my friends from Silicon Valley in a room,

and I said, you know, and what ended up happening is that, let's five to seven of them ended up doing the thing we were all trying to do. We're all trying to build a billion dollar company. Maybe five to seven of them did it.

I don't think it's because those five to seven were smarter or more talented or harder working than the other hundred.

What the two things that I think they did do is project selection, market selection. So I think they picked the right idea in the right market.

But it's not that they're better at doing that necessarily. It's not that they those guys had a different insight or a a a higher skill at picking. You know, they they happen to pick or the thing that they were curious about happened to be on trend or happened to be the thing that where the bigger opportunity was. So I think that's one.

And the second is, you know, the the there are, you know, still, like, twelve,

you know, plinko bounces of the of the puck as they go. Right? Like, we're talking to the Airbnb guy, My biggest takeaway was this company should have died, like, seven times.

And I actually give them credit because I think they are in top point o o one percent of, like, grit and resilience that they actually did have a different thing that pushed them through. But most of the people, I know that made it. It they didn't have the same

number of times it could have failed once they once they got going, if that makes sense. So anyways, I I guess I don't think out of the batch of a hundred people, that the difference between the winners and losers was intelligence or talent or hard work. I don't believe that that's what was the difference. I agree with that. I think these people figure things out, but it is interesting because right now we glorify this person that, like, it's not working for a hundred years and then finally, like, the light bulb works.

You know? It's it's interesting we glorify that, but a lot of it is, like, for you guys and myself, how many things have you guys done that did not work? I mean, at least fifteen, twenty projects

that I've tried that did not work. Right? Some of a day project and somewhere two years, projects to three years. Yeah. I mean, I'd I've I've done many, many, many things, and

like, three have taken off.

This podcast being one of them. Yeah. So, like,

thirty per ten percent have worked. I think we think that the people are smarter, though, Sean.

We're like, oh, these people must know something I don't know. And, like, I I talked to a bunch of CEOs when I came back to appsumo because I left for a few years. And I remember I interviewed, like, the founder or the CEO of You to me at the time and all these other, like, famous kind of CEO people I was like, these people aren't that much better than us. And I think we that takes some time to recognize, though. And then you it does maybe they have more experience, which is stuff we can learn over time.

You're fascinating right now, I think, because

you've you run one of these companies that was talked about a ton when you first launched it because you were

one of the early guys in you're you're kinda in this world with Tim Farris and Ramit. And so you were part of the kind of the zeitgeist in two thousand and eight two thousand fourteen, maybe. And then you started this company appsumo, which is like groupon for software discounts.

And you've kind of been quiet, or at least the company has been quiet at appsumo.

But it's one of those stories where you're like, What's going on with that soon though? And then you find out that they're just quietly crushing it, wherever you I, you know, I don't know what you did in year one, but it's probably ten years old. You're eighty million in revenue. And what I admire about appsumo and what you've built there is that you've just done the same thing or about a decade or even more, and it's just been quietly crushing it. How long how how old is it? So it's fourteen year almost fourteen years old. It's going through puberty. So we've got some growing pains here.

But it but it's been it's been cool though to see that you're just, like, I think that there's a few companies like this. I, like, one example, and I have no idea if this is true, is, like, you know, where you guys know, hey dot com and superhuman,

the email software companies. No. They don't. I think there's a bunch of companies that, like, they get a lot of hype and then they just get quiet for five, ten, however long years, and they just are quietly killing it and building the business. I'll give you an example of one card. Oh, yeah. About seven to ten years ago, it was really popular to create, like, your your personal website. Right?

You're about dot me. And then there was, like, Wix and Weebly, and those were, like, hot YC startups that were, you know, that were doing the thing. Squarespace was, like, on every podcast.

Advertising everywhere.

And then card came out, and it was just simple single page websites.

I still use card today. And I love this love this app. For what? Anytime I need to make a site. It's a it is for me still the fastest way to make a website. Like, I think webflow is more popular, probably.

Card's easier to use. It's what it's really hard though. Yeah. Like, I need to find there's there should just be a blog for low IQ people. It's like, hey.

If you're just, you know,

Let's be honest about where you're at, capabilities and talent wise. This is the software you should be using.

It's like card is is in that that bucket of really, really, like, stupidly easy to use.

And

they came out. They were, like, kind of hot on product hunt and stuff like that, like, in the kind of when indie hacking was, like, had a little moment, then it kinda disappeared. Nobody really talking about them for a while. And I met the founder one time, and he's told me the numbers. And they were just crushing it. And I was like, what? And he goes, yeah. I know. He goes, actually, a really random thing happened. He's like, every, like, political

movement,

started using cards. So, like, during the campaign, like, twenty sixteen, twenty twenty, thousands of websites got created using

card,

to promote, like, election stuff or any cause. It was, like, became, like, a thing for causes.

He's, like, yeah, that drove a ton of growth during that period. And now Yeah. And I think they just raise, like, a venture around ten years later. Like, they bootstrap for ten years and then raise, like, a single round from investors because they kinda couldn't deny, like, hey, this is now much bigger than a two person project. We should probably, like, I don't know, hire an employee and and see what Yeah. They had two people for ten years. Right? Yeah. This guy AJ, and I think one other guy, then that was it. And then now they raised a little money. Now they're trying to go for it. But it was this company that you heard about, then you just didn't hear about it for seven years, but that didn't it went away. It just meant, like, it's out of, you know, TechCrunch or whatever. I think there's something not talked about about longevity.

Right? Like, just doing it over, over and over and over and over and over and over for a very long time. I think the second thing is really market selection.

Right? Like, we've stuck with it fifteen years almost, but really, it's also we chose a good market. Right? Like, software went from ten deals our first year, give or take to not, like, how many software products out there? Hundred thousand plus? And more coming.

And so something when people are starting businesses, it's like, okay. Well, is this something that's gonna be bigger, maybe, in the future? And then how do you at least be mindful of that as start. Did you bootstrap it, or did you raise money? A bootstrap? So you bootstrapped it fourteen years and eighty million. So it's profitable. I don't know how wildly profitable or just sort of profitable. Can share the numbers. I'm happy to to talk about it. Okay. Great. Let's do it. In terms of net revenue, I think we ended it was seventy

six something was the actual final at the end of the year. And that's like gross revenue, meaning you give a you give a percentage to the software companies. Thought, but you said net. So that's after you paid out the software company. Right? So gross sales is seventy

six point seven.

Net revenue

was fifty six.

Wow. Pretty good. And then profit was seven point five. And what do you do with that profit? That's like, Noah's piggy bank or where where does it go?

Yeah. No. No. It it doesn't go there.

So what we do is it's been the same approach we've had. So we copy Amazon for if you actually look at our net profit over the past literally fourteen years, it's like,

point five percent net income margin.

And so what we do is in q four, we try to spend all the profit we have so that every year gets bigger and bigger. So take everyone on the team to Mexico,

ads, servers,

sponsorships, if we can, hiring investors, prepaying for things whatever we can within tax rules,

and pay the team distribution and then whatever's left after that, then me and my partner get some distribution.

Right. What?

So what what's what's confusing about that?

What's confusing about that is,

what's the point? Wait. So you're but you're including your paying yourself out of me. Right? Like, the point of running this business for fourteen years without the profits is my my question? He he included he included his dish distribution and then he prepay ads for the next year. Yeah. You you try to invest everything as much you can theoretically if it's a if you think it's a positive investment so that the next year is bigger. Yeah. But pretty hard to do that. I we do that for our e com business. It's pretty hard to pay seven million dollars ahead of time. So what's the big challenge there?

No. We spend, like, I think almost two million dollars distributed back to the team just so that they have bonuses.

And for the first five just for what was interesting though, first five years, I didn't pay myself anything. Right? It was like, how do I put everything back in? Even though we were doing pretty good in terms of the business, like, the business hit right away, which most businesses don't. You guys know that. Like, you try a lot of things and not all of them work. But after I think year six, I was like, I got nothing to show. I don't think I'm gonna go public. No one's trying to buy us. Like, I'd like to have some money in the bank. I think Well, were you broke? I mean, because, like, before this, you'd ran,

what was it called game kick,

or kick flip? Kick flip was one of them, and then gambit. And then you were with mint, and then you were famously with Facebook.

Were you cash poor for a long time? No. I've I've never been broke.

Well, I had a million dollars at thirty from day jobs. I think that's kind of, like, not recognized by most people. Meaning, one, I was super cheap.

Right? So I lived on floors for a year. That's a good way to save money.

I lived at my mom's house, lived at my aunt's house, So just as as cheap as possible, I did get two paydays. One pay day was from the gamut payments company. So I think I made three hundred and fifty thousand. That was payments for Farmville and all those annoying games.

And then the conferences.

So those plus just being really conservative with the cash It was about a million dollar liquid,

around thirty. Could you tell the Facebook story? I know you've told this before, but like I said, I think a lot of this is buried in your blog that people nobody's reading blogs anymore. And so I don't want this to I don't want the store to go untold. What what happened with Facebook? How did you

kinda

blow, like, a hundred million dollar payday? It was more a few hundred million dollar payday.

Every year I think it's also it was a good it was thanks for Robbie. Did you know this word shorten, Freud? Yes. You have pleasure in other people's pain. Right?

It's like one of my favorite words. It's like they have a word for that. I think it's just kind of the wild thing about it.

You know, it's funny. I posted on Twitter some of these, like, old Facebook memories with, like, me and Zuck and dot Moskovitz

and Bosworth, who's now the CTO or Chris Cox,

Tullie Keever, Adam De Angelo. It was it was, you know, Errington from Tech Crunch. It wasn't a it was a special time, man. Wasn't really social stories. So how did you get there? What were you doing? What was it like and what happened?

I worked at Intel. I had a day job, but I was always building stuff on the side. So I was always kinda doing things like build college up dot org, Craigslist for college students, no one use that, ninja card dot com, discount cards for college students, that did really well.

And then I was putting on conferences, so entrepreneur twenty seven. I was basically just really wanting to get the hell out of a day job and and have an on, own business So I sent in my resume cold,

but the differentiator was that I sent in mock ups.

So I I took Facebook and I was like, here's Facebook maps. If we ever have a Facebook feature. So if you wanna go see your friend, here's how it would look. And they were like, wow, you have a bunch of businesses for college students, and you're doing you're showing us what you would do here. And you're not a designer. Right? So you're you're scrapping these mock ups together. You paid somebody. What'd you do? No. That was myself. So I think I was either using Google slides. I didn't know if that was around, probably, Microsoft paint.

Like, I'm talking super basic. It doesn't have to be fancy. Google slides is probably that in Canva are probably the best free things you could use. Did you cold email, Zuck, or how how who'd you send? No. No. No. I so I was gonna quit Intel in December because I was waiting for my health insurance to kick in. I wanted to get my HSA payment.

And then I just saw the job listing. There I didn't know anyone there. And so you you send that in. They're like, cool. You go What was your first impression walking into the office? I I guess, what what was it like back then? Because what and what year was this for Facebook? This is two thousand five. I think one of the things for people out there, if you get a job, which I think could be cool is just go look at what you're using all the time. You know, if you listen to a podcast, if you're working on a product, to be clear, though, it is work. People think that at appsumo, they're like, I'm gonna come party with you guys. Like, know, realize, like, ninety percent of our day sitting on a computer working. Ten percent, yeah, we do a lot of cool stuff, but,

when I came in there, it was chaotic.

I mean, I posted one of these photos. It was a good memory where, like, there's cables everywhere. The desks were kind of all over the place. But it felt like there's something special happening.

It felt like there's, like, holy shit. We're we're on a mission that no one else is a part of, and we know where this is going. And then we have this this truly fearless leader. That that seemed like a savant. That was he's definitely awkward as hell, but,

I was really impressed about, you know, what he was able to do and how big he was thinking about this company would could be.

What numbers were was he throwing around?

Yeah. So a few crazy things crazy things that people forget, though. He copied connect you. I don't know if anyone remembers this. In a weekend, he copied someone else.

And then emailed out his, emailed out to his dorm and that's how it got going. So I think people think these big companies start very complicated. No. He copied someone else, launched it, it worked, then he kept going, and then he changed his vision. Some of the crazier things that I recall

was at a very early time he rejected a billion dollar sale, which now maybe sounds a lot or little, but imagine, like, on your, what, thirty something? Thirty thirty five. Yeah.

Thirty five. You're twenty four years old, and there's, like, hey. I'm a give you a billion dollars. This is Yahoo.

I think all of us would take that in a heartbeat. I I took a hundred thousand dollar job, so I think I was gonna take the billion dollar to offer two.

I heard this crazy story where they're, like, I think it was Yahoo that was offering to buy him, where, you know, Zucks sitting there and all the Yahoo gray hairs are talking to him, and they make the offer. And he was like, hey, can you guys leave the room so we could discuss this and Peter Teels in there? And then the executives leave the room. And everyone's looking at suck. Like, Alright. So let let let's take this. And he goes, so I just wanted to, like, sit in here and pretend like we're talking about this because, obviously, we're not gonna take this deal. By the way, you're totally making this that's not what happened.

I that's what I heard. I I read a blog post on it. The story is

they got the offer, then there was the next board meeting. At the next board meeting, he was, like, which is like where Peter Teel and others were. He was like, okay. But housekeeping, we gotta discuss, you know, we're supposed to talk about this. Got this offer. Obviously not gonna take it. And they were like, whoa, whoa, whoa. Maybe we should

Mark, that's a lot of money. We should talk about this. That's what they said. But even that, I think is Sean, don't let facts get in the way of a good story. Well, I think there's even more revisionist history, which which is interesting here because then later, there's another story

that Zuck actually accepted an offer from I think it was I think it was Yahoo.

And, it's the the Yahoo Microsoft. I don't remember.

And then they reneged. They came back and tried to negotiate down.

So, like, you know, he took one point two and then they came back and said, no. It's gonna be, like, nine hundred or something. There's another story like that. And so none of these are congruent because Peter Till tells the story Right? That's where the that was the source of that story where he was just trying to say how Zuck is this, you know, he was this, like,

visionary,

you know, balls of steel turned down the billion dollar offer. But then there's this other story where he kinda took it. And I'm like, well and they're like, if he wanted revenge because they they negotiated him down. I was like, but wait. He said yes. So I don't really know what the truth is, but I know there's a lot of this BS in startup lore where people make up stories that make somebody sound more more, brave or

I would, you know, someone asked me a few days ago, like, is Zuck good or bad? And I think he's good.

I think people might have negative pressure, but he was he he's he's he's ambitious But I think he always, at least when I was there, had good intentions of being ambitious. It wasn't like I need to manipulate the media. He's probably like, what are you talking about? It's just an algorithm. I don't know. Like, change it up again. We'll fix it. No. Can I start with the environment? Because I remember once in when I lived in San Francisco, we were I was doing a startup. I thought I was doing a I thought this is it. We're we're all we're just like every other startup. We're in the race we're in the hunt. We're gonna make the next big thing. And then I went to a friend's office

who was doing a startup, and they actually had product market fit. And Like, the market was pulling their product. They were growing faster they could handle. Yes. And I walked into that office, which was smaller,

way less nice.

You know, didn't have, like, didn't have it wasn't super organized. They had, like, you know, people were sitting on the floor and, like, there was just, like, people everywhere. There's cables everywhere. It was, like, a different vibe. Is the company still around? Yeah. Yeah. It it's it actually sold, for, you know, few hundred million dollars. And so I walked home, and I remember thinking on my way home. Oh, fuck. We're just playing house. Like, That's what it's supposed to feel like when it's working. I didn't even actually realize it till I stepped foot in there, but that's a totally different energy. Yeah. They have it, and we don't. And, did you feel that when you went into the Facebook office?

A hundred percent. I felt it I've been lucky to feel it a few times. At mint, I felt it, appsumo feels it And I think it inside at Facebook, one, my boss got fired the day I I I started. So I walked in and my boss is walking out,

which is a really strange you know, I just left Intel, which, you know, I had you know, eight meetings a day, and I had all this training. It was horrible. And I, you know, I go into a room in Zucks, like, your your boss, Doug, who ended up founding GoodRx. He has no GoodRx. Yep. Oh, wow. It's pretty pretty pretty impressive.

I just fired him because he he wanted to he's a lot of the guys from Facebook came from Yahoo.

And he's like, he tried to sell the company. So it's my company. I fired him. Welcome to Facebook.

And then I just grabbed literally a corner of a desk, and it was like, alright. Well, what should I work on? Right? And it it's literally like a stark contrast from Intel where, like, everything is regimented.

And, it was amazing. I think the thing that was interesting that others didn't know is that we saw the internal metric about the growth. So we knew there was something happening that others didn't see. In terms of, like, I think we're at ten million the day I started, by the day I got fired, it was about fifty million.

So we just saw that, like, wow, this growth, but the threats were serious. Like, Google was a threat, which people, you know, kind of forget today. Myspace was a huge threat. And, obviously, now those things aren't even really talked about. What were you doing the the math when you were thinking about how much your stocks eventually gonna be worth? Were you like, man, this might make ten million dollars.

My whole thing was that I just thought the equity is gonna be insanely value. I didn't know at mint, I had a very specific number I thought it would sell for, which I was accurate there. Facebook, I was like, I don't know the limit, because Zuck's vision was to connect the entire world. And his whole his quote was like, we wanna be a toll booth for the internet. I remember that. That was inspiring. It was nice. You know, even at Absu and I, I'm now, like, okay. What are we excited about? And, no, we're excited to promote software. Like, we love promoting software. It's like, his was like, I wanna connect the entire world. I imagine showed up to work, and he's connecting the entire world. And and what he did, a lot of really clever things, which was do we reduce all distractions? So, like, he paid for all of our parking tickets.

He paid for all of our cleaning. He paid for us to live close. He paid for, like, everything. So all we had to do is focus on work. And that wasn't normal back then. Right? Like, No. It was super awesome. Pick your parking tickets and be like, hey, there's gonna just bring your laundry here. Shit, like, shut up about your life and just bring your laundry here and just because,

we when we were hanging out with mister Beast, Jack Smith said this the other day he got we were hanging out and he goes, I like how he just has no disregard for social norms. Because we were like, how'd you hire this guy? Or, like, how do you train people? And he's like, they move in with me, basically. Like, they just I attach them to my hip. They follow me everywhere.

We work seven days a week. And then after six months,

like, now you could start to give your ideas because you now you have now a fully absorbed means, like, Alright. Well, I don't think I could I sent there, like, California labor laws. Like, how does this work? And, and and I I think it was right. The absolute disregard for social norms I've now learned is like a very, very positive attribute or signal in highly, highly successful people sounds like Zung was kinda like that too. I don't know if that I think asking

and doing things that you believe, I think you guys are very good at that, but there's also, I think, negatives. Like, I remember this guy Dan died,

in a bike a tree fell on him. This is during one of the workdays he was biking, and a tree killed him. Oh, boy. And I'm like, okay. Are we gonna put a bike rack outside? Are we gonna have a moment? And there was not even any acknowledgement. It was like, let's just work. And I just thought what that was that was insane. Yeah. I mean, there's a price to pay for being crazy like that. Right? Like, there's pros and cons. Yeah. I mean, it's special to be a part. And you have to think, like, we had Harvard PhDs in customer support.

Like, imagine that. Like, people that wanted to be there so badly doesn't matter your degree. You just can work there. And so being in that environment was really special.

And just, like, learn seeing all this amazing talent that that was there and that has left to go do really cool things. And so why did they fire you?

It's funny. I was actually looking at the pictures I was fired in, basically, because of Coachella.

Like, you you dipped I was, like, I was drunk and high at Coachella. And then for me, I I was blogging about Facebook because I was so excited about it. I think go find things you're excited about it and tell the world about it. If you think it's a good thing, how I've always felt with the stuff I do. And

I let Arrington at TechCrunch know, like, hey, Facebook's opening up to at Microsoft and at corporate emails in the morning. I think you should write about it and get and talk about it because Facebook wasn't gonna do any press. And he wrote about it that night, and then I emailed Zuck and some of the other e team. I let him know what I did. So I think it was that. And then I I think, for me, I also felt frustrated. You got you guys have seen these people where me at thirty people, when I was like, no, just figure things out. So I was like, alright, I'm gonna help build mobile with sleep, or I'm gonna help build ads, or I'm gonna help do the status update thing, which they didn't even wanna do. It was just fun. It was very, like, there's a lot to do there, and and I was also probably more immature.

And then as I got older and it grew, I I didn't wanna be in meetings. I didn't wanna do sell project management. I didn't wanna have long discussions with thirty people about basic ideas.

When did it become corporate?

I mean, at that point, it was a hundred and fifty people. It felt very corporate to me. It felt very you know, and if you look at Facebook, what's the last great thing that Zuck has done since two thousand five?

Besides acquiring other people, what does he come up with portal? That was a floppage.

Like, name one thing he's actually done.

Besides make he's acquired, he's made good decisions acquiring people. I'd say that. He had just gotten bigger. I mean, he it that that's why Facebook's great. It's just it's because everyone uses it. I mean, it's so big. I remember when Sarah, my wife worked there. They were like, we're doing this thing in India where we put blimps or drones up in the sky. And I was like, why are they doing that? They're like, well, because the only people who aren't on Facebook are the people in India who don't have internet. So we're just gonna go give them free internet so they can use Facebook. Mean, his relentless drive towards growing to everyone is is what he's done. Yeah. And stuff like, you know, the part of thing is the bigger you get, the harder it is to move the needle. So it's like, marketplace.

Super successful, but,

kinda like who cares? It's like, yeah, you built Craigslist inside Facebook. It's fine. You know, is is they need us they need to do something so big. Right? That's why it's like the metaverse or AI. Like, they have to go on these huge waves just to kind of, like, move the needle for how big Facebook is. I think what what was really interesting, but people can think about in their own businesses is the core really great. Because, like, Facebook marketplace or Facebook events, I was really excited to to grow and improve and monetize early on, and he was just against it completely.

And I noticed that with appsumo alerts, our core businesses go find cool products, get a deal on them, promote them.

That's it. Right? But it gets very exciting to think, alright. Can we do MRR? Can we do all these other options? But, really, it's like, can you do the core excellent and then start adding new things at a later point? So you you've had this video where you went on this plane with this guy who I think was a commodities trader, or I don't I I think that's what he said. You know, and I assume he was worth hundreds of millions of dollars. I know that you have a bunch of friends who are billionaires. You told me ahead of time, you said, most billionaires that you know are unhappy.

Tell me more about, like, what you've noticed about hanging out with some of these, like, Uber, Uber, successful people. Most of them didn't set out to be billionaires. Like, you hear people online. Like, I wanna be a billionaire. It's, like, almost every billionaire I know, and I've worked for them or multi multi millionaire was just like, here's something I'm curious about or excited about. And, yes, maybe in private equity or finance, but a lot of the entrepreneur ones. It was just, like, stuff they're curious about. All of them got rich as well in one way.

Like, I was just at FedEx this morning because I interviewed the guy from, kinkos,

He just focused on copiers.

That's it. But a lot of newer entrepreneurs I've seen are ones I haven't had as much success. We're like, I'm gonna do five different Solopreneur startups this weekend. It's like, okay. You could test five. But which one's working? Let's just do one. These billionaires just did one.

But they tell us to diversify.

And so I I think that's always fascinating for me because they do one thing. And and this is, again, we kinda come back to the appsumo stories. They stuck with it for a very long period of time. Like, any about any billionaires you know, how long did it take?

Yeah. I mean, twenty years, thirty years, a lifetime, a lifetime, a a career.

A lifetime, a lifetime, and we're trying to get rich in a weekend, or which, you know, crypto rich in a month.

And I think the the slow compounded growth over long a time is what doesn't get recognized. Sean, didn't you say that was, like, your major takeaway from your camp MFM?

Yeah. I wouldn't say it exactly like that, but,

When,

I was talking to Jimmy, and I was like, yeah. I think the thing I'm, you know, most,

the thing that's standing out to me the most as I I get out of my bubble. I reassess. I reflect. It's the start of the new year is

I think I'm spending,

so much energy

But I'm spreading it out. I'm spreading it too thin, and

that's a mistake. Like, I'm doing more and getting less. And I put it differently. I said, I think you have a thousand times more opportunity hit, you know, opportunities coming to you every day. And you've said, yes, to half the things I have. So something's wrong here. I think in general, the more successful you get, the more opportunities you get, but the more things you should and and you should be saying no to. I think Hornosi said a nice thing about this that I, I thought resonated. He goes, let's say you get let's say you're making ten thousand a month. And now somebody comes and offers you something that's gonna make you a thousand dollars. Pretty easy to say no. Like, you have a going rate. You if you're making a hundred thousand a month, and somebody comes to you and says, here's something that'll make you ten grand. Easy to say no. The hard thing is when you're making a hundred grand and somebody comes to you and says, here's the thing that can make a hundred grand. And you're like, that's my rate. But what happens is you now have to you you've now split your focus and you're basically

you're you're losing life balance, but you're also doubling down on the amount of work that you have to do, only to get, you know, one more unit compared to where you were is, like, the best people, the smartest people, they basically when they're at the hundred, they don't say yes to the next thing that can get them a hundred or two hundred. They will only say yes to something that might get them, you know, ten x more than that. And so the right way to do it is to basically say, alright. This gave me the right to say no to certain things.

And the hardest one to say no to is the one that's at the current level where you're currently at.

And the people who really break out and get to the next level, they're the ones who are able to to to say no, stay focused until they see something that is truly ten x better opportunity than what they have.

So how are how are you changing this year?

Well, I said not a bunch of things. I shut down two of the things that I was working on that were working, but they were more in that, like,

one x,

one x type of category.

And then every day, I basically start my day with the first three hours because I was, like, know, the main thing I wanna focus on is is making great content. It's the thing I love doing the most. It's the thing I think I'm I'm best at.

But the hard part is

a deal comes on the table. And now I'm spending, you know, the first eight hours that day working on that deal or that investment or that opportunity or that new new idea.

And so I just carved out where the first three hours of the day, I'm only doing content. And I was like, cool. I want this to eventually be eight hours, ten hours a day, but The thing I can control is that the first three hours, I'm not gonna say yes to anything else. I'm only gonna say yes to this. And the cool part is as soon as you do the first three hours, you have so much momentum.

The natural thing to do is just to keep going. So that's been, very effective so far. Where you Sean, where are you gonna start making content? Like, when when you keep saying content creation, are you talking specifically

text Now you're talking about text based? Blogging. It's coming back. Sean, blogger dot com. All all ideas are on the table. So right now, I'm just prototyping. So I'm basically trying to figure out which one do I enjoy the most. I knew I would enjoy podcasting.

I listened to a ton of podcasts. I had prototyped it. So before this podcast, I had recorded two other podcasts. One with my roommate and brother-in-law at home where we talked about sports

and never released it. There's only been three listeners ever. It's me and the two guys I did it with.

Then I did another podcast at my office when I was doing a startup. It was me for kind of a couple of couple other guys. Three episodes. I think they're up on YouTube somewhere. Nobody ever watched them. But doing that, even though those podcasts went nowhere, it did one thing, which has showed me, oh, man, I really like doing this. And how cool would it be if I actually,

like, could do this all the time, or it was actually, you know, if people actually listened to it, man, that would be amazing. And so I had prototyped and I had felt it out before I

in order to know that that's actually something I wanted to do. So when I say new content, I'll dabble with, let's say, short form or or write, you know, I'll write a a a brief to a book, like, you know, an outline to a book at the first two chapters because I'm trying to understand. What do do I wanna write a book or not? I don't need to commit to that.

Because I can prototype and feel it out first. You definitely should go the book route. The problem with the book route, Noah, you've seen it seems so fucking hard. It seems so hard. Everyone I know who who writes a book, they describe it exactly how my friends who run marathons do. Where they complain constantly while they're in training. They say the race is miserable.

And then about two weeks after the race happens, or the book goes live, they go, alright, I think I wanna do this next book on this topic. And I'm like, man, I just heard you complain for two years. No. You've been talking about this freaking book for years. I think it's been way longer than four years actually. I remember you talking about how you wanted to write a book forever, and it took four freaking years to do this thing. It you think it's gonna be worth it? What's the ROI gonna be?

I like it.

I'm proud of it. I think it's first off. You know, coming back to Well, and the the ROA on that, I think it's gonna impact people.

I think one person at a time. I've already seen it. Right? I've seen people read it and I'm like, holy shit, really? Know, even I think with these things, like, what what you guys have done with your show and Sean's, like, what you're exploring when yours,

your content is, like, what's something you're excited to do and that's kinda hard.

Or, like, no one's ever proud of themselves, like, yeah, I wrote I walked five feet.

Like,

but if you run a mile or if you run a marathon, you're like, damn, that was hard, but I can actually do this. And I think that that that to me was really the ultimate aura in this book.

Thinking it, can I actually face myself and and work on a book and help other people? And then can people do it for themselves?

Why did you become so political? What do you mean where, like, I'm it's probably You're, like, a you're, like, a politician, my friend. Like, so Old Noah gotta tell a story about Old Noah. I remember,

Sean, one time there's a coworker who I work with, who Sean you are friends with.

And she,

we go into this meeting and Noah shows up shirtless.

He's got no shirt on. He's in his house. I think he's, like, on his couch. And I'm like, no, what the fuck are you doing, dude? Like, he he was just, like, crazy mad man. And that's actually what made him brilliant, was, like, he would do all this crazy stuff. And he executed crazy stuff really, really, really well. But now when I ask what the ROI is of this, you you're showing so much

evolution. You're talking about changing people's lives. It's so funny to see you say this this stuff. But

one, thank you. I think we should try to change people's lives back then too just in a different way. One nip at a time.

Yeah.

I I I was gonna tell you about inverted my inverted nipples, which I'm very self conscious about. Okay? No. I mean, look, I'm maturing. Do I wanna show up shirtless maybe if we're hanging out in our sauna? Like, come over. But I I think as you you get older, you also realize, like, what kind of behavior do you wanna do?

And I think that's fine.

Do the book I think people have these these, like, bullshit ROI things. Like, I wanna help a million people. I don't give a shit about that.

I don't. But I am happy if, like, one or two or five or a thousand or ten thousand, then read the book and do something for themselves.

No. We appreciate you doing this, man. I I forgot to I should have plugged this earlier on, but I'm doing I I'm buying how many how many books am I buying? Thirty fifty books?

Something like that.

So I bought a bunch of books. I'm trying to do my part to help you rank up in in the list. So if you go to the anti MBA dot com, between now and February fifteenth,

to anyone who gives me their email, I'll just, like, pick I'll randomly pick fifty of you guys, and I'll send you a link to buy the book for free. Or to enter your, address it, and then we'll send you the book. I'm excited to see you do this. I hopefully, hopefully, you, impact some people, which I know you will, but also

The the ego side of me is, like, hopefully, you rank on some type of best seller list, which I know is also pretty cool.

We appreciate you doing this. What do you wanna what it's called million dollar weekend. You're noah Kagan on Twitter,

appsumo dot com, noah kagan on YouTube. I'm missing any other plug.

No, man. It's a By the way, no, I had an experience like this that shifted my life. I'm a testimonial for this even before your book came out. I was working on a startup, my very first startup. We were working on it for, like, nine months trying to get everything right. We literally had a three hundred page business plan. It was embarrassing. Letting out there look back. But we thought that meant we were, you know, doing everything. We were dotting every, you know, we're dotting t's and crossing i's out here. And so, we're I was like, alright. Well,

At a certain point, I looked at my my co founder and I was like,

my co founder. He's my roommate, my friend. And I was like,

I was like, dude, I feel like we just keep telling everyone we're doing a business, but we don't actually do any business. And he's like, what? And I was like, like, how long have we been sitting here with this whiteboard and this plan? And, like, How much we have no revenue? We've never made a dollar. Like, who yeah. I can't believe this. And we just keep tricking ourselves into thinking that this is legit. I just read the four hour workweek, and I was like, alright.

This weekend,

we are gonna make money. I don't care how it was, like, we're in our we set a goal for a thousand dollars. I said, we're gonna try to make a thousand dollars the next, you know, basically, it was it was Friday. It was like, we're gonna make it by Sunday night. And, I don't care how. Let's go. And

instantly,

just by having that intention, things started to fall together. We made this website. We found a product on Alibaba. We got it dropshipped. We made our first sale. We sold basically, I don't know, few hundred of these, like, wristbands, like, kind of customized wristbands, like, those fat, like, live strong bands.

To somebody who's, their parents were having an anniversary and they needed, like, two hundred of these. We charge them, like, you know, four or five bucks per. We made a thousand dollars in one weekend.

And I felt like the champion of the of the universe. And I was like, this is what business is supposed to feel like. Taking action, actually going out there, trying to sell a product,

Moving fast. Don't try to perfect everything. You don't need a three hundred page plan. And after that, like, literally my, you know, my whole game shifted just from that one experience. And so haven't read your book yet. You you sent it. I'm gonna read it, but I already, like, in my soul, am on board with what you're all about.

Dude, I did that wristband business too. That's so crazy. They they were hot at the time. Right? Like, every kid was wearing them. My every college kid was wearing them. But I I think the the thing you called out, which is interesting in in one that's awesome is, like, because you said, hey, I'm gonna do something, and I have this limited time. And you have fifty two of them. Right? So, especially if you guys have kids and all this stuff, you you don't have a lot of time. But you can make an hour or two in a weekend to to do something. And then look at what you did in a weekend, which you didn't do in months. Right. Yeah. Exactly that. What you did in the weekend that you didn't do in months. That's that's how it's exactly how it felt. And then I was like, I either can go back to the old way

or I can go this new way, this action way. And the action way became the way. And that, you know, basically that became,

I don't know. Like, Sam, it's so funny you have that tatted on your feet. Like, that's It's been tattered in my brain. That's like the only thing.

You know, I I remember literally looking around. I was at Duke, and there's a bunch of smart kids at Duke. I thought when I was in high school, I was the smart kid, then you go to a college with all the smart kids from those high schools, and you realize, oh, you ain't shit. And I was like, alright. Yeah. Am I just gonna be, like, forgettable average? Because that's where this is going. And I was like, am I really gonna get smarter than these people? Am I gonna I don't have any, like, special talents that they had that that nobody else has, but I realized that A lot of smart people are over thinkers.

They hesitate.

They doubt. They over analyze. And I was like, that's my thing.

I'm not gonna do that. I'm just gonna immediately take action, and that will be the difference. And that will be my thing, and I could just that'll be the bedrock that I can build any kind of success on rather than trying to have been like a special snowflake that was, you know, pretty, predestined to do great things. And that just became my, my, my motto.

I've still got the needle, bro. We can change that. We can we can do Let's tat it. Let's tat it.

But Sean, but most people who listen to show wanna make a million, they don't ever make a buck.

And everybody can make that one dollar. And that's where they have to get, you know, get up fast.

That's

No. Those plowers, dude. That was that was great.

Like like grid lyrics, nice nice words. Thank you. Like You're a forty year old YouTuber. How do you not know these things?

I'm learning the the vocab, but dude, I read this good book last night, Sam. You made me inspired by it. It's called the Art thief and, this guy who steals art. But one of the things you said that stuck with me is, like, what's the first thing you look at when you wake up in the morning? And I I do respect that. I love that you're, like, this is the area I wanna prove, which is, you know, you saw it on your feet. I don't I don't see my feet first thing in the morning, but I don't it's like, put something on your bedside, put something out where you're like, first thing you see in the morning. Maybe it's Sean's face, Yeah. Maybe it's a million dollar weekend. Maybe it's something, but I I love that idea.

I'm getting my whole legs done. You know, not you know, I've got a kid now. So maybe I'll do her name, but, I've got a I've got a I've got bold fast fun tattooed on my thighs because BFF, that's kinda what I live for when it comes to business.

I've got a pirate ship. Is that is that

bro, live, laugh, love is bullshit.

Yeah. I mean, it that's true. I moved to Austin, and I found myself.

Yeah.

I did the work, Sean. It's self fun. You get the work, dude.

Good. Well, you know, the reason I like homemade tattoos is you do what you want. When I found out when you go to tattoo shops, basically find an you like, and you're like, here's kind of what I want. And they're like, yeah. I'm just gonna do whatever I want. And you're, like, too embarrassed to, like, tell them exactly what the what you want because guy, you wouldn't impress him. And so I basically have a whole bunch of tattoos on my legs and all throughout my body that I was just trying to trying to impress Hector, my tattoo artists. So

So that's pretty much all for it when it comes to tattoos.

No. We appreciate you coming. We'll wrap here.

That's a pop.