This Is What Billionaires Regret Before Dying - Noah Kagan

Noah Kagan is an entrepreneur, founder of AppSumo and a YouTuber. Does money make you happy? What about a lot of money? Like billions of dollars a lot of money. Noah has spent years around some of the richest people in the world and deconstructed some of their biggest regrets, thinking patterns and hacks for success. Expect to learn the most common traits of super-rich people, the advice Noah wished people would stop talking about, why having a day job can be riskier than starting your own business, how much money Noah spent on coaches, his best tips on how to overcome self-doubt and much more… - 00:00 When Chris Emailed Noah in 2019 08:42 The Pitfalls of Leverage 11:34 Common Traits of Very Wealthy People 16:40 Finding a Specific Niche to Focus on 19:57 Taking a Less Aggressive Strategy in Business 25:53 Is Wealth Worth it? 30:38 The Biggest Regrets of Rich People 35:24 How to Enjoy the Journey of Success More 46:07 Having Faith in Your Mission 51:52 When Can Success Be Enough? 1:02:01 Noah’s Experience With Coaches 1:10:20 Believing That Your Situation is Unique 1:19:56 How We Shift Our Own Narratives 1:24:26 Why Money Isn’t a Good Enough Goal 1:27:28 The Greater Risk of Inaction 1:36:58 Being Comfortable With Asking & Rejection 1:43:29 Where to Find Noah - Get access to every episode 10 hours before YouTube by subscribing for free on Spotify - https://spoti.fi/2LSimPn or Apple Podcasts - https://apple.co/2MNqIgw Get my free Reading List of 100 life-changing books here - https://chriswillx.com/books/ Try my productivity energy drink Neutonic here - https://neutonic.com/modernwisdom - Get in touch in the comments below or head to... Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/chriswillx Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/chriswillx Email: https://chriswillx.com/contact/

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Speaker 00

  I was so impressed to see that you emailed me in 2019.

• 0:04Chris Williamson?

  Yeah, tell me about that. You were reading the archive emails back.

• 0:07Speaker 00

  It's just interesting to see who makes it, right? And I think I emailed you as Million Dollar Weekend was coming out. I was talking to the team and I was like, oh, there's a few shows I'd love to be on and you were one of them. I think Stephanie reached out and we reached out and then it was like, yeah, it's gonna happen. I was like, oh, that's interesting. And I saw one of your clips about success bias as the world works. And I was like, I just want to tell him I love his stuff. And I think that's such a thing that anyone can copy, like, reach out to someone and just tell them that you've made an impact or that you like what they're doing. And so let me just search my Gmail. So I searched Chris Williamson in my Gmail. And it was in 2019, January, you said, hey, mate. That's how you British like you like to address us. And you said, hey, I'd love for you to come on the show.

• 0:48Speaker 00

  And I just couldn't believe. And then what was even crazier, I was reading it to my girlfriend today. I said, hey, I'm busy with my with AppSumo. Can you follow up in March? You said, no problem. You follow up in March. I said, I'm busy in March. Can you follow up in two months? You followed up every single time. And it's you don't know who's really gonna make it, but it said a lot about your character that you kept following up, following up and following up. And I I always admire people that follow up. Thank you. That's cool that we're here.

• 1:11Chris Williamson?

  I appreciate that. Yeah, man. It's come full circle. It's only what, five years later or whatever?

• 1:16Chris Williamson?

  We find I got you in the end, you motherfucker.

• 1:18Speaker 00

  There it happens. Yes.

• 1:20Chris Williamson?

  No, yeah, I think. Look, there's a lot of disadvantages to being obsessive and compulsive. Like, even if it doesn't meet the medical criteria of that. There are a lot of disadvantages, like you, you, you see things and you don't let things go and it causes you to move slowly. Like I find, and a lot of the people who also have an attention to detail that's probably over the top. Will notice that they leave things on the table because they can't move as quickly as people who are a little bit more blasé. You know, if you're able to just like move fast, break shit, like that whole kind of like Silicon Valley SF thing. That's never been me. It's never, ever, ever been me. And I've kind of, I've come to terms with that now.

• 2:03Chris Williamson?

  And I've realized where my competitive advantage lies and it's being thorough and paying attention to detail. And winning in the weeds and other people can win with velocity, but that's not the game I. Would need to, I don't know, just permanently be on like MDMA or something if I was gonna do that. You know, that's the only way I'd be able to get away with it. So yeah, I think, you know, playing to your strengths, whether it's in business, whether it's in content creation, whether it's finding a partner, you know, crafting some sort of persona outward brand for whatever it is that you're trying to build. I think that all of those things, playing to your strengths, because that's swimming downstream. Like if I was trying to be the move fast, break shit guy, things would go badly.

• 2:44Chris Williamson?

  But for me to be the detail oriented, like sprinkling of autism guy, super easy.

• 2:51Speaker 00

  Do you think that's ever held you back? Or do you think, how do you think that's held you back in areas? And then how did you get the podcast started if you're someone who takes a long time to do things?

• 2:58Chris Williamson?

  Hmm, uh, yeah, it's definitely held me back, but it's very interesting. Being detail oriented and being obsessive about things results in you being held back in ways that are very invisible. Being moving fast and breaking stuff causes you to be held back or to fail in ways that are incredibly public. You know what I mean? So a lot of this stuff will be, um, I've basically launched zero businesses since running the podcast, even though we reached like half a billion people a year. I haven't done any of that because I move slowly and take my time with things. And I don't tend to like experiment publicly all that much, apart from with the one thing that I do all of my experimentation with, which is the show.

• 3:42Chris Williamson?

  When it came to launching the show back in 2018, it took me six months to come up with the name. Come up with the name and come up with the branding and pick how I was gonna make it all work. So, um, yeah, for, for all that perfectionism is procrastination, masquerading as quality control. And I do believe in all the rest of it.

• 4:00Chris Williamson?

  There's an upper bound on, uh, on how quickly certain people can move at stuff. And it's just like, all right, well, focus on the weeds instead.

• 4:07Speaker 00

  I think what I've observed is people have it backwards is that we stick too long on things not working and not enough on things that are working. And the things that were not working, we could find out really quickly, maybe in a weekend.

• 4:20Chris Williamson?

  Yeah.

• 4:20Speaker 00

  That, that's more my style. And then once you find the thing that working, how do you actually stick with it?

• 4:25Chris Williamson?

  Yeah. It's I was reading this Paul Graham essay, How to Do Great Work. And I've been pretty obsessed by this idea recently. He says that the activation energy needed to start something is significantly greater than the activation energy needed to keep it going.

• 4:40Speaker 00

  Hundred percent.

• 4:41Chris Williamson?

  But the inverse is true with your results. So your results in the beginning are the lowest that they'll ever be, and your results toward the end are the highest they'll ever be. So for every episode that we put out now, it's like 200,000 times what it would have been six years ago, right?

• 4:59Chris Williamson?

  But in the beginning, it was also the hardest that it was ever going to be to do. So it's the hardest and the lowest return. And then as you get further along, you've got better consistency and motivation and systems in place, and you get more return. But here's the kicker that Paul didn't write about, which is if you're not careful and you don't protect your passion and your motivation through that journey from going from start to maturation, if you don't protect it by not celebrating wins, by not having both internal and external motivation, by not having a team that helps to support you, by not all of the thing, like the motivation stuff. If you don't protect it, you actually end up getting to a stage where it's the easiest it's ever been. It's the most returns that it's ever been, but your motivation is the lowest it's ever been. Because at

• 5:43Chris Williamson?

  the very beginning, motivation's quite high. It's just that the returns and the difficulty are also like low and high respectively. So you need to protect that passion, or else you end up in this, this awful kind of like reverse hell, where everything's going great, apart from the fact that you don't have the energy or the motivation to keep it going. So yeah, it's an interesting arc.

• 6:03Speaker 00

  You started the show. Did it take you six months from when you had the idea to get the name and launch it?

• 6:08Chris Williamson?

  Pretty much. Because I was working on a ton of different, I was running a business at the same time. And again, I wasn't just like, I think maybe four months. I think it was September or something, 2017, and then January or February 2018, we launched with album artwork and all the rest. But even Tim Ferriss did a podcast about how to launch podcasts, which you might remember, it was pretty famous ages ago. And there's a way that you can hack your way to the top of the Apple Podcast charts by releasing multiple episodes within the first couple of days. I'm pretty sure the highest ever chart position that we had for like the first five years was the first week, even though it was completely terrible place by using Tim's playbook. So yeah, just. It's a lot of preparation in the buildup.

• 6:50Speaker 00

  I guess what I've observed for for myself is that winning is motivating. Right. Which is sounds so stupid and obvious. And most of the cliche, as I'm getting older, most cliche things are obvious. Paul Graham's got two great ones. Make something people want. How do you know when they want it?

• 7:06Speaker 00

  Right. But everyone's like, yeah, make something you want. But then I it's like, are you having trouble selling? You having trouble marketing? Yeah, because no one wants what you're doing.

• 7:12Chris Williamson?

  Correct. I mean, dude, I must quote that Naval thing. You're doing sales because you sucked at marketing. You're doing marketing because you sucked at product. I must quote that to myself like once a week.

• 7:24Speaker 00

  Yeah, I mean, Naval funded my last company, and that was interesting to work with him. The other thing that people hear, and I think that's what I'm hoping just to reemphasize. The thing you hear that might be cliche, maybe think about how you can apply it for yourself. Like, how do you know someone wants it? Maybe they've given you money. With my first YouTube video, it was about three years ago, my first real one. It was just on my phone. But a few hundred people watched it. And so talking about starting, which most people never do, which we I think you can do in a very short time. And then sticking with it once it's working or once you're seeing some of that early validation. I think the other thing that Paul says that I think people hear but don't do. And I did it with Million Dollar Weekend. I've done it with AppSumo. I've done it with Mint. I've done it with all these things time and time again. Is how do you do things that don't scale? Right? Kind of another annoying one.

• 8:08Speaker 00

  This is stuff that I'm like, yeah, I know. But then people are like, well, how do I do my ads? I was like, well, have you reached out to 10 people that probably want this product? No, no, no, that's not going to scale. It's like, I know. Same thing I do with my I literally messaged 1,000 people. That was my goal. Can I get 1,000 people to be in my launch team and then help me with giving reviews and feedback on the book? And now you know, my whole my whole marketing plan, it's literally just a spreadsheet with 1,000 lines. That's not really sexy, right? But that works. And I already validated that people are excited about the book. I got started 2011 with this concept. Around how do you get things done really, really quickly?

• 8:41Chris Williamson?

  Yeah, I think one of the other memes that I wish.

• 8:47Chris Williamson?

  It caught hold and then it's been sort of bastardized the most. Someone asked me, what's a piece of business advice that you think needs to get in the bin? And leverage, despite the fact that I love it, has also been completely used and repurposed in ways that are wrong. So people start learning about leverage and they think, oh my God, my inputs can be magnified, so I get more outputs. Fantastic. But they then start to forget that there are like high touch advantages to people who are prepared to not use leverage. So for instance, my background's in club promo. When I first launched my podcast in 2018, I've still got the messages in my WhatsApp. You used to be able to chunk your address book together into 50 person broadcast lists

• 9:33Chris Williamson?

  on WhatsApp. And I had two and a half thousand contacts from being a club promoter for a decade and a half. So I put 50, 50, 50, 50, 50, all the way up to two and a half thousand and sent every single one of them a message saying, hi, I've just launched a new podcast. It would mean a lot to me if you could subscribe on Apple Podcasts. Here's the link. And I did that just myself on my phone for like weeks. It took weeks to do, but that resulted in us getting a ton of reviews at the start.

• 10:01Speaker 00

  What were you telling yourself at that time? Cause I think that's the part, people might hear this and a lot of people aspire to have a business, be an entrepreneur, which guess what? You don't have to be tall, like you're fit. You don't have to be fit to be successful in entrepreneurship. You could be anywhere in the world, right? Like, how great is that? Like you could be born to anything and be successful. But I think it's interesting, people never get started. So I'm curious what you were going through in your head. Cause a lot of people feel like, oh, I don't want to bother people. I don't want to ask people. That's something I've learned is one of the things holding most people back. They're afraid of asking.

• 10:30Chris Williamson?

  Yeah, I, that, that fear or that bar to get over is completely removed by being a club promoter. It just doesn't exist. Like we've spent our entire career sending people unwarranted, unsolicited messages, asking if they're going out on a Tuesday, a cold, wet Tuesday in the middle of October. You're fine with sending people messages. You're fine with asking for things. Charlie Hooper tried to reverse engineer some of the stuff that I do, or he said that I do, and he came up with one that I hadn't realized that I do when it comes to networking. And one of them is, I.

• 11:04Chris Williamson?

  Assume familiarity. So I'll send him messages that are like, there's no, hey, there's no, how are you? There's no nothing. It's just like the meat and potatoes of what you would send your friend. You know, it's just a awesome article. You got to read this, like just that, without any couching. And it's, there's a degree of familiarity in that, because that's what we used to do with nightlife. But basically, what I'm saying is, become a club promoter for 15 years and everything will be fine. What, one of the things that I love about your YouTube channel, you've managed to get yourself into some very interesting situations with some very wealthy people. You've spent a lot of time interviewing millionaires and then worked your way up to billionaires as well. What are the common traits

• 11:49Chris Williamson?

  that you found some of the common commonalities between a lot of the very wealthy people that you've spoken to?

• 11:56Speaker 00

  Yeah. And I think what's interesting is going back to promoting, it's asking. I just asked different people if they knew billionaires. Anyone can ask, and it's a skill you can get better at because you did it yourself. You asked and asked and asked. So when you had your own product, your show, you asked. So one of the things that I would say is it's similar to what you're already talking about in your show. All of the billionaires, not, not some of them, all the billionaires, I've worked for Mark Zuckerberg, Dustin Moskovitz, Adam D'Angelo, Charlie Chiver, you know, gotta be around Peter Thiel a little bit, billionaires, they all got rich on one thing. So if you think about yourself, you're like, I'm just doing the show. And most other people are like, diversify and do all these other things. Like for myself, I really only got rich on AppSumo. I've done a lot of stuff

• 12:38Speaker 00

  and I've tried so many things you've never heard of. And the same thing with these billionaires, like I was in FedEx Kinko's and the Paul Arfili, he found in Kinko's, sold it for 2.4 billion. He's like, I just did copiers for 34 years. That's a long time. And I was joking, the guy I bought my house from is a football player. He's a kicker. Do you know, I was joking about it this morning. Do you know what his day is like? His, what his day is like as a professional NFL kicker? Think about his Monday.

• 13:04Chris Williamson?

  Lots of kicking.

• 13:05Speaker 00

  And then Tuesday, and then Wednesday, and then, okay, at night, he watches kicking, and then Wednesday and Thursday and Friday, and then he kicks for 10 seconds on Sundays. And I, he loves kicking and he's a great person. I think it's finding the thing that the world wants and that you enjoy doing that you can do. Ideally, I'd say 10 years, 20 years, most of the billionaires, I'd say the second point. Once they found the one thing that's working, they stick with it for an extraordinary long period of time. Extraordinary, right? Almost none of them got rich in one way, like very quickly. I generally believe if it's coming, if it works quickly, great, but if the business gets built slowly. It goes away slowly, but it compounds in time and time and time. So I think that's a huge thing that doesn't get talked about because it's like, these guys aren't getting rich overnight.

• 13:49Speaker 00

  They're getting rich in 20 years. The other thing, a few other things that I've noticed is that they're working in billion or trillion dollar markets. Right? And a lot of it, let's even take AppSumo, we're, you know, almost a hundred million dollars a year in revenue. Doing software deals. It's, yes, we're skilled. Yes, we've stuck with it 15 years. But also software went from, there's 10 software products available. Now, 15 years later, there's tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of software products. So we were in a good wave and so being mindful, okay, YouTube, if I started in that, that's might get bigger. So can you look at Google Trends? Can you have your own intuition? Like, how can you look at some data to get that indication? And so social networking, there wasn't any Zuckerberg, right? Kinko's, there wasn't copiers and things like that.

• 14:31Speaker 00

  Basements, Larry Janeski, you know, there wasn't as many, anyone doing basements. And his, his funny line that I loved was, we showed up on time and sober. So professional, blue collar work. And, you know, energy traders and all these different things that I've interviewed. They worked in areas where you can make that amount of money. And I noticing like a funny example you can think about at home is physical therapy or masseuse. I have a masseuse, she comes to my house, shout out Claire. She gets paid 140 a session, which is great. It's like, how many sessions does she need to do to make a million? That's a lot of backs, right? Okay. Well, maybe she'll hire people. Great. Or then maybe she'll create the platform. Great. Or maybe she'll create software that can go to local businesses as well as online businesses. And so I think you have to be mindful of the, the opportunity you're thinking in for the market size.

• 15:16Speaker 00

  Now, I'd say last thing from billionaires, I don't know if all of them are very happy. I'm pretty happy being a multimillionaire. I'm really happy being a multimillionaire and I think when you hear people say, I would be a billionaire. None of these billionaires were like, we want to be billionaires. They were very excited about problems. And I, I, I wouldn't say, I don't have data, I didn't survey, like, you're happy or not happy because it's also subjective. But I don't know if a lot of them seemed really content with life. I got to interact with one of them and I won't, I won't call him out, but he liked, it was just some crazy shit. And I was like, wow, this guy's got a lot of things going on. And well, the reason I left Silicon Valley, the reason, you know, for me doing a lot of things like I wanted to, I want to live. I'm not here just to make so much money that I can have the nicest cemetery grave.

• 15:59Chris Williamson?

  Yep.

• 15:59Speaker 00

  All right. Like, okay, yes, I want a karaoke machine at my cemetery grave. I think that'd be really fun. I really think how cool that would be. Come over and like party with me. It's like, do, I gotta feel it. But I would say a lot of them seem to regret that they didn't balance the time with their families. Cause on your, you know, deathbed, people know this stuff, but we get very fixated on how much money, what's like, how am I comparing to this other person? Uh, when, you know, my girlfriend who's phenomenal, she, she doesn't care. She's like, I just care about who you are. And I think a lot of the people aiming sometimes for billion are so obsessed with that. Missed out on the overall balance of for themselves, for their family, for their friends, because they're so obsessed with the work.

• 16:36Chris Williamson?

  Dude, so much to go through there. That's, that's really, that's really great. Okay. So, um, first off, the, doing one thing, going narrow and incredibly deep, the very, very correct that there is this, you've got something going on. Now it's time to diversify after having done it for a small amount of time. Um, that doesn't, that really, really mega wealth and mega, mega success. I don't look at many people, unless you're a personal brand and what you're doing is kind of bestowing, like you're, if you're Shaq, right? Or like, if you're bestowing your, uh, seal of approval on multiple other businesses, but you're still

• 17:17Chris Williamson?

  only working on you, right? It's still, it's not Shaq giving himself a moniker or like becoming a, you know, a Cape Crusader at night or something like that. It's still just him. So that's very interesting. The consistency thing and being prepared to play long-term games as well.

• 17:35Chris Williamson?

  Makes complete sense, finding a very large ocean, one that's lot, hopefully getting bigger. I think, you know, the podcasting audience is growing at around about 30% between 20 and 30% a year ish, something like that. So if you just hold on to your market share, guess what?

• 17:51Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 17:51Chris Williamson?

  You get to grow at 20 to 30% per year.

• 17:53Speaker 00

  I would think with that question specifically, are you seeing a market that's going to be bigger? And others don't realize it's going to be bigger. When I started AppSumo, I was always fixated on the problem. Most people when they're starting businesses are fixated on solutions. AI, don't care. It's like crypto, don't care. What is it solve for the actual end person? And ideally it's yourself as a customer, but also others. And what are you seeing that if this problem actually helps someone? Can there be a lot more people in the future that you can help? And so when I started AppSumo, I went to my mentor and I was like, hey, I got this idea. Software deals. I think it's cool. I like, and all these businesses have the problem getting customers. I can solve that. He's like, yeah, it's not going to work. And the only way you can find out is with the customer. And very quickly I tested it. People wanted it and I was like, oh.

• 18:36Speaker 00

  So I think it was inspired by Mark Manson, but it's like, find something that other people are doubting or not sure, get validation of it if you can, very quickly. And then later, I would say if you stick with that, it can prove to be a very successful business. Cause if there's market opportunity and there's market awareness, there's market prices. There's market, everyone's then trying to get in it. You follow? So you have to find the thing where it's like, a lot of my best marketing is I found things before everybody else found it. And then I took full advantage of it.

• 19:00Chris Williamson?

  Well, they're going to find it eventually.

• 19:01Speaker 00

  Yeah. I mean, after AppSumo, I think six other people, maybe 10, 15 copied me. They're like, oh, software deals. That's cool. I'll just copy him. And then none of them took it seriously. I think that was among a few other things. They took it as a hobby, right? It's like, okay, I'm going to learn to swim, but I'm going to swim maybe once a week. That's fine. I'm swimming every day if I'm trying to get better.

• 19:19Chris Williamson?

  You're not going to become a professional.

• 19:21Speaker 00

  There's a difference between amateur and professional. There's a difference between like major leagues and minor leagues. And a lot of the time, it's just that, are you putting in the effort and the focus on the one thing? And I've tried it like, you know, when I was doing social media, launching my YouTube channel, I tried every platform. Instagram, Tik Tok, LinkedIn, YouTube, Twitter, blogging. And I was like, it's really hard to win all of these, even podcasting. And it's like, let me just pick one that I feel like the work I'm doing has proportional to the results in terms of the views I'm getting relative to the effort. And I've always thought for me was law of 100. So it's like, how do I do a hundred videos before I quit? Cause I think we all know we quit too soon. Everyone has. So I'm curious for your journey as well, how you've not quit. I think that's mostly.

• 19:55Chris Williamson?

  Enjoyment. You know, I did this long before anybody listened. Like, if you look at the graph of the show's growth over time, it's flat for three and a half years. Three and a half years in, we'd had Peterson on the show. So it's still flat comparatively to them. Only 18 months ago, did I do Rogan. And it was, if you look back to the point at which I go on Rogan, it's like, that, it's so small. We did more plays in December of last year than in the entire first three and a half years of the show. We accumulated more subscribers in one month than we did in the entire last three and a half years of the, the first three and a half years of the show. Eighty-five percent of the audience found us last year, and we were at half a million

• 20:38Chris Williamson?

  subs at the beginning of last year, and eighty-five percent of them found us. It's just, they're compounding, and this is going back to that Paul Graham thing that I was talking about before. As time progresses, each unit of your effort will be worth so much more. And that's why the stick with it muscle is something that's very important. But the easiest way to stick with it is to enjoy what you're doing, or to do it regardless of what the external accolades are. If you would do this thing for free, you will win, because the person that loves walking will way out walk the person who has to walk every single day. Oh, my God, I've got to get myself up and go for another walk again. That guy just want, he try and stop him. He just wants to walk. So for me, yeah, I found the intersection of having conversations, learning and curiosity.

• 21:23Chris Williamson?

  And that was the show. So.

• 21:25Speaker 00

  Have you ever given up too soon, or wish you would have stuck with something? Because everyone has. Everyone, like my podcast, I started it crushed, and then it wasn't at a hundred thousand downloads an episode.

• 21:35Chris Williamson?

  Bailed out.

• 21:35Speaker 00

  Bailed out. And I gave up for six months, and I came back, and now I'm at 7,000 an episode. And I would beg for 30,000. And I'm happy with that. And I focused on other things. But it was a good reminder of like, same thing with AppSumo, same exact thing with you, where first year 300,000, second year 3 million, then we were flat. And then last year was 76.7 million. Right. And what's crazy is we've had, and it's amazing, you know, the partners are happy, customers are happy, team is happy. What's amazing though, we have days now that were the same as years.

• 22:04Chris Williamson?

  Crazy.

• 22:05Speaker 00

  And so I, I think one of the things that I've been really reflecting on my leadership style and business strategist is less aggressiveness. I know that's counterintuitive when most people talk about, and it sounds like, I'm not saying this is necessarily your approach, but if you're less aggressive, it's more sustainable.

• 22:19Chris Williamson?

  Well, you, you can jog for longer than you can sprint.

• 22:22Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 22:22Chris Williamson?

  And psychologically, that is, that is the way you're, you're dealing with this stamina bar inside of your mind. That you don't know how, you don't know where it is. It's like playing a computer game, but you don't know where the bottom is. And you're just thinking, I just presume that you need to do the thing that you're doing for another 10 years. Just presume that you always need, okay, could I keep doing this?

• 22:40Speaker 00

  Can you say presume again? You say it's so cool.

• 22:42Chris Williamson?

  Presume.

• 22:43Speaker 00

  God, that's good.

• 22:43Chris Williamson?

  Yeah, I know. All right. So.

• 22:45Speaker 00

  Hang on. So this is the thing, and I think this is such a powerful moment. Most people just don't start. Most people are like, I like to have a podcast. I like to have an e-commerce. I like to even have a wife. And so for me, what I've noticed is like, what's the thing you could do right now? Like everyone could put out a show. And for me, it sounds similar. I love doing it. Like I've been putting out stuff since 2000 before the internet was around. Right. I think you're what? How old? 23?

• 23:10Chris Williamson?

  What?

• 23:10Speaker 00

  How old are you?

• 23:11Chris Williamson?

  35.

• 23:12Speaker 00

  Okay. So I was gonna say before you were born, but you just look young.

• 23:14Chris Williamson?

  Oh, yeah.

• 23:14Speaker 00

  And so I've just been doing it because I like it. People are like, why'd you do this? I enjoy it, but it is, there's definitely something there. Getting started and then finding a way. Maybe it's law of 100. So you do 100 episodes, but doing it ideally finding something people want and then finding ways to stick with it.

• 23:28Chris Williamson?

  So 90% of podcasts don't make it past episode three. And of the 10% that do, 90% of those don't make it past episode 20. So by making 21 podcasts, you're in the top percentile of all podcasters ever in history.

• 23:45Speaker 00

  And so you're doing your podcast. And I think these are the kind of stories more people need to hear. Same with my YouTube channel. When I was doing my YouTube channel, when I first put, first video was 300 views. I was just shirtless in my room on my phone. Second video, same thing. I didn't think I put a shirt on. And then it was like a thousand views and I just kept sticking with it. And I was like, I just like this. And I was playing around with things. And I did three videos a week for every single week for a year. And then finally at the end of the year, I was like, okay, I want to get more subs and I'm doing the same what everybody else is doing, but I want to try different. And so we did a 180. We were just like, let's go crazy and knock on doors. But I think the fact that we're like, we're going to do at least a hundred videos this whole year. Definitely kept us going. So I'm curious for you, besides, we enjoyed it. What were you telling yourself these first three years? I think that's the part that people don't really want to hear, but that's what they need to hear.

• 24:27Chris Williamson?

  To be honest, man, I wasn't telling myself much. I was hungry to to establish myself in a world that I respected. So I respected a lot of the people that I was on, I was in the wake of. So I respected the Rogans and the Petersons and the Jockos and the Sam Harris's and the Orlando Botons and the School of School of Lives. I respected them and I, they gave me so much. They improved my life so much, they helped me to understand myself that I figured, well, look, if I can, even if I'm a thousand miles behind them, if I'm moving along that same sort of a track, it's definitely going to benefit me. And if it's going to benefit me, it's almost certainly going to benefit some non insignificant minority of other people as well. So let's just keep on doing this thing.

• 25:10Chris Williamson?

  And then, yeah, before you know it, kind of everything catches up. It's very strange and it must be the same with you too. Like when all of the things that you wanted to have happen kind of occur. And like you go, holy fuck, like, is this what arriving feels like? Have I arrived? How full of myself am I to think that I'm arrived? How, how like uncongratulatory am I to think the thought? Am I the sort of person that has the thought? Am I the sort of person that thinks, have I arrived? Like, and it's just this infinite regress of like self molestation. But yeah, it's like, um, it's very interesting. It's very, very interesting. I've been reflecting on this, like the, the trajectory of journeys and stuff and where people stop and where people keep going and things an awful lot.

• 25:50Chris Williamson?

  But, you know, the thing that you touched on at the end, which I was really fascinated to get into is billionaires and whether or not they say that wealth is worth it. You've sat down opposite these guys that are worth an awful lot of money. What do you see in their eyes when you talk to them?

• 26:07Speaker 00

  It's the things unsaid. And one that stood out was Power affiliate found in Kinko's sold 2.4 billion.

• 26:13Chris Williamson?

  What's Kinko's?

• 26:14Speaker 00

  FedEx.

• 26:15Chris Williamson?

  Right.

• 26:15Speaker 00

  You know, FedEx has stores?

• 26:17Chris Williamson?

  Yes.

• 26:17Speaker 00

  The ones you go in, every single one of those stores was a Kinko's.

• 26:21Chris Williamson?

  Okay. So that was the brand before FedEx?

• 26:23Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 26:23Chris Williamson?

  Fine. Okay.

• 26:24Speaker 00

  So back in the day, my, my father came to America, sold copiers. So I'm familiar with the copiers and fax businesses. And, uh, yeah, so all these stores that had copy machines around, because that was the way you printed things back in the day. And so one of the things he said, and that kind of saddened me a little bit was, he's like, I was stressed for every year of 34 years. I was like, oh, that doesn't sound really enjoyable. And is there, is there other ways? And there are other ways, but that was definitely telling. The other people out there, I would say John Paul Mitchell, John Paul DeJoria, you know, Paul Mitchell Hair Care Patron Tequila. He was one of the few where I really, I really idolize him. I love that guy. Doesn't have a computer, doesn't have a computer on his desk, nothing. And he seems very kind to himself and to others.

• 27:09Speaker 00

  And I felt really inspired by his story where his whole thing was, and he was homeless twice. His story is kind of crazy, right? The things that I really took away was I felt like, one, he didn't try to do a lot of stuff. He's like, let me find something I really believe in, just one thing. If you think about it, he really has two products, hair care and tequila. That's it. That's it. Both billion dollar business. He sold Patron for three and a half billion. The other thing he said that I thought was really telling and interesting was selling is the most important skill for him. Selling. And he says, I love to be in the reorder business. So I try to find a product that's the best. And at the time, now it's obvious, but again, we come back to non-obvious, obvious things. There wasn't a $30 bottle of tequila.

• 27:54Speaker 00

  Now $100 bottle of tequila is like the norm. And he said, people have to reorder it. And to your original point, to my experiences with AppSumo, I'm the customer. YouTube, I'm my watcher, my book, I'm the reader.

• 28:08Speaker 00

  He tried the tequila Patron. He's like, holy shit, there's nothing else. Like, I love it. And this is the part again, that people never hear these parts of the story. He spent two years without a lot of sales. He just believed it though. He's like, this, there's something here with it. And I think you have, the same when I worked at Facebook, we saw the early data of people going insane on this, even though externally, people didn't know how big we were going to be. And so I think you have to have some early like success or win to feel like, okay, I like it. And people seem to like it. I'm going to stick with that because I think what happens is people find something no one wants and they stick with that probably too long. And so with him, it was after two years, finally, I don't know if it was the Oscars or some finally huge celebrity thing, finally like, okay, now people know about it and they're like, wow, Patron Tequila. I think seven years later, then it finally sold.

• 28:47Chris Williamson?

  I had a conversation with Dean Phillips, who is a Democratic candidate for the presidency this year. He's also the guy who found Belvedere vodka and Talenti gelato, both of them.

• 29:01Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 29:02Chris Williamson?

  And with Belvedere vodka, they were pretty flat, pretty flat, believed in it, believed in it, believed in it. And then one morning, he puts on MTV and Jay-Z's there with just bottles and bottles and bottles of Belvedere and everything just goes completely berserk after that.

• 29:17Speaker 00

  Yeah, you can definitely increase your chances of luck, right? If you, but it's not sitting at home waiting for it or looking in the mirror trying to manifest it. Like there was John Paul DeJoria selling it and selling it and selling it. And so I love that he talked about the reorder business, right? Are you selling a one-off or something that, like a podcast, like maybe people want to keep listening to it. And then I would say last thing that I admired about him, and I'll contrast it with another person as well. The day he sold his company, he donated 50 million bucks. And I think a lot of people are like, ah, you know, I'm gonna donate or I'm gonna do these things. And it's kind of bullshit. It's not authentic. And it reflected to me how genuine he is about being just a kind person. And I felt like he, to me, in my interview with him and the hour and a half I got to spend with him at his house, it was just like, wow, what a person who

• 29:59Speaker 00

  seems to be content. He's got enough. And I think most of the other billionaires I've met, I don't know if it's ever enough. And it's like, you're just gonna never be fully content with life. And I don't know, I think that's something I've worked on in the past few years. Just like, is this enough money? Yeah. Do I have a great enough girlfriend? Not great enough. She's amazing. I have an amazing girlfriend, you know, like, do I have enough attention, right? Otherwise, it's this external chase that just can never end. We're never satisfied. And definitely some of these other billionaires, I don't want to, I appreciate them sharing their stories. But they seem like it's never been enough. It seemed like they never spent enough time with their family. And I even got some, I get texts from them and I'm like, oh, I sent a show to my girlfriend. She's like, holy shit.

• 30:39Chris Williamson?

  What are the biggest regrets of rich people?

• 30:42Speaker 00

  The family. It's almost always the family. It's like, I just wasn't there with my family.

• 30:48Speaker 00

  So they got divorced, the kids don't really interact with them, or maybe they ideally do. And I also say there's some level of specific billionaire, it's just like, it's never enough and he's still out there chasing it. And I think that level of dissatisfaction, which is helpful in being an entrepreneur. An entrepreneur is someone who says, hey, I have a problem, I can do something about it. Great. Eventually, though, you might need to be satisfied that the problem is solved or that you can be content with dissatisfaction and satisfaction.

• 31:15Chris Williamson?

  There's a

• 31:18Chris Williamson?

  there's an idea that I came up with that it turns out there was already a name for. I fucking hate it when that happens.

• 31:24Speaker 00

  Dude, they're all thought of.

• 31:25Chris Williamson?

  I'm forging new cognitive ground here. Let me explain the world of psychology. So I called it the vestigial pattern bias and it was already called the Einstein effect. So do you know why qwerty keyboards are qwerty? Why they have that, those letters at the top?

• 31:40Speaker 00

  It's not the fastest. I don't recall.

• 31:42Chris Williamson?

  So when typewriters were first made, if you have letters next to each other that are commonly used, they can often stick. If you're trying to use one, then the other, they'll stick and both will fire when you only meant to hit one. So what they did was they tried to create a map of the keys where letters that were commonly used were not together so much. And that would free this up. So this is, it's called path dependency, right? It's the same reason why railway tracks are now just like locked in. Like, at what point are we able to change the width of railway tracks from whatever they were originally? So there's actually a myth, this isn't true, and I propagated some disinformation.

• 32:23Chris Williamson?

  There's a myth that the, the size of the space shuttle is the width of two horses' asses. It's not true. It's not true.

• 32:31Speaker 00

  Everyone.

• 32:31Chris Williamson?

  Sorry, like I must apologize to the internet. My point being the path dependency is there is a pattern that existed before and you're kind of locked in as you move forward. I think that there's an equivalent here with people that want to improve and grow their business, that especially when you begin, you're the guy that puts a thousand people in a spreadsheet, or you're the guy that splits up two and a half thousand people into 50 person broadcast list and send stuff out individually to them. You're the person that follows up every other month for six months to some guest that doesn't know who the fuck you are. Like, that is a very specific skill set, and it's very, very useful in the beginning. But it is a fuel that holds you back when you get later down the line. The tools that

• 33:16Chris Williamson?

  got you here won't get you there.

• 33:17Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 33:18Chris Williamson?

  And letting go of that is particularly difficult because you think, well, you have proof, especially if you come from a working class background, especially if you come from that spit and sawdust and from the northeast of the UK, you know, a 30,000 pound wage there is like, you've done really fucking well. So these are people that earn their stripes. These are people that just, you know, roll the sleeves up and get back to work. Then realizing that the skill set is now to relinquish all of that, to tell other people, to encourage other people, to teach other people to be able to do that on your behalf, is it's a completely new skill set, completely new skill set.

• 34:01Speaker 00

  What happens when you arrive?

• 34:04Speaker 00

  I resonate that so much. My twenties, I was really angry and bitter. I got fired at Facebook. I got fired at Mint.com. And I'm like, holy shit, this is great motivation. Like, that's great fuel. And at some point, though, you know, all my content I say is for the underdog. And someone said to me, like, I don't think you're an underdog.

• 34:21Chris Williamson?

  You're not the underdog anymore?

• 34:22Speaker 00

  No, no. Maybe I still like that message in some way, but then I also think it's from going to therapy, having relationship coaching, have a business coach, have a CEO coach, journaling, you know, whatever it is for each person, finding, readjusting maybe that vision, readjusting like, okay, maybe I don't need to stop proving them wrong. Maybe I can just start proving myself right. Maybe I don't need to prove anybody else anymore. And I can just think about what makes me proud. And then maybe a lot of it for all of us, which we can all do, is probably something we're a little scared of. And then think about what that is and be like, okay, let me go into that a little bit and see what happens. And so you are right with these people where, hey, we're dissatisfied, hey, some daddy issue even, or whatever it is that leads them to the success. I think that's beautiful how you put it. Maybe reevaluating, like, is this still serving you in this next phase?

• 35:06Speaker 00

  And, you know, let's take Zuckerberg as an example. He didn't start Facebook to be like, I'm going to create a takeover the world. He's like, I'm just going to build something in a weekend, see if I can change my life and meet some girls. And then as it worked, he was like, oh shit, my vision changed. Now I'm going to take over the world.

• 35:18Chris Williamson?

  Yeah.

• 35:19Speaker 00

  And then now his vision has changed where I'm sure it's something else.

• 35:23Chris Williamson?

  It's interesting to think about the arriving part and about the, what does it mean to let go of what used to fuel you? Like, that's very, I think a lot of people have this concern. And I hear this quite regularly. I did this live tour toward the back end of last year, which was fun. I did Dubai, the UK, Ireland, Canada, US. We were everywhere, like 17 shows in 28 days or something. It was really fun. And one of the most common questions that people asked, a couple of them, how do I know if the thing that I'm about to pursue or thinking about pursuing or pursuing is the right thing? So like optionality and multiplicity of options is a challenge. And I get swamped with the paradox of choice, basically is that one.

• 36:08Chris Williamson?

  And then another one that was really common was I'm scared to congratulate myself too much. Because if I do, I'm worried that I'm going to kill my drive and my motivation to keep going forward. And I used to have that in my experience. I'd be interested to know your thoughts. If you are the sort of person that's sufficiently driven, that also has the ability to do that level of introspection, your drive is like a nuclear reactor inside of you that just isn't going to stop. And by the time that you've got to the stage where you can ask that question, because you've achieved maybe a bit of success or comfort or whatever.

• 36:51Chris Williamson?

  The habit and the consistency and the momentum is just you're freewheeling downhill at 100 miles an hour now and you're like, I didn't try and pump the brakes, but it doesn't really work. And if I take my foot off the accelerator, guess what? We still go quicker. So, uh, yeah, those were, those were two interesting things, but I think the, uh, the fear of being thankful, being grateful, it's like, this is my edge. My edge is my, my bitterness, my resentment, my desire to prove people wrong, my underdog story that I continue to tell myself. This is where I get my fuel from. This is what pushes me forward. I don't think that it's, it may be what gets people started, but it, it doesn't seem to be what keeps healthy people going.

• 37:30Speaker 00

  I would, I would agree. I, I think you can end up in the same destination. It's just more, how do you want to feel along the way? And I, and myself, uh, I'm, I'm like the worst person in the world to myself. I think we all are actually for, for the most part. And one of the things I reflected on turning 40 recently was like, wow, I could have gotten here just in a lot friendlier of a way. Well, I didn't have to be literally, oh, you're guilting about you drank too much, or why is this business fail? Or why is this girl suck? Or how come you're not doing better here? And it's like, who are you talking to? And so one of my buddies taught me this thing a few years ago, where it's like, anytime a negative thing, you criticize yourself, just say a positive thing right afterwards. And it's silly. It's silly. A lot of stuff, you know, million dollar, it's like kind of little silly things, but you start doing it and I'll start doing it in the stupidest

• 38:15Speaker 00

  stuff. And then I've noticed now, I don't think about it anymore. But when I try to usually guilt myself, it doesn't come up. And I'll do silly, like I'm mountain biking and I remember I went over a rock and I was like, good job. And I was like, who the fuck said that? Like, where did that come from?

• 38:30Chris Williamson?

  What, are you a disapproving fucking like PE coach?

• 38:33Speaker 00

  Yeah, but it's, dude, this is for all of us, man. Like, oh, my dad or my person would be disappointed in me. Who, who is there? Who's that voice? You know, like the surrender experiment. I don't know if you've read that.

• 38:42Chris Williamson?

  Yes, by Michael Singer.

• 38:44Speaker 00

  Gang, gangbuster book. I love that one. And it's just noticing this, these negative things that we're criticizing, which doesn't mean that we can't acknowledge it. Like, hey, you did something wrong. Like, I wrote an article that I sent to near y'all and he said, hey, it sucked. And I was like, yeah, he's right. But I didn't have to be mean and take myself down in that moment. It could be, yeah, he's right. I think I can get a bit better here. That was great feedback. Thank you, Nir. And then I went and made it better. And he's like, good article. And I was like, yeah, I know it is good because I put more effort into it. I'm proud of it. And I think we can, if we're all more mindful of that, and just even small moments like Cookie, whereas we're talking to other people. Or I was on a show yesterday and I was like, I don't know if I did my best. And guess what? That's okay. I can get better. And I can ask them like, hey, did you like the show? What did you guys think? Give any feedback? Actually, I thought you were good.

• 39:29Chris Williamson?

  Interesting.

• 39:29Speaker 00

  Yeah. So that's definitely something where, uh, years now, maybe past three years, it's just like any negative that you say about yourself, just at least try to say positive right after. It's okay to have a negative thought. You can't change that. That's not going to go away. But the more you recognize the positive in us, which we all have way more than we realize, that you just do that over and over and over and over and over again. You're like, overall, eventually you're like, ah, pretty good person.

• 39:49Chris Williamson?

  There's a lesson that the internet seems determined to not learn.

• 39:57Chris Williamson?

  Which is people with success aren't allowed to be unhappy with their lives. And it blows my mind because I completely understand and still me, you know, looking up at, like you look at a Rogan or whatever, who's a friend. And you go, this guy's got his, fuck it. We're having a nice conversation. I can open the door. Spotify briefly, a couple of, about a month and a half ago, added a new piece of functionality onto their platform. They added stories, uh, which are these vertical scroll clips that people could swipe through when they landed on a

• 40:39Chris Williamson?

  channel's account on Spotify. So you'd have that little circle, kind of like you do on Instagram. And when you pressed it, AI would have gone into the episode and found maybe a 90 second salient section. And you can swipe through and it would tell you stuff. What it also did was it was the first time ever that Spotify made follow accounts public. So for about two and a half to three weeks, you could click on this little circle and it would come up and it would show the follower counts of all of the, like, everybody on the planet. So I see this and immediately just light up every WhatsApp chat that I'm a part of with, like, can you see this on your account? And some people did, so it'd been rolled out to some people and not to others.

• 41:24Chris Williamson?

  So we paid some, like, Vietnamese VA to scrape the top 500 shows and put them all into a spreadsheet. And then they removed the, the functionality. But Rogan is in a different universe to everybody else. Just for context, his show's 26 times bigger than mine just by followers alone.

• 41:47Chris Williamson?

  It's a complete other, other world. But you would look at somebody like Joe and you go, he owns his own comedy club. And he's got this beautiful house and he's got the biggest podcast in the world and everybody knows his name and he moves culture and he does it like whilst having fun and he can take mushrooms and he can smoke weed and he's got the, like, and if he was to complain about something that he was dealing with psychologically or the side effects of some of the, the fame or the success or whatever, it's like champagne problems, right? Uh, all right, mate, yeah, yeah, difficult for you, like such and such can't pay their bills this week. And you're totally right, like, the material conditions of that person can be perfectly illustrious, right?

• 42:28Chris Williamson?

  And yet, their inner experience can be not only as bad as somebody who's down there, but they also have got the layered guilt on top that they don't even have any material concerns to use as an excuse. And I've been fascinated by this, by this problem, like champagne problems or Titanic problems is another one.

• 42:48Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah, I mean, I regret that I was so unhappy all along the way to get here, that I made it so much harder on myself and so much more disappointed in myself and-

• 42:57Chris Williamson?

  Could you have done it without that?

• 43:00Speaker 00

  I don't think so.

• 43:02Chris Williamson?

  There it is.

• 43:03Speaker 00

  I don't know, man, I don't know. It definitely motivated me, feeling that so many people doubted me. Like, I got fired once and I fired twice and realized that unless I'm gonna be an entrepreneur, then no one else is gonna take my livelihood away again. You know, Mark did it once and then Aaron did it at Mint. And I thanked them because it did lead me on a path. It's hard to replay the entire game, but I do recognize like, did I need to make it so hard on myself all along the way? And now in the 40s stage, which I remember being 20 thinking about 40 year olds and I'm like, dude, shut up, old man. You know, let me just hustle my ass off and grind. It's like, okay, try it out. Do it your way. I think my, what I'm noticing is I'm getting older is that my baseline is generally more content. And I'm, what's crazy is I'm having the exact same problems. Not, not I'm creating problems, but like someone quits. This person

• 43:46Speaker 00

  doesn't work out. This customer didn't happen. This partner's upset, whatever it is. But my understanding and way I'm responding to it has changed and evolved. And so my baseline overall of contentment is higher and then my swings of, oh my God, I'm doing partying and I'm whatever is happening, going to the Playboy mansion, which was crazy. You know, Ron Jeremy was there. You know, Ron Jeremy?

• 44:07Chris Williamson?

  Of course.

• 44:07Speaker 00

  Yeah. Yeah. I got kicked out of the party, but I was like, Ron Jeremy, you're my dad.

• 44:10Chris Williamson?

  What were you doing that got you kicked out of the Playboy party?

• 44:14Speaker 00

  Well, okay, I'll tell that story, but the swings were just so much crazier. It was like, that is a high versus like, you know, then I'm feeling bad at myself and going to India, right? Like, I don't know what's going on in life. I feel like India is the place you get answers from, obviously. Oh, that party, I started a business doing payments for Facebook games. Remember like Farmville, all those annoying things?

• 44:33Chris Williamson?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 44:34Speaker 00

  So we were building the games and my dream was to move to Argentina and build those games. And Naval funded me, went to Argentina, realized I hated making games. Then Tim Ferriss came and hang out. I mean, it was just a story. And then I moved back to America to here because my partners are going to quit. And we're like, let's just build something that we need. And so we built payments for games. And one of the payments was signing up for like affiliate offers, like sign up for Netflix subscription, like all these different affiliate leads. And so if you were in the top three affiliate sales with one of the ad networks, that you got to go to the Playboy mansion. And so we worked our asses off to go to the Playboy mansion. It was, it was just three of us and our intern. You imagine as an intern, shout out Sung Ho, he had a great year that year. And yeah, we got a bus ride and I had sex in the grotto. I

• 45:19Speaker 00

  was like, you gotta just do it.

• 45:20Chris Williamson?

  Take all the boxes, man.

• 45:21Speaker 00

  Yeah. And then Ron Jeremy was there and I was so drunk.

• 45:24Chris Williamson?

  Outperforming you.

• 45:25Speaker 00

  He would definitely.

• 45:25Chris Williamson?

  Pump for pump next to you.

• 45:28Speaker 00

  I grew up on him. So I go up to him and I'm so blessed. Oh, man. And I'm like, Ron Jeremy, you're my dad. You're my dad, man. You raised me. And he's like, who the fuck are you? I was just like, I was like, oh, sorry, dude, I'm wasted. He's like, yeah, yeah. He's like, get the fuck. He's like, trying to talk to the chicks. And then I got into an argument with the Playboy bunny. I don't even remember what it's about, but I got kicked out. I still had a great time. Still a good time. Still gotta say, I go to the Playboy mansion. Still gotta go see like the zoo they have there and all that. I haven't told this story ever. That was an experience.

• 45:58Chris Williamson?

  Oh, yeah.

• 45:58Speaker 00

  And so that's like a high that I remember going back to the hotel room and having a really bad argument with my girlfriend.

• 46:03Chris Williamson?

  I can imagine that that would have been an issue. Yeah.

• 46:07Chris Williamson?

  So the, the, the looking back and it's that insight that

• 46:14Chris Williamson?

  the resentment, the pain, the bitterness is really, really potent fuel to get you started, but it's pretty toxic to keep you going. But I really don't know how you have proof that this is an effective strategy and letting go of something that you know works to be like, oh, yeah, like, you know, I did the, I covered every email. I ensured that all of the stuff I was every single Slack message. I made sure that I was on top of whatever it is, like the level of attention to detail or the level of bitterness or the whatever it is that you do. And then to go, and now it's time for me to transcend or, you know, grow out of that somehow.

• 46:55Chris Williamson?

  That's really hard, but Aubrey Marcus, when he released his book, and this is at the announcement, I think for hitting the New York Times list, maybe like four or five years ago. And he gives this speech and it sounds very similar to something you were talking about. He said, I spent so much of my life terrified of what I was going to become and whether I was going to be right here, right now. God, how much time did I waste afraid I wasn't going to be right here, right now? If I could change, the only thing I'd change about my whole life would be fearing less that I wouldn't get right here, the place that I was going anyway. I wouldn't change all the mistakes and mishaps. I needed those, but all the constant worry that I wasn't going to make it, that took me out of enjoying the moment.

• 47:38Chris Williamson?

  It took me out of enjoying these experiences, smiling or eating my lunch or doing whatever I was doing. Know your mission. Have faith you're going to get there. Wherever you go, it's going to be all right. Just find ways to get out of your head.

• 47:50Speaker 00

  Holy fuckballs. That was great. Shout out Aubrey.

• 47:53Chris Williamson?

  Phenomenal.

• 47:53Speaker 00

  Thank you.

• 47:54Chris Williamson?

  Phenomenal.

• 47:55Speaker 00

  Yeah, it's thinking that the failures aren't so bad. We ourselves are not so bad. One of my best friends, Tynan, and again, here's a hack in life. Just be around positive people. I know it sounds silly, but in your town, if you're around, people are like, hey, you can leave here. Hey, you can do anything you want. Maybe it's online. I don't know if that that was the case, but I know for Tynan, he's always saying, Noah, your life is awesome and it can get better. And he's telling me all the time. And it's like, that's a great person to be around. And so noticing.

• 48:20Chris Williamson?

  George Mack has this idea of sofa friends and treadmill friends. So it's some friends, after you've spent time with them, you need to go online to sofa. And other friends, after you've spent time with them, you want to go and run on a treadmill. And you should aspire to have as many treadmill friends.

• 48:33Speaker 00

  Treadmill's good.

• 48:33Chris Williamson?

  Tynan.

• 48:35Speaker 00

  Get a Titan in your life.

• 48:36Chris Williamson?

  Yeah.

• 48:37Speaker 00

  And I mean, the other thing I've done, I mean, I record my conversations with them. So I'll listen to them back. And that's whether you put it out publicly or just for yourself, it's been helpful. I think one of the transformative, because I'm trying to, I loved your post about success because it's easy when people are successful, but they don't have a lot of podcasts of all the people who've failed. Right? Like those don't, it's not, it's okay. What are you going to, maybe you'll learn from that too. And so I'm trying to reflect like, where was this transformative moment? And I don't think there was one definitive, like, okay, it changed everything. But if I had to summarize and try to boil it down, it's when I stopped avoiding. When I stopped, you know, my, my old therapist would say, the only way in is through. And so I quit his therapy and I found a new one. But afterwards.

• 49:16Chris Williamson?

  I don't like, I like the only way through is around.

• 49:18Speaker 00

  Yeah, just like, what's the shortcut? Is there a long cut? No one ever talks about the long cuts. And the long cut, which is the, I would say the right cut for me is I transformed my life to feeling more content and at peace with inside was what are the hard things I'm really avoiding in life? And I was avoiding, I was avoiding work. I was avoiding, what's the worst thing I really want to do in work that I can do, but I'm scared of. And that was being back at AppSumo. Cause I was, I basically took three years off and I was just making all this money, not doing really anything. And the guy, the guy who was running it quit. So that was kind of a forced thing where I was like, oh, I have to face this. So that was then getting back to being a CEO and ruining and messing up the company for two years. And finally, last year, it's like, oh, shit. Okay, maybe I can. The thing I was most afraid of, and I thought was scary, I can overcome. And this is true for everyone.

• 50:03Speaker 00

  Like, what's the hard thing we're avoiding? Next is relationships. Okay, I would like to have a partner. I'd like someone to like me. I'd like to like myself. But then my behavior was partying, and my behavior was like going on trying to hookups. It's like, all right, well, that's not what you say you want to do. Your behavior is not aligned to it. What's the hard thing? Hard thing is taking yourself seriously. Not to say you can't have fun, but okay, you want to have a partner with partner. Let's take that seriously. Let's get a coach. This woman Stephanie Riggs, she's amazing. She's on Instagram, she has great stuff, really practical. Working with her, feeling more worthy through that practice of just talking with her about it, doing things that made me feel good about myself. Like, there's a simple question. Does this make me feel proud of myself? Doing drugs or not doing drugs? Sometimes, yeah. But no, mostly it was not doing it. And I'm like, wow, I'm feeling better and better. And then, you know, two months later, I found

• 50:47Speaker 00

  a partner. It's like, oh, is that a coincidence? But no, it's like, because the discomfort in a moment of not doing the thing that was easier, led me then to find the thing that was better. And I think it was just like this, and you know, the work, myself, the relationship, and all these things, like even Million Dollar Weekend, it was like, I can't write a book that's going to help people. You know, I've done it time and time, and I've helped all these people. And then finally facing it and doing it, I was like, ah. And I think that's kind of the message of myself, the book, we all can do it. Whether you're from a small town in New England, in North England, right, or wherever, we all can face these hard things, and we can all live these great lives. It's just, are we willing to face it? And I think that most people can. It's just like, okay, what can you do today to face it? And how do you start that right now?

• 51:28Chris Williamson?

  The magic you are looking for is in the work you're avoiding.

• 51:31Speaker 00

  I know, but I just want to get around it.

• 51:33Chris Williamson?

  Yeah.

• 51:34Speaker 00

  And eventually, you can, you can. But I think when people, I think the question you said earlier is so interesting, because I don't think about, am I reaching my potential anymore? I don't, doesn't even cross my mind. I don't wonder if I am or not.

• 51:45Chris Williamson?

  Could you, so this is a really good question, and I'm glad that I get to talk to you about it. Can you transcend that concern about whether or not I'm reaching my potential? Or can you move it to one side and dispense with it if you haven't done something that gives you a sufficient amount of validation externally from the world?

• 52:11Speaker 00

  What I've noticed is that there's never enough. You know, I was in therapy with a many therapist and he's like, when is it enough? And if you had all that fame, what's going to change? Nothing. So we have to change something else. And so what I've recognized for everyone out there is what's something that matters to you? Maybe it's a podcast, maybe it's a relationship, maybe it's writing a book, maybe it's being a good father. And so part one is something you want, whatever, everyone's got their own desires. And part two is putting to work on it. And what is, when people say put the work out, I'm always like, what's the work? Can you tell me what the work is like doing it and doing it and doing it and doing it? And all the things we're most proud of ourselves in are always the hardest. Like what stuff you're proud of, I would bet a lot of money you're proud of the show.

• 52:51Speaker 00

  And why? Because you, you did it when no one was watching. You stuck your ass with it and you kept going and going. And yeah, now there's some results for it. But I think even if it wasn't as big, I think you'd still feel proud because you did things that was something that was challenging.

• 53:01Chris Williamson?

  Yeah.

• 53:02Speaker 00

  And I think that's true for most of the things that all of us recognize that we never said that's our potential or not. We're just, we're proud. And so how do we build up more of an internal validation? And mostly, again, it's things you want and things that you've worked hard on.

• 53:12Chris Williamson?

  But this, again, this comes back to that question. Can you take pride in internal validation without external validation? So it's the Naval quote where he says, it is easier to achieve our material desires than to announce them. And to say, I don't care about driving a beat up Toyota Corolla because my last car was a Ferrari. It's way easier to do that. It's way easier to say, you know, I'm really happy to settle down with my girlfriend and, and do this thing. After you've been pumping at the Playboy mansion, you know? I have a friend, I have a friend who was a pickup artist for a long time. And I remember asking him a question about, dude, you're really into this pickup artistry thing. It's just a revolving door of chicks, right?

• 53:57Chris Williamson?

  And you're like, this is, you're really, really passionate about this thing. He's like, yeah, yeah, I am. My future wife better be thankful for all of this. I'm like, please explain to me how you have somehow laid at the feet of your future wife? All of the efforts for you to spray it across the north of England at the moment? He's like, well, you know, when I'm with my future wife and walking down the street with our two and a half kids and a golden retriever. I don't ever want to look at two Brazilian chicks and think, I want to know what it's like to fuck two Brazilian chicks. I want to have ticked off all of the different things that I've got to do all the way down. And although that I think was quite largely just cope, reverse engineered cope. There's something true in it, which is.

• 54:38Chris Williamson?

  We need to prove, a lot of the time, we need the world to tell us that we are enough before we can say it to ourselves. And maybe some of the billionaires that you spoke to are really far down that spectrum where there is basically no amount of world saying, yes, well done, that they can get to before, or maybe it would be a trillion or 100 trillion or whatever you're pointing at yourself.

• 55:00Speaker 00

  It's for themselves. They never get to a point where they can say it for themselves.

• 55:05Speaker 00

  It's like, I'm with my partner now and she's amazing. I don't question having more. Cause I have enough. And I do think, yeah, try, I think you have to try things out. It's like, yes, you can marry your first boyfriend. Yes, you can do those things. And it can work too. But try things out in life. Experiment. Find the job that I tried a day job. That sucked. Tried to work for other people, got fired. It's like, I gotta find another way.

• 55:24Speaker 00

  And so at this point, I don't, yeah, it's weird. I don't think about finding another person or that, oh, man, I'd love to have sex with more people. I'm like, I'm really getting deeper with this one person. There's a, I don't know if it's Esther Perel or Brene Brown. It's like, if you want variety in relationships, you heard this quote, if you want a variety in relationship, date one person.

• 55:42Speaker 00

  That's good. I know when I was single, I was like, well, that's good. And there's truth in that, right? We think we need more of these experiences. And I think it's good to get them. But sometimes you find something and you have to, like, if you hire someone, but you've never interviewed other people, it's hard to know how good they are. And I think with a lot of these experiences, we talk about, let's take ayahuasca or doing anything. Like I did ayahuasca a few times years ago, influenced by Aubrey, talking with him about it. And I think the whole point of ayahuasca that I learned afterwards, it's not even about ayahuasca and the crying and the puking and stuff like that. It was like, wow, that was kind of hard and I could do it. That was the takeaway. Not whether, yes, I recognize things about my stepfather and things about my biological father and other areas, but ultimately it was like, wow, I could face something. And we all can.

• 56:25Speaker 00

  And then we can overcome it. It doesn't matter whether you're already a millionaire or whether you're a zero in air, right? But it's that you can do these things. And I don't think people, I don't know. I don't know if people recognize that they have more ability than they can do. And that's why when they ask that question, I think they know the answer. When they, like, do you ask yourself, are you reaching your potential?

• 56:40Chris Williamson?

  Yeah, pretty regularly.

• 56:41Speaker 00

  Oh, really?

• 56:42Chris Williamson?

  Yeah, I'm still pretty rough with myself about falling short of some arbitrary rule that I've met, like some bar that I should have got over, some, something that I should have done. It's better than it was, but there's still a lot of that to be deprogrammed. But I'm also in therapy. So, you know, that's, that's helping. That, I mean, that's, that's another interesting thing that, that people just. There is a lot of fear around uncertainty and we don't know, we don't know what's coming next and we don't know if we can deal with it and we don't know if we're going to be good enough. We don't know if we're worthy of love and acceptance and we use observable

• 57:21Chris Williamson?

  metrics in place of hidden metrics. So the best observable metric in the world is money. Single numerical value which can be translated across the entire world almost instantly. Oh, you've got $5 million. I know what that is in yen. I know what that is in pounds. I know what that is in euros. It's the best game in the world, but people will often trade observable metrics for hidden metrics and a hidden metric would be something like peace of mind, quality of relationships, amount of sleep. That's a big one. Like all of these things, bringing the hidden into the observable is something that I'm trying to do an awful lot now. Like, am I trading my sanity for accolade? Am I trading my peace of mind for status? Or am I trading my...

• 58:04Speaker 00

  But the thing that you're saying, especially from your old clip, which I love about success, that also helped to get you where you are.

• 58:09Chris Williamson?

  Of course.

• 58:09Speaker 00

  And so how do you continue? Maybe you don't continue that and that's okay too. There's, do you know Joe Hudson?

• 58:15Chris Williamson?

  No.

• 58:16Speaker 00

  I love Joe Hudson. He has a course called Connection Course. Phenomenal. He's got a great show too, Art of Accomplishment. And one of the things that I've taken this course with my girlfriend is that, and that's okay. That's just that phrase. And I say this phrase all the time. Hey, I don't know this answer. That's okay. Hey, what helped you do what you're doing maybe isn't how you're going to do in the future. That's okay. And so I wonder for you, it doesn't have to also be you're going to solve it immediately. That was one thing I was thinking about this morning, about a lot of success is patience. And not just patience in time, it's patience with ourself. Like what Aubrey said, like, hey, it's probably going to work out. Let's be a little patient and not make it so hard along the way. So I wonder, I'm curious how you're going to evolve.

• 58:56Chris Williamson?

  Yeah, me too. It has been significantly better, which I guess speaks to just how unrequited I was for a very long time. I felt like I wasn't, I was built for more. I felt like I was built for more and I hadn't fulfilled my potential and that I should... If only I had worked harder, taken that chance, done the thing, been less afraid, been more brave, been more courageous, whatever it is that I needed to do, if only I'd done that thing, I would have got the outcome that I wanted. And that was, that was like

• 59:38Chris Williamson?

  a very sort of powerful, you're not, you're not doing enough, good enough, whatever it might be, really, really strong motivation for a long time. And then it's interesting when you get to the stage where you go, okay, well, how much is enough? Because that's a question. And this sort of comes back to the people that have achieved success or accumulated wealth or whatever. They can suffer with all of the same mental maladies that the person at the bottom rung of the ladder can as well. But the difference is, they look up and there's only two more rungs. So they're like, hey, if the answer isn't there or there, where the fuck is it? And that's something that, again, this sort

• 1:00:20Chris Williamson?

  of champagne problems idea is why I'm kind of obsessed with it at the moment, that the lack of sympathy that everybody, myself included, gives to, oh, you know, such and such a rich person complains about the fact that the food was cold in first class on the way from Dubai to Houston or whatever, you know? What was it called?

• 1:00:39Chris Williamson?

  But it's like, I understand, I understand why that's such a ludicrous position to be in. But if we assume that people who have money and status aren't necessarily always happier than the average person, in fact, what got them there might be exactly the reason that they aren't happier than the average person. If, if people took more of a balanced view about how they perceived the downstream effects of wealth and of status and of attention.

• 1:01:16Chris Williamson?

  I think that it would disabuse a lot of people who think that they want that of presuming that the answer is on the other side of it.

• 1:01:23Speaker 00

  They presume that once they get there, it's solved. And that's what I thought. Like, once I get rich, I'll be happy. And that's not the case. And what I've noticed is someone like yourself, where you start the show because you love it, and you create this prison that you mainly don't love. And then you end up revisiting the reason you started it. And you're like, oh, I love it again.

• 1:01:38Chris Williamson?

  It's so funny, man.

• 1:01:39Speaker 00

  Right. And that, yeah, that's part of the journey. And there's nothing wrong with that. There's not a right or wrong way to do it. I would say it's nice to be rich and have problems than poor and have problems.

• 1:01:47Chris Williamson?

  Correct.

• 1:01:48Speaker 00

  Because at least there's a little bit more options. Or if you're, if you have some money, or you have your own business, which everyone can do, at least you can maybe hire someone to talk to you about it. Or maybe you can not do meetings for weeks, or months, or years.

• 1:02:01Chris Williamson?

  And you've spent an awful lot of money on coaching. You mentioned that earlier on.

• 1:02:06Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:02:07Chris Williamson?

  How much money have you spent on coaching?

• 1:02:11Speaker 00

  Collectively, with myself and the team, at least a million. At least a million dollars in coaches.

• 1:02:16Chris Williamson?

  And what things have you worked on?

• 1:02:19Speaker 00

  So, an hour before this meeting, I was with our CFO coach. So she's the former CFO. And the coaches I hire, they've done, they're looking ahead, and they've been ahead. I like people who've been in the game that I want, that I would like to be at. So she was a CFO at Mailchimp. Thank you. Everyone's pretty familiar with Mailchimp. You know, they sold for 12 billion. And so she's advising us on our VP of Finance quit. Again, problems still happen no matter what. How you want to respond to them? I think I, my 20 year old self was very emotional and reactive. Now, the only difference, I'm still can be reactive, but I pause. And then I respond. So she's a coach that we hire. I have a therapist. And that's what we've worked on, really about pausing. And I rate myself every single week. Last

• 1:03:03Speaker 00

  week was a four. I got a little triggered. So I ran myself on my consistency and my emotional behavior, one through five every week, and why. And just having that every single Friday has helped.

• 1:03:11Chris Williamson?

  Four out of five seems good.

• 1:03:12Speaker 00

  Four was not bad, but someone in my, I do YouTube office hours for the book launch. And this, this guy was complaining about AppSumo's rev share. And I'm like, you don't even know where rev share. And I was just like, and then I paused after I triggered. And I was like, oh, I don't want to behave like that. And that's okay. Means I did that. But that means that next, next week, I can improve it. Before, it's not bad. That's much better than the past. So that's therapy. And so therapy, I've worked on pausing and responding. I've worked on being alone. I just don't like being alone. I like being active. And so, you know, it's not to say I should go force myself to live in a cabin in a woods, but on a Saturday afternoon, it's noon.

• 1:03:49Speaker 00

  How can I just be happy being with Noah? How can I just, okay, I'm going to read the Wall Street Journal. Or just go for a bike ride, or just be at home and it's okay not to have to distract myself. And that led me then to feel more happy just being with myself.

• 1:04:02Speaker 00

  I have a CEO coach, Aiman Alabdula. He's the former CEO of AppSumo. And so, a lot of my strengths historically has been like zero to one. Like, I love starting. That's a million dollar weekend. How do you start something in a quick time? Aiman's superpower is consistency. Aiman's like, what's working? Okay, make it work better. Like even a month ago, I went to Aiman, I said, Aiman, we've got this TidyCal product. I don't know if you're TidyCal. It's a Calendly alternative. So it's $29 for life instead of $20 a month. I'm like, Aiman, this thing is doing super great. It's blowing up. David and the team that are running it is doing awesome. We're going to do something new. He's like, all right, so you have the thing that's working really great. And you want to do a new thing?

• 1:04:42Speaker 00

  You think you want to do a new thing, or maybe just keep doing the thing that's great and make it work better? I was like, there's your money. I'll send you your, I'll send you your, pay your invoice right away. So he's a lot of, you know, I think higher to your, higher to your weaknesses. And so he's a lot of the consistency. I have a business coach then. So he's more strategic. I have a business coach. So that's Dan Putt from reboot.io. Anyone, you have a great podcast, great book. And Dan's, ah, it's annoying. He's always asking about my feelings. I'm like, dude, stop talking about my feelings. I want to talk about the business. He's like, I know, but I know how your feelings are impacting the business. It's like, shut up. So a lot of it, you know, for instance, I was feeling very disconnected from the leadership team of AppSumo where I'm like, what the hell are we doing this quarter? And he's like, well, if you don't know, do you think the rest of the leadership knows? And I was like, no. And so then literally the next day, this was two weeks ago.

• 1:05:26Speaker 00

  Next day, we put together a one pager, which was like, what's the one, what's the exact thing we're doing in Q1? So that we know the leadership team knows and the rest of the team knows. And a lot of that is just him exploring how I'm feeling about the business, like how things are going in my personal life. A lot of business is a projector of who you are.

• 1:05:40Chris Williamson?

  Right.

• 1:05:41Speaker 00

  Like you with the lighting before the show got on, right? It's a projection of Chris's preferences about how things go.

• 1:05:45Chris Williamson?

  Yeah.

• 1:05:46Speaker 00

  And your business is going to reflect good or bad who you really are. Not good or bad, but just reflects who you are.

• 1:05:51Chris Williamson?

  Yeah, there's a very interesting signature that trickles down from whoever's at the top of the business down. So we, We it's so funny running running nightlife stuff because the owners, the organizations tend to be very flat. So the owners are still very close to the ground floor of whatever's going on. And we would be able to walk down the street and without looking at the company on the back of the hoodie that the person was wearing, just by the way that they were dressed, we would be able to work out, oh, they're from Jiluminati, they're from Voodoo, which was our company, they're from like the posh kids one, they're from this one, they're from that. And we would just be able to tell because there was this signature that that

• 1:06:33Chris Williamson?

  kind of came from the top down. And it was the same in the marketing copy. It was the same in the way that the events were run. It was the same in the way that the DJs were booked. It was the same in the way that the entry pricing was done. There were some companies like us that would be over complicated in some ways with we'd have tiered pricing and we'd have all of this extra stuff that would be put in. Then there'd be others that wouldn't even remember to increase their pricing. Then there'll be some that were cheap and there were some that were expensive and so on and so forth. So there's just it. It really is. Is it James Clear that says, uh, running a business is a vehicle for personal growth disguised as a wealth making enterprise?

• 1:07:07Speaker 00

  I think it's about best way to learn about yourself is starting a business. And I always think of, you got me thinking about toilets.

• 1:07:13Chris Williamson?

  Obviously.

• 1:07:14Speaker 00

  I have a super nice toilet, by the way, like Rich Life.

• 1:07:16Chris Williamson?

  Japanese?

• 1:07:17Speaker 00

  Yeah, the Toto. It's like a $6,000 toilet.

• 1:07:19Chris Williamson?

  Okay.

• 1:07:19Speaker 00

  Best. Everyone should get one. Get rich at least so you can get it to this toilet.

• 1:07:21Chris Williamson?

  Okay.

• 1:07:22Speaker 00

  Point being though, is that like, I like going to bathrooms or restaurants and businesses. And then you're kind of like, oh, how much attention do they pay to? I don't think it has to be all the details of a screw necessarily. That that's not me, but like, huh, this is what they think about their business. And so I'm always fascinated when people meet people from AppSumo and they're like, hey, I met some guy today was like, I met Mitchell from AppSumo. He's great. I was like, I know. I love Mitchell too. He's like my little optimism angel. And it's interesting about the people around and, you know, the, the way we represent the business represents us. I think business is a great way to learn about ourselves. For the coaches, I guess if I had a, the theory and the way that I've approached it is, what are the areas for myself and really anyone that I like to improve? And just go pay someone for their 10,000 hours. You could pay someone 500 bucks, 250 bucks, a thousand bucks an

• 1:08:05Speaker 00

  hour for that, for literally 10,000 hours of experience. So I have a marketing advisor, Mooney Glasgow, CMO Glassdoor and Zapier. And a lot of the times it's, and I thought about this because it's a lot of the stuff I don't want to hear.

• 1:08:19Speaker 00

  Because if you thought you could do everything, you wouldn't need an advisor, you wouldn't need a coach. And I think there's some people like, ah, don't do any coaching. It's like, all right, every sports team ever in the world has a coach. And we have teachers all through school, but when we get out, we're like, no, I'll get, I'll figure it out. Okay, how does that make sense?

• 1:08:34Chris Williamson?

  Well, this is a difficult, a couple of the reasons why I think coaching is sometimes hard for people. The cost is upfront, but the returns are down the line. It's very difficult to verify. It's very difficult to verify whether or not this person actually is going to give you the sort of returns that you want out of something. There's no coach.me, you know, Yellow Pages, yeah, rating for this stuff. It's always by word of mouth and referral and bits and pieces. And if you do end up getting burned or disappointed perhaps by one, that then starts to sort of smear the rest of the coaching world. So I understand why people are reticent about doing it. I should be better at it.

• 1:09:19Chris Williamson?

  I should be better at leaning in.

• 1:09:21Speaker 00

  What would you hire? So by the way, I think no matter what, we just, we self, we self preservation hire, we self preserve, no matter what coach we hire. I had a business coach, I won't shut him out because it was horrible, but it was $10,000 a day. And he, this guy, like, I don't know, he's polyamorous and just all this woo woo weird shit, you know, slept with all the people. And I remember afterwards, because I was so lost and I just wanted someone to tell me what to do.

• 1:09:46Chris Williamson?

  Yep.

• 1:09:46Speaker 00

  And the main thing I took away from him, he's like, no, you know, this, this $23,000, because I hired him for two and a half days. He's like, that $23,000 you gave me could have been in your pocket. And that was his, that was my takeaway, where I wanted something and meaning that the money in my business is mine. Right? So I need to be mindful of how we're using it. Maybe I'm giving it to him, maybe I'm giving it to others. But I think in almost every single time, whether you have a coach you like or don't like, you're learning, you're learning something. Ideally, you're doing it with someone who's done the thing. And they're like, yeah, I've done it. I can ideally share you how you to do it. And you're getting it through a referral too.

• 1:10:19Chris Williamson?

  Yeah, I think one of the areas that people get into, again, something else I'm kind of obsessed by at the moment is believing that our situation is unique, particularly unique. No, no, no, but you don't, you don't understand because me, the way that it's put together for me is that you would not do it. You would, it would take 10,000 hours just to begin to understand this, you know? And it's because I had this idea on the, on the live talk where if there was a cookie here on the edge of this couch and I decided I was about to make the decision whether or not to eat it.

• 1:10:59Chris Williamson?

  Inside of my mind, when I look toward that cookie, this unholy war begins between two different versions of myself. And there's battle plans and platoons and someone's got a dragon and there's a catapult and stuff. And then the better version of myself succeeds and I don't eat it to, you know, live another day. If you'd seen me do that, what you would have seen is some bloke stare at a cookie for a while and then turn away looking hungry and sad.

• 1:11:27Chris Williamson?

  Our inner experience of ourselves and our external observation of other people are so asymmetric that everyone else looks like a rational agent and we look like a wavering idiot permanently. You vacillate 10,000 times a second, but that person just seems like they go about their day from thing to thing. And even if they trip over, they're kind of meant to do that too. Like, and because of that, we, it's obvious why it's, it feels like our issues are so personally cursed to us. It feels like a designer disease meant just for us. It's only me that has this very specific.

• 1:12:10Chris Williamson?

  Way of lambasting myself or speaking to myself. It's only me that has this very specific fear about relationships or about changing or about moving or about leaving or about disappointing my parents or about whatever it is, because nobody else cut. And it's like, it's because you are only ever going to experience your unconsciousness.

• 1:12:25Speaker 00

  It also gives them an excuse if they're unique. It gives them a reason to say, well, if I'm unique and it's so hard, then it's obviously not solved. But if you know, like my book starts with frequently made excuses. Why? Because when you realize that most of the things that you've you've avoided are actually very solvable, like, oh, shit, it actually can be solved. I can stop having to be a victim in this situation.

• 1:12:44Chris Williamson?

  What are the frequently made excuses?

• 1:12:46Speaker 00

  I don't have any business ideas. I don't have, I have too many business ideas, which is a totally new one. I don't have a technical co-founder. I don't know how to do marketing. I don't have money. How do I use AI? Those are definitely, I think that's top seven. I'd have to look through the book for the other three. And these are ones that are super common. By the way, quick shout out. I've also hired a health coach. You know, there's health, there's literally coaches for everything and figuring out which coaches you need and, you know, I've had a squash coach, boxing coach, but I use

• 1:13:13Chris Williamson?

  You got any better at squash?

• 1:13:15Speaker 00

  Oh, sure. For sure. Yeah, for sure. Yeah. Shout out. I use squash in Barcelona. But my my bodytutor.com. And so I worked with him for years. And now how I interact with food, how to direct my self feeling about food has been changed permanently from that experience.

• 1:13:31Chris Williamson?

  It's fun. It's fun to think that there are people out there who have answers to the questions that you think are unanswerable.

• 1:13:38Speaker 00

  Well, I remember with AppSumo, so one of my best friends is Andrew Chen. He's like a super

• 1:13:41Chris Williamson?

  He's been on the show.

• 1:13:42Speaker 00

  Oh, Andrew. Yeah, Andrew's one of my best friends. And so I love Andrew and he's very strategic and he's always been helpful. And I remember with AppSumo, I'm trying to innovate our HR stuff. And I was trying to innovate our sales stuff. And I was trying to innovate in our programming, trying to innovate in our marketing. And he's like, why don't you try to innovate just one thing? Most of that shit is figured out. And find one thing to innovate on. And the other nine, you could probably just copy other people who've solved it. For instance, even in a silly example, Jenny, who's our CFO advisor, she's like, I've already got job recs. You don't have to write your whole brand new job rec. You can use chat GPT for it. But she's like, here's the criteria that I look for when I'm hiring a VP of Finance. I was like, it's a lot better than trying to be innovative from scratch.

• 1:14:22Chris Williamson?

  Yeah, yeah. Yeah. What coach would you hire today? Uh, someone for the business, I think. Um, I need to build out the, I hesitate even calling it an organization because it's not. It was just supposed to be me talking on, on the internet. You start talking to people and then it accidentally becomes a job. And then before you know it, you're like, oh, this, I've got like 16 fucking reports. I have 16 direct reports. So like, our organization is this very, very flat, two dimensional octopus with 16 fucking legs on it and then a couple more that trickle, trickle off some of those legs. So for me, I'm like, I can't, we can't keep, we can't keep doing this. And there's only one person that's the hub in

• 1:15:05Chris Williamson?

  the middle of all of the rest of it. And I'm like, all right. So what do I need? Do I need a CMO? Do I need a CEO? Do I need a chief of staff? Do I need a COO? Do I need a right hand? Do I need an enforcer? Do I need someone that's, and do I need a second YouTube strategist? Do we need a third YouTube strategist? Do we need someone that does copy? What about somebody that helps to sit on top of, you know what I mean? And again, it's the belief that your situation is sufficiently unique that nobody else could, would be able to understand. There were no, no, of course not. And in some regards, the world of, you know, like independent creator is relatively new, but there are also going to be an awful lot of rules and procedures that you can just be like, yeah, but I mean, it's very similar to X established business that's been around 50 years and there's the playbook from that. And we just chink, turn this thing slightly and it slots in straight away.

• 1:15:50Chris Williamson?

  Yeah. What's the voices in your head like?

• 1:15:54Chris Williamson?

  Hmm.

• 1:15:56Chris Williamson?

  Frantic sometimes, but I meditate a lot as well. So it goes away. Uh,

• 1:16:04Chris Williamson?

  excited, encouraging. Um,

• 1:16:12Chris Williamson?

  like, there's a degree of trepidation, which is another thing that's kind of interesting. Before you've got to any.

• 1:16:25Chris Williamson?

  Until you've raised yourself up out of some mid quadrant of where almost everybody is, maybe beyond where most people quit, but still where most people end up, the pressure is still in some ways a little bit lower because you go, well, you know, if this thing doesn't work or if you don't really fulfill stuff, nah, what does it matter? But when you go like, oh, this could really be a serious shot at something very special here. I genuinely believe that we make the most beautiful podcasts on the planet. We've made the most beautiful podcasts that have ever been recorded and I want to keep doing that. And I want to keep being world class at the things that we do. But that comes with its own degree of pressure, right? This is no longer little leagues.

• 1:17:06Chris Williamson?

  This is now, oh, you said that you wanted to become one of the best in the world at doing this thing. Do you realize the price that you need to pay to be able to do that? Do you realize how hard you're going to have to work? Do you realize how much attention to detail you're going to have to pay and all the rest of it? So one of my end of year reviews or one of the questions that I've got asked for myself for this year is, can you be world class and have fun at the same time? I love that. That's something that I'm thinking about an awful lot. Like, I want to still dot every I, cross every T, but I want to have fun along the way because, you know, and this is one of the beautiful things about people reflecting like yourself opening up about anger in your twenties or Aubrey opening up about fear during the process of writing his book,

• 1:17:49Chris Williamson?

  that you get to see, you get to see the pitfalls that other people nearly tumbled into. And by looking at that, you go, hmm, that kind of sounds a lot like how I feel. And maybe if that's how this person that's five or 10 years along the road from me says, and if I can kind of imagine me as them, well, maybe I can find a way to bring some of that learning and wisdom down into the present and then maybe even avoid, maybe I can mitigate what they did. And, you know, their insights can help me to expedite my growth and my progress.

• 1:18:31Chris Williamson?

  So, yeah, that's, that's what I'm thinking about this year. Can I be world class and have fun at the same time?

• 1:18:38Speaker 00

  You got me reflecting. Thanks for sharing. You know, I think sometimes people think the kitchen's clean. A lot of times the kitchen's messy. What they see is the kitchen, they see the dish, but they don't see what's really going on.

• 1:18:48Chris Williamson?

  Oh dude, yeah, I mean.

• 1:18:50Speaker 00

  Or like couples. I can't tell you. There's couples that I'm like, I want to be like them divorced. They're horrible together. Maybe it's bad, but you don't really know what's going on. And in these different experiences and you know, one of the things that every person can do is get out your phone, you know, watching YouTube or podcasts, just scroll up on your photos. Go back up or down.

• 1:19:11Speaker 00

  And almost everybody, I think if they do it, at least how I felt was like, wow, I'm proud of myself. I think if you actually just scroll back and like.

• 1:19:17Chris Williamson?

  Look at all the cool shit that I did.

• 1:19:19Speaker 00

  Yeah. And just look at where you are today. And I think if we can give ourselves a little bit of kindness and grace in that, and even just even the photos, like, you know, just go back and be like, I went and looked at my old house. And I think this house represents me, represents where I was where it's 800 square feet. It's literally falling down. It just got flooded a few days ago from this freeze. And I was like, I don't care.

• 1:19:40Speaker 00

  And I went back and I've seen it in the photos and stuff. And I was like, oh, wow. I'm proud of how far I'm come. I'm proud of the house I'm in now and how, who I think I am today. Not necessarily what others think, but who I think. And that that does take time. And I think we also just can, if you see your old photos, you're like, wow, I'm already making progress, even it doesn't feel like it.

• 1:19:55Chris Williamson?

  Yeah, I always said, and Elon Musk with Neuralink may make this happen, but I'd love for that to be a way. For you to go back in time in your own mind, not to go back in time to a different place, but to be able to revisit the texture of your own existence from 10 years ago or 20 years ago and think, what were the sort of things that captured my attention? What was the normal rhythm and cadence of my daily existence like? What did I think about?

• 1:20:26Speaker 00

  I think it's also crazy because is that the stories change over time. We changed the our own narrative by the day of it, or when you ask me, or in a year, I'm like, well, the story was actually this. It's like, was it? Or am I shifting it to create the narrative that's working best for me in my life?

• 1:20:39Chris Williamson?

  Oh dude, I mean, that's, you know who Sam Ovens is? You must do.

• 1:20:43Speaker 00

  Sounds familiar.

• 1:20:43Chris Williamson?

  He had consulting.com. So that's a reandor, he now does school.com, S K O O L.

• 1:20:49Speaker 00

  I'm not familiar with them.

• 1:20:51Chris Williamson?

  Big online marketer guy. Anyway, I was at some. Neurodivergent degenerate retreat in the middle of the desert.

• 1:20:59Speaker 00

  What does that mean neurodivergent?

• 1:21:01Chris Williamson?

  Like, like a drug autistic group of degenerate people. And we were all just catching up and it's some creators, some business people. It was really cool, to be honest. And I'd known about Sam for a long time and I knew what he did and we got a chance to have a catch up. And I asked him about why he'd stopped making content and he'd been pretty prolific at. He had, he used to have this like 40th floor penthouse apartment with a motorcycle in it, overlooking floor to ceiling glass. Maybe it was in New York or some big city like that. And he said, he'd found that the story he was putting out publicly

• 1:21:43Chris Williamson?

  was one that he'd begun to feel the need to live up to privately.

• 1:21:49Chris Williamson?

  That he'd created this narrative about being the guy with the motorcycle in the window and about this is what I do and whatever, whatever. Alex Becker is a good example. You know who Alex is? Yeah. So Alex who does, hi Ross, hi Ross. He's been the sell all of my possessions and go live in an apartment with like just a mattress on the floor guy. He's now even got rid of that. He's sleeping on the floor and now he's the like fitness guy and now the whatever, whatever guy. And I do think a lot about, because everyone's doing this. Everybody has a public facing persona. You know, everyone's got a social media account. My mom has one, my dad has one of some regard. And feeling the need to live up to the public persona that you are putting out there in private.

• 1:22:31Chris Williamson?

  First time I'd ever heard anyone say, I'm still thinking about what that means to me now. And I mean, you know, fucking in this really interesting reflection on it for six months. But yeah, that was very formative, very, very unique insight. And I thought it was very useful.

• 1:22:46Speaker 00

  Yeah, it's maybe my girlfriend, I remember the first time she came, I met her in Barcelona and we spent half the year there. And I remember I have like a multimillion dollar house and I've got to share it because I've lived so cheap and so crappy for 20 years that finally I got a sick house. But I keep, I can't, I can't believe it every day. I'm like, this is so cool. And I remember bringing her to the house and I was like.

• 1:23:06Speaker 00

  Oh, yeah. She's gonna fall.

• 1:23:08Chris Williamson?

  All me, baby.

• 1:23:09Speaker 00

  Look at this. You don't have to worry about who I am inside. Look at my external avoidance.

• 1:23:12Chris Williamson?

  Yeah.

• 1:23:14Speaker 00

  Fame.

• 1:23:14Chris Williamson?

  Motorcycle in the window.

• 1:23:16Speaker 00

  Scooter.

• 1:23:18Chris Williamson?

  I've seen you on that going around the, um.

• 1:23:20Speaker 00

  The Vespa?

• 1:23:21Chris Williamson?

  The Loro. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 1:23:22Speaker 00

  Yeah, I have a white Vespa. My other one got stolen from my front yard. That was, dude, from a front yard. Jesus. Um, I remember she came in the house and I was just like.

• 1:23:34Speaker 00

  Nothing. She didn't say shit. And I remember, you know, this is the point we just started dating. And then a few months later, I was like, you're the first person ever to come into the house and was not impressed. And she's like, I wasn't. It's a nice house and I like all the, you know, the stuff. It's cool. Like, it's nice, but I just care who you are.

• 1:23:52Chris Williamson?

  The best part about the house is you.

• 1:23:53Speaker 00

  Ah, I say that sucks. You know, I've worked so hard to avoid that.

• 1:23:56Chris Williamson?

  Yeah.

• 1:23:57Speaker 00

  And now, I'd say in these past few years, I think that's finding a partner who's also just looking for me. She's not looking for me to be anybody else.

• 1:24:04Chris Williamson?

  So interesting.

• 1:24:05Speaker 00

  And that, that's been a, you know, in terms of a game changer from a baseline level, it's being with her is a game changer.

• 1:24:10Chris Williamson?

  Yeah, because you don't have this sort of if I lose it, what if anxiety that's sat behind you. And if you'd gone like Dan Bilz's Aryan route and everyone was kind of just there for the experience.

• 1:24:20Speaker 00

  She just cares who I am and that enables me to feel I can just be myself.

• 1:24:24Chris Williamson?

  Do you ever feel resentful that the efforts and fruits of your labor, uh, monetarily, isn't more sort of like wide-eyed, sour-eyed? Do you know what I mean? Cause I think there's a part, I sometimes think about me, me and some of my other friends as well. And I think that there's a part in men that wants that

• 1:24:49Chris Williamson?

  look at my resources I've acquired. Like you kind of want there to be a bit of like, you know, panty dropping results from that.

• 1:24:57Speaker 00

  Yeah. I mean, I think we want our fathers to acknowledge us a lot of the time. And I remember I went to my dad and he was on his, he was kind of dying and he was dying. He was just drinking beer and I was like, hey, I made a million dollars. He's like, okay, cool, man. Good job. I was like, that's it. And then, you know, I think over time, I was thinking about my YouTube videos where, you know, we get videos get a million views, but my favorite video still, I don't even know. I think it has like 10,000 views and it's about a fisherman. This guy named Nick from Florida and he's a millionaire fisherman and I just loved that. He makes money fishing and I wanted to make a story about him. And I think that's kind of the lesson where you get going and you find the thing you enjoy. And yeah, there's a balance of what the world wants, right? Cause if you only do what you want and no one wants it, like that's, you're not going to have a business. You're not going to have any audience, but I was proud of that.

• 1:25:40Speaker 00

  And I think with, with Mafe, this is my partner, as I'm more with her, it's just being more okay with myself. And yeah, I think I would have liked to have money and I, I thought, when you get money, straight up, this is real talk. I thought when you get money, like all these people come and all the girls come and all this stuff come. And it just didn't, right? It's still just you alone in a house. And yeah, you can have partying and you can have distractions, but it's still just you by yourself. And that's amazing that it lucky that I had that chance or I could, I thought it was, I'm great. It didn't. And then it's like, all right, well, I'm still myself. I have to find a way to enjoy this life on this planet. By the way, no one knows what the fuck we're doing here. No one and anyone who tells you otherwise, full of shit. And yeah, the money didn't fix who I was. It definitely now is easier because I'm feeling good about myself.

• 1:26:26Speaker 00

  And the journey was, yeah, I think all these cliche shit as the more I get all the more, I'm like, yeah, the cliche shit is all true.

• 1:26:32Chris Williamson?

  Bill O'Reilly's got this quote where he says, money is like gasoline on a road trip. You need enough to keep going, but you're not doing a tour of gas stations either.

• 1:26:43Speaker 00

  That's good. Bill O'Reilly said that?

• 1:26:44Chris Williamson?

  Yeah.

• 1:26:45Speaker 00

  Oh man, that's good stuff.

• 1:26:46Chris Williamson?

  Yeah, I know.

• 1:26:47Speaker 00

  No, but yeah, nothing ever came. There's no party. No one ever cares. Everyone cares about themselves, right? And it's been nice. I think part of this, you know, this book tour stuff even, it's been special. How it's created a kind of an excuse to go hang out with people. An excuse to connect people and talk about different ideas, whether it's self-worth, whether it's starting a business, which really is what you said about from Aubrey, like it's a great, or James to learn about yourself. And all of business has been that, like, how am I interacting with other people? How is it when someone leaves me, like, my dad left me, or someone that's a teammate leaves me? And just chances to, you know, prove to ourselves who we can be, who we can be. And I think that's not talked about where people, it's like, people can be a lot more than they realize, but they have to realize that it's even possible and then they have to get started on it.

• 1:27:28Chris Williamson?

  You've said, starting a business isn't risky, working a day job that sucks is risky. Why is that the case?

• 1:27:35Speaker 00

  You know, when you, your original thing, the number one question you said you got from people is, how do I know I'm realizing my potential? If you ask that question, you're not realizing your potential. If you ask the question. And so for me, being at Intel, in a cubicle with gray walls, having to be dressed up, going at 8:00 AM, felt risky that this is the next 40 years of my life, knowing that there's probably something else I could be doing that I really want to do. And it's listening to that voice, or that, as my, I have a Latina girlfriend, listening to that feeling, and acknowledging it, and then maybe embracing a little bit of that fear leaning into it. And doesn't mean you have to quit the job. I never quit jobs to go start a business. I thought that was risky. It's starting it at nights, weekends, whenever, to get it going, and then when it works, then quit it.

• 1:28:17Speaker 00

  But I've seen this guy, there's a guy named Rick, and this is the thing I think is not recognized. There's so many ordinary people getting rich. I think people think it's like some special ability and you have to be tall, or you have to be, no. Ordinary people get rich, but they start, and most people just don't. And there's a guy, Rick, and I remember we'd be in these meetings at Intel. All we did was meetings, they didn't do shit at this company, at this job. I don't know how they're still in business. And Rick, I always was like, man, you are so more, he's so much smarter than me. He's more impressive than me, but he was afraid of finding out who he could become. And all, he could do it at night, and I, he talked about, he's like, yeah, there's other things I probably want to do, but I've got soccer practice at 5:00, and I want to be there for my kids, which is great. But that means you spend a third of your life doing what you didn't want to do? And so how do you start planting seeds?

• 1:29:02Speaker 00

  Like, I planted seeds 14 years ago that I'm finally, I am really, truly enjoying today. And it felt risky to really spend that 10, 20, 30, 40 years in an area where it's like, I don't want to be here. And what's crazy though, is on the other side, there are engineers at Intel who fucking love it. They're like, I'm building chips, which is great. And so it's finding that thing for yourself, so you're not feeling like, hey, I'm going to spend 10 years, and then finally enjoy life at 60. That to me seems fucking crazy, which is what my, you know, kind of what we tell most people to do.

• 1:29:29Chris Williamson?

  James Smith, my business partner in the drink says, if you're succeeding at a job that you hate, imagine how good you'd be at one that you love. And that's, that's, you know, so many people, especially where I went to university, there's a lot of sort of recruitment, you know, these guys who are on a 20, 20 grand, 25 grand base salary with pretty good bonuses and it's sales, it's like hardcore sales. They're doing recruitment for IT or construction or whatever it is. And, you know, they're not placing super high net worth individuals here, but they like grinding, they're doing the thing and they're fucking destroying it. Mostly because they were trained by me and my business partner in nightlife, but also because they're very, very talented and we found these kids that are just driven and they want to do things.

• 1:30:16Chris Williamson?

  But lots of them like love the money, hate the job. I'm like, dude, like the money is the easy thing. Like you can replace that skill set with something that's so much more enjoyable. Like, think about how you hate the thing you do. And you're driven by the thing you get. You still get the thing you get, but the thing you do would be something that you loved as well. Imagine if you had double drive, like nitro boost in Too Fast Too Furious.

• 1:30:43Speaker 00

  Well, it sounds like with you and your podcast, there's no reason for you to ever quit because you enjoy it.

• 1:30:49Speaker 00

  And then doing that on a business, I think one of the things from, from the YouTube channel and any million dollar weekend was how many different ways you can get rich. And I think people think there's like some secret door, there's some secret course, there's just not. But it's about getting started on the podcast, putting out the episode. It's about asking someone to be a customer, finding something people actually want. And then guess what? If you do it, you enjoy it too. You can do this as a career. I don't know if people realize that's possible. I, I, you know, I see these people, I'm like, no, it doesn't have to be this way. And you could change it today.

• 1:31:20Chris Williamson?

  Yeah, it's hard to think because so much of my life has been around people that are self-employed, that have done, you know, online fitness coaching or then business coaching for online coaches or selling courses or being, doing whatever, right? So many people were. Failure renegade, self-employed people over and over and over again until they found something that worked. And sometimes some people didn't. But it was so obvious to me that that was just a route that was available. I never really questioned it as something. And yeah, if the that I didn't think about that. I didn't think that some people believe

• 1:32:04Chris Williamson?

  that there is a secret doorway in between them and being their own boss. Yes. In between them and starting their own business. Yes. Like, there's nothing like, hey, guess what? If you fucking love dogs, if you absolutely love dogs, there is a dog walking business that you will adore every single second of. And you'll crush and you'll care more about the dogs than the competitor who's just doing it for the money. And all that you'll do all day is spend time with awesome animals that you love. And you'll make great money on your own terms, doing something that you get to choose. And then maybe you'll hire some staff and then they'll love the dogs as well. And then maybe you set up a sanctuary in them. Maybe you get to be able to contribute to a charity as well. And maybe you can take him, take in dogs and maybe it becomes a kennel.

• 1:32:49Chris Williamson?

  And maybe you even roll this out and it becomes the the premier dog care franchise in England or something. That sounds exciting. And even if you don't want to make it big, like the Michael Gerbers, the E-Myth revisited, even if you don't want to like, go full, I don't know how to bake a cake anymore, as the lady that started a bakery thing, you get to spend every day with dogs. And

• 1:33:10Chris Williamson?

  A question would be, if it's so easy,

• 1:33:15Chris Williamson?

  why isn't everybody else doing it?

• 1:33:20Chris Williamson?

  And that question is both the question and the answer to the question. You know what I mean? Like, that is the selection effect that's stopping most people from doing it. Because most people think, if it was that easy, everybody would be doing it. But you don't realize that the fear that you feel is precisely the selection criteria that's stopping everybody else from doing it as well.

• 1:33:42Speaker 00

  Yeah. One of my favorite quotes of my buddy Adam is like, you know, discomfort is your compass. So maybe noticing where there's a little fear and then thinking about, well, if I went into that fear, what would happen? And where would I be on the other side of that fear? And, you know, I love doing a fantasy year. It sounds like something you're doing on the review, but if you had to end this year, where would you like to be? And then you could literally create, a few years ago, I wrote like, be on Joe Rogan show. And you write all these crazy fantasies and you're like, I think when you realize that it could be true, at least gives you the belief that you could be in these different levels. And it sounds like you and myself were both born pretty middle class. Is that?

• 1:34:13Chris Williamson?

  No, no, no. Very, very working class.

• 1:34:15Speaker 00

  Working class. Okay. I was growing middle class. And so you kind of think, oh, I guess I'm stuck here. And then you start seeing other people, maybe you listen to your show, maybe you realize other things are like, huh, maybe there's some other levels of what I can do. And what I I've noticed from so many people who aspire to be millionaires, and for me, I aspire to never to have someone control my livelihood and take away that, which you can when you have a job, in that if you want to be there, what's the thing you can do today to actually make that happen? They don't ever make a million because they're like, how do I just get $1? They're like, what about this? What about this? Don't worry about any of that. What can you do today? Can you help one person today on a service? Can you post one podcast? Can you post one video? And I've even done it myself, just to show it. Like, the best way to sell anything is to get

• 1:34:55Speaker 00

  happy customers or prove it. So two weeks ago, I let people, I didn't use any social media, which by the way, you can cheat, use social media, use your email list, use your contacts on your phone. And I let, I said, give me some business ideas from the audience and I'll go do them. I'll prove it. So I tried knocking on doors and just asking people if I can mow their lawn.

• 1:35:18Speaker 00

  I just went door to door in Austin, Texas. Can I mow your lawn? No. Who are you? No. This is hard. Is there an easier way? Yeah, that's the whole point. If it's not working great, let's find some people who are excited for you to service them on. Because just because you want to do it, doesn't mean people want to pay you for it. That's a big misconception, but finds that people are excited to pay you for. So then it was like, well, what's another problem I have paying for software? I hate, I don't like subscriptions. That's what AppSumo is. So I started contacting people that anybody who emailed me a DocuSign, you know, DocuSign? I looked through my Gmail and I was like, well, I hate DocuSign. I hate subscriptions and I hate using it. Let me look at anyone who's ever emailed me a DocuSign and contact them. So I just called people. I called my accountant. I called people who used to work at AppSumo, called people I used to pay for, called.

• 1:36:03Speaker 00

  Being friends with you must be a fucking nightmare. Don't ever answer my call. It's like Noah's outside. What's he doing this time? Uh, dude, he's got a bucket and a sponge. Pretend he's not, oh, he's seen us. He's seen us. What? And you know, to be clear, you know, my neighbor, I asked him to mow his lawn. He said, no. And then I went to him and I pitched this idea and he said, no. And you ask like, what's holding people back? It's fear and it's the fear of failure. It's the fear of rejection. It's the fear of who they can become. And we make these things so fucking scary. Oh my God, dude. Oh my God, they say, no, it's over. Like, I'm not, I'm worthless. I'm not good enough. I'm not having my potential. Or if you practice it and they say, no, you're like, that's it. There's so many gurus like how to scale, but there's so many business book out there. Why aren't people, everyone getting it? And because these fears have stopped them.

• 1:36:49Speaker 00

  And when you practice it, so I always say coffee challenge. You heard of my coffee challenge stuff? That's ask for a free coffee. Ask for a discount. Oh, discount. I, so were you anything to do with the hundred days of rejection thing? We, it was the Asian guy. There's a bunch of people have talked about rejection therapy. This is the one that's, that I, I use to talk about in the book that I found the most life changing. Cause it's universal. What is it? And so we talk about the fear of starting. We talk about the fear of success, talk about the fear of asking. And so you can go out today and anytime you buy a coffee or, you know, new tonic or wherever, don't do it for your brand, but other businesses in person, you ask for 10% off. That's it. You just go up and you have to commit before you go in. And anyone who's watching, if you want to change your life today, commit to this. This one thing, it's simple. It's silly. It's easy.

• 1:37:34Speaker 00

  And either people will say, well, I'm experienced in sales. Great. That'll be easy for you. Or I'm really afraid. Great. That'll empower you to feel good about yourself. And when you go and ask for the discount, you say, I want 10% off. They'll say, why? You can say, oh, Noah Kagan, million dollar weekend, or you can say nothing. Make it harder on yourself. And the beauty of it is they'll reject you. And you realize the fear that we created about these things, about what they thought, about these strangers, about this, doesn't matter. And the reality about our ego and separating it out from this horrible experience is that, wow, it wasn't so bad. Huh, what else can I ask for? What else have I been afraid of that maybe it's not so scary? And you do it in small, silly ways. Even today, I was driving home. I do, you can even do it in a very easy way.

• 1:38:17Speaker 00

  Compliment, the compliment challenge. Ask someone, hey, where'd you buy that shirt? Compliment them, hey, I like this guy in the car next to me. I said, hey, I like your shirt. Where'd you get it? And he's like, he smiles, he's so happy. And he goes, oh, I got it from Goodwill. And he's like, $7. He was so excited about it. Again, it's putting yourself out there in ways where you maybe get rejected. Realize it's not so bad. And then you can move forward. And the more that people build up this confidence in things, it's the same thing that we're talking about. Like, starting the business is the best way to feel more confident about yourself. You're helping other people. So with this DocuSign business, my neighbor, he rejected me. And I asked him again, he rejected me. And I asked him a third time, he still rejected me. But I didn't take it as him rejecting me. It's just, this is not helping him right now. And out of the 27 people I contacted that day, I didn't make them buy anything.

• 1:39:01Speaker 00

  I didn't say, hey, I'm doing a video, I need you to do this. I said, hey, here's something I'm excited about. I think it's a million dollar opportunity or beyond. DocuSign's $11 billion business, which is crazy. I didn't realize it's so big. Tell me about your problems. I listened to them. They told me their problems. Interesting. I'm creating an alternative. What do you think about that? Oh, my God, yes. Great. Would you be willing to put down a deposit today? It'll be ready in 30 days. I made $3,000 in 24 hours. It's coming out February 19th. So, coming back to your original question, why aren't people doing? Because they think it's harder than it is. And they're afraid of themselves. And so how do we do it in stupid, silly ways? Maybe it's getting a dollar. Maybe it's complimenting someone. Maybe it's asking for a discount on coffee. Doing it, and it doesn't mean you ever, I don't get afraid.

• 1:39:45Speaker 00

  But it doesn't mean that it gets easier and easier and easier. And you get more confident and confident and confident. And then you realize, holy shit, all this is just me putting myself in a little bit of discomfort, which ultimately becomes fun at some point. It doesn't become, rejection's such a bad thing, it becomes a good thing.

• 1:39:59Chris Williamson?

  Yeah, it's overcoming the fear of rejection or of asking for anything.

• 1:40:05Chris Williamson?

  It's kind of like a superpower. It probably is. I've got the 100 days of rejection therapy website open here. Borrow $100 from a stranger, request a burger refill, ask for Olympic symbol donuts, deliver pizza for Domino's, have a tour in a grocery store warehouse, play soccer in someone else's backyard, speak over Costco's intercom, get the number one spot in Best Buy's Thanksgiving line, send stuff to Santa Claus through FedEx, take an unregistered exam, give $5 to five random people, be a live mannequin at Abercrombie, borrow a dog from the Humane Society, give a weather forecast on live TV. It's gonna be difficult to do.

• 1:40:47Speaker 00

  I feel like these are all extremism. Like, I thought I had to do this extreme, like, go do this, tons of things. And again, I think it can work. But I think for business, there's like, a few you can just do over and over and over. Like, I was telling someone a few weeks ago, I wanted to do all these rejection and like discomfort challenges. So I did naked yoga. And it's just like, okay, yeah, I just don't want to be naked with a bunch of other guys doing, like, where we push each other.

• 1:41:10Chris Williamson?

  I'm not sure if this is me overcoming.

• 1:41:14Speaker 00

  Is that overcoming fear? It's just, it's uncomfortable. I don't want to do it.

• 1:41:17Chris Williamson?

  Yeah.

• 1:41:17Speaker 00

  But what I think the bigger concept for most people out there is how can you get started right now? And stop avoiding the self. Stop avoiding who you can become. And the second part, I would say, is how do you practice asking in a controlled way that you can repeat over and over again and get more comfortable with it and realize this whole thing. There's a guy Stetson, he was watching, I was talking with him, and he did it. And I always ask the same question, what'd you learn about yourself? He's like, I made it so much scarier than I was. And I realized now, there's so many more things that I can get what I want, instead of get what I'm getting, because I'm asking for it. Whether it's you want your, you want cheese off your pizza, or you want a wife, or you want to raise, or you just want someone to be your first customer, or be your first podcast guest.

• 1:41:57Chris Williamson?

  Have you read No More Mr. Nice Guy by Dr. Robert Glover?

• 1:42:01Speaker 00

  A while ago, yeah.

• 1:42:02Chris Williamson?

  He was on the show a couple of weeks ago. So I'm still kind of digesting everything that he, he taught there. And a lot of the stuff is in that as well. And there's a lot of guys have listened to this show, lots of girls as well. But especially for the guys, I think there's a degree of.

• 1:42:18Chris Williamson?

  Like extra embarrassment around being a man who's not, doesn't have the bravery to maybe go out and do this sort of a thing. It's like emasculating, right? It's like, oh, like I should be, not only am I not doing this thing, but also there's something weak or fragile around being the sort of man who doesn't. There's an extra layer of expectation, perhaps wherever that comes from, you know, childhood or society, or quite rightly yourself.

• 1:42:43Speaker 00

  Preservation, I mean, you're afraid because you're scared.

• 1:42:46Chris Williamson?

  Yeah.

• 1:42:46Speaker 00

  Right? And maybe that could protect you in the past, but now if you could face that fear, what can it also get you? And again, I don't think it has to be such an all or nothing mentality. Not saying that's what you're saying. And you don't have to do it in this big, dramatic way.

• 1:42:57Chris Williamson?

  Correct.

• 1:42:58Speaker 00

  But practice it in simple ways, like compliment and ask where they got it from, or ask for a discount on coffee. And then you realize you could go up to another person and say, Hey, I think you're really interesting. Like, tell me who you are. And then, wow, that's an ask that eventually maybe you'll get. And so same with, you know, dating, same with customers, all these things. And I think when people realize it's not as scary as it seemed, they realize there's much more out there for themselves than they expected.

• 1:43:21Chris Williamson?

  Hell yeah. Noah Kagan, ladies and gentlemen, Million Dollar Weekend, the surprisingly simple way to launch a seven figure business in 48 hours. Where should people go if they want to keep up to date with the stuff that you do?

• 1:43:31Speaker 00

  This is a milliondollarweekend.com at Noah Kagan everywhere. It's funny, I've been telling people it's a business book wrapped in personal development.

• 1:43:39Chris Williamson?

  Hell yeah.

• 1:43:40Speaker 00

  So it's like, you know, and I dedicated the book to everyone willing to take a chance on themselves. And I think everyone can do it. Everyone can be an entrepreneur, everyone can not be an employee or have a risky day job and realizing that there's just more out there, man. And you can live whatever kind of life you want to live. But you do have to start and you have to stick with it, just like your show. And then eventually those compounded returns pay off.

• 1:44:01Chris Williamson?

  And then five years later, they'll reply to your email and come on your podcast.

• 1:44:04Speaker 00

  Yeah, man. I think that's a, you know, you never know, you know, one of the things I love about being public is you never know who you're going to run into. So think about how you're interacting with other people. And, you know, with this book and in general, it's like, one, thank God I wasn't super rude to you back in the day. I don't think I was, I read my responses. I was just saying, hey, I have a priority. My priority was absoluto. And that's great. I'm okay with that. But being nice to other people and then also noticing who can you text when you need help? Who can you call when you need help? And most of the time it's because you've helped them.

• 1:44:34Chris Williamson?

  Yeah.

• 1:44:34Speaker 00

  So I think about it, especially now a lot, like, you know, how am I being mindful to help the other people out there? Because we're in a selfish world.

• 1:44:41Chris Williamson?

  Couple of my friends that have been canceled said to me, you know who your real friends are because they're the ones who pick up the phone before you ring them. And when the cancellation hammer comes down, they're the ones that ring you and are like, what can I do? How can I help? How can we make this better? As opposed to you being like, dude, I'm struggling. Oh yeah, man, I saw that. I'm so sorry. What can we? It's like, very interesting. Dude, I appreciate you. I think this is, I think this is really, really great. I'm glad that it's taken five years. I'm really glad, really glad that we managed to get this done. I love the embodied vibe that you've got going on. You've genuinely, obviously done a ton of inner work and I hope that you continue to

• 1:45:15Speaker 00

  Thank you.

• 1:45:15Chris Williamson?

  be a good role model. There should be more like integrated, successful business people.

• 1:45:21Speaker 00

  It can be both. It doesn't have to be all or nothing.

• 1:45:23Chris Williamson?

  Doesn't have to be flowery, like psychedelics and like, you know, wishing, wishing for your money to come to you. And it doesn't have to be hard-nosed, like nose to the, nose to the grindstone stuff.

• 1:45:34Speaker 00

  Yeah. And I think one of the things I reflect on is I've done so much to get to this point, like with the therapy, with the coaching, with being alone. That's been something to work through. And I think we also remember to keep doing the work. Keep doing those things. Like keep showing up for therapy. Keep showing up for your coaching. Keep showing up for whatever it is that's helping you get to these places. And being mindful, like, is it still serving you? If not, okay, you can change it. But I think it's very easy to be like, I'm feeling great this time. See you therapist.

• 1:45:58Chris Williamson?

  Don't need to go to the gym anymore. Don't need to do that therapy.

• 1:46:00Speaker 00

  Yes. Right. We are, oh, I'll coast now. And, uh, you know, I think it's still showing up in these things and still keep reinforcing the self, the positive self-talk. And just being okay with it. Like, hey, if it's not great right now, guess what? You can improve it. It's okay.

• 1:46:14Chris Williamson?

  Hell yeah. No, I appreciate you. Thank you, man.

• 1:46:16Speaker 00

  Good to see you.

• 1:46:17Speaker 02

  Close your eyes, exhale, feel your body relax and let go of whatever you're carrying today. Well, I'm letting go of the worry that I wouldn't get my new contacts in time for this class. I got them delivered free from 1-800-CONTACTS. Oh my gosh, they're so fast. And breathe. Sorry. I almost couldn't breathe when I saw the discount they gave me on my first order. Oh, sorry. Namaste. Visit 1-800-CONTACTS.com today to save on your first order.

• 1:46:45Chris Williamson?

  1-800-CONTACTS.