#717: Noah Kagan — How to Launch a Million-Dollar Business This Weekend

Brought to you by LinkedIn Jobs https://linkedin.com/tim recruitment platform with 1B+ users; Eight Sleep’s Pod Cover https://eightsleep.com/Tim sleeping solution for dynamic cooling and heating; and Shopify https://shopify.com/tim global commerce platform, providing tools to start, grow, market, and manage a retail business. Noah Kagan (@noahkagan https://twitter.com/noahkagan) was #30 at Facebook, #4 at Mint, and has since created seven million-dollar businesses (Kickflip/Gambit, AppSumo https://appsumo.com/, KingSumo https://appsumo.com/products/kingsumo/, SendFox https://appsumo.com/products/sendfox/, Sumo, TidyCal https://tidycal.com/, and Monthly1k https://appsumo.com/products/monthly1k/). He is the CEO of AppSumo.com https://appsumo.com/, the #1 software-deals site for entrepreneurs, and has a popular YouTube channel, Noah Kagan https://www.youtube.com/@noahkagan. His new book is Million Dollar Weekend: The Surprisingly Simple Way to Launch a 7-Figure Business in 48 Hours https://www.amazon.com/Million-Dollar-Weekend-Surprisingly-7-Figure/dp/059353977X/?tag=offsitoftimfe-20. Please enjoy! * The blog post for this episode: https://tim.blog/2024/01/23/noah-kagan-million-dollar-weekend/ * This episode is brought to you by Shopify http://shopify.com/tim! Shopify http://shopify.com/tim is one of my favorite platforms and one of my favorite companies. Shopify http://shopify.com/tim is designed for anyone to sell anywhere, giving entrepreneurs the resources once reserved for big business. In no time flat, you can have a great-looking online store that brings your ideas to life, and you can have the tools to manage your day-to-day and drive sales. No coding or design experience required. Go to shopify.com/Tim http://shopify.com/tim to sign up for a one-dollar-per-month trial period. It’s a great deal for a great service, so I encourage you to check it out. Take your business to the next level today by visiting shopify.com/Tim http://shopify.com/tim. * This episode is also brought to you by Eight Sleep http://eightsleep.com/Tim! Eight Sleep’s Pod Cover http://eightsleep.com/Tim is the easiest and fastest way to sleep at the perfect temperature. It pairs dynamic cooling and heating with biometric tracking to offer the most advanced (and user-friendly) solution on the market. Simply add the Pod Cover http://eightsleep.com/Tim to your current mattress and start sleeping as cool as 55°F or as hot as 110°F. It also splits your bed in half, so your partner can choose a totally different temperature. Conquer this winter season with the best in sleep tech and sleep at your perfect temperature. Many of my listeners in colder areas enjoy warming up their bed after a freezing day. Go to eightsleep.com/Tim http://eightsleep.com/tim and save $250 on the Pod Cover by Eight Sleep this winter. Eight Sleep http://eightsleep.com/Tim currently ships within the USA, Canada, the UK, select countries in the EU, and Australia. * This episode is also brought to you by LinkedIn Jobs https://linkedin.com/Tim. Whether you are looking to hire now for a critical role or thinking about needs that you may have in the future, LinkedIn Jobs https://linkedin.com/Tim can help. LinkedIn screens candidates for the hard and soft skills you’re looking for and puts your job in front of candidates looking for job opportunities that match what you have to offer. Using LinkedIn’s active community of more than one billion professionals worldwide, LinkedIn Jobs https://linkedin.com/Tim can help you find and hire the right person faster. When your business is ready to make that next hire, find the right person with LinkedIn Jobs. And now, you can post a job for free. Just visit LinkedIn.com/Tim https://linkedin.com/Tim. * [00:00] Start [03:55] Noah and some of his notable successes. [07:00] Is Barcelona the new Austin? [13:43] Navigating the legal hurdles to living/working in another country. [17:44] Running an $80 million business. [20:41] Noah’s negotiating basics. [24:33] The chargeback maneuver. [27:02] WIIFT (What’s In It For Them?) [29:54] A recap of the coffee challenge. [31:31] “Life punishes the vague wish and rewards the specific ask.” [34:12] Other comfort challenges Noah recommends. [39:12] Feedback is a gift. [42:26] When comfort challenges aren’t appropriate. [45:33] LOT (Listen, Options, Transition). [46:59] Tracking metrics that matter. [52:17] T3 B3 (Top Three, Bottom Three). [59:46] Weekly reviews. [1:02:42] The value of unambitious goals. [1:06:51] Regrets of billionaires. [1:13:32] My approach to book launches: then and now. [1:26:50] Priorities: then and now. [1:43:19] Finding a sustainable purpose. [1:49:42] Do I still find my past work useful today? [1:52:44] Testing the waters with new hires. [1:55:22] Don’t forget to look in the rear-view mirror sometimes. [1:56:23] Why should you trust Noah’s advice in Million Dollar Weekend? [1:59:47] Now, not how. [2:03:18] What’s your freedom number? [2:03:59] Getting your ask in gear. [2:05:09] Counterintuitively, constraints catalyze creativity. [2:08:17] Turning annoyance into opportunity. [2:11:21] Determining if your intended market has value. [2:14:12] Most profitable, elegant businesses are simple at their core. [2:14:57] Entrepreneurs rise from the ashes of fired employees. [2:17:14] Why you should start a podcast or business. [2:18:18] “No solutions, only trade-offs.” [2:19:01] Putting the idea to the test. [2:22:52] Are you making this harder than it needs to be? [2:24:09] The Dream 10 as a test for market viability — and your commitment. [2:27:07] Rejection as teacher. [2:27:58] Deliver on promises before worrying about scaling up. [2:32:01] The three Ws: what, who, and where? [2:33:04] The AppSumo origin story. [2:36:24] Early high-touch community building and scaling considerations. [2:38:29] The BrainQUICKENing. [2:42:43] Finding underserved opportunities. [2:44:48] Initiate correspondence with humility. [2:48:12] Little ask, big ask. [2:48:56] How do I handle rejection? [2:51:18] Revisiting the Law of Category. [2:56:16] How Noah handled a recent rejection. [2:57:28] Dating circa now and learning optimism. [2:59:18] How Pat seized opportunity in Poland. [3:00:36] Free work? [3:04:35] Behind the scenes of my Opening the Kimono event. [3:12:02] Making sponsorship deals win/win. [3:15:47] Streamlining business idea validation. [3:19:42] Unorthodox simplicity. [3:22:02] Better to be chased for money than chasing it. [3:23:45] Best holiday purchases for under $50. [3:31:28] Is competing for attention on YouTube worth my time and sanity? [3:39:55] Low-effort, high-reward YouTube experiments. [3:45:21] Lessons learned from spending more than a million dollars on coaching. [3:53:01] Benefits of the board. [3:53:35] How to take on the 48-hour challenge. [3:56:00] What’s the DEAL with Cindy 10 years after meeting Noah and me? [4:00:34] Parting thoughts. * For show notes and past guests on The Tim Ferriss Show https://tim.blog/podcast, please visit tim.blog/podcast https://tim.blog/podcast/?utm_source=podcast&utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=podcast-description. For deals from sponsors of The Tim Ferriss Show https://tim.blog/podcast, please visit tim.blog/podcast-sponsors https://tim.blog/podcast-sponsors Sign up for Tim’s email newsletter (5-Bullet Friday) at tim.blog/friday https://go.tim.blog/5-bullet-friday-1/. For transcripts of episodes, go to tim.blog/transcripts https://tim.blog/transcripts. Discover Tim’s books: tim.blog/books https://tim.blog/books. Follow Tim: Twitter: twitter.com/tferriss https://twitter.com/tferriss Instagram: instagram.com/timferriss https://instagram.com/timferriss/ YouTube: youtube.com/timferriss https://www.youtube.com/timferriss Facebook: facebook.com/timferriss https://www.facebook.com/TimFerriss/ LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/timferriss http://linkedin.com/in/timferriss Past guests on The Tim Ferriss Show http://tim.blog/podcast include Jerry Seinfeld https://tim.blog/2020/12/08/jerry-seinfeld/, Hugh Jackman https://tim.blog/2020/06/26/hugh-jackman/, Dr. Jane Goodall https://tim.blog/2020/04/16/jane-goodall/, LeBron James https://tim.blog/2018/11/27/lebron-james-mike-mancias/, Kevin Hart https://tim.blog/2020/05/20/kevin-hart/, Doris Kearns Goodwin https://tim.blog/2018/09/07/doris-kearns-goodwin-leadership/, Jamie Foxx https://tim.blog/2015/12/06/jamie-foxx/, Matthew McConaughey https://tim.blog/2020/10/19/matthew-mcconaughey/, Esther Perel https://tim.blog/2017/05/21/esther-perel/, Elizabeth Gilbert https://tim.blog/2020/05/08/elizabeth-gilbert/, Terry Crews https://tim.blog/2017/12/20/terry-crews-how-to-have-do-and-be-all-you-want/, Sia https://tim.blog/2020/08/12/sia/, Yuval Noah Harari https://tim.blog/2020/10/27/yuval-noah-harari/, Malcolm Gladwell https://tim.blog/2016/06/21/malcolm-gladwell/, Madeleine Albright https://tim.blog/2020/05/27/secretary-madeleine-albright/, Cheryl Strayed https://tim.blog/2017/03/30/cheryl-strayed/, Jim Collins https://tim.blog/2019/02/18/jim-collins/, Mary Karr, https://tim.blog/2020/11/11/mary-karr/ Maria Popova https://tim.blog/2014/10/21/brain-pickings/, Sam Harris https://tim.blog/2020/05/15/sam-harris-2/, Michael Phelps https://tim.blog/2021/01/21/michael-phelps-grant-hackett/, Bob Iger https://tim.blog/2020/01/16/bob-iger/, Edward Norton https://tim.blog/2019/10/31/edward-norton-motherless-brooklyn/, Arnold Schwarzenegger https://tim.blog/2015/02/02/arnold-schwarzenegger/, Neil Strauss https://tim.blog/2014/06/24/neil-strauss/, Ken Burns https://tim.blog/2019/09/12/ken-burns/, Maria Sharapova https://tim.blog/2017/08/26/maria-sharapova/, Marc Andreessen https://tim.blog/2016/05/29/marc-andreessen/, Neil Gaiman https://tim.blog/2019/03/28/neil-gaiman/, Neil de Grasse Tyson https://tim.blog/2019/10/03/neil-degrasse-tyson/, Jocko Willink https://tim.blog/2016/09/21/jocko-willink-on-discipline-leadership-and-overcoming-doubt/, Daniel Ek https://tim.blog/2020/12/03/daniel-ek/, Kelly Slater https://tim.blog/2020/09/08/kelly-slater/, Dr. Peter Attia https://tim.blog/2019/11/27/peter-attia-fasting-metformin-longevity/, Seth Godin https://tim.blog/2016/02/10/seth-godin/, Howard Marks https://tim.blog/2018/09/25/howard-marks/, Dr. Brené Brown https://tim.blog/2020/02/06/brene-brown-striving-self-acceptance-saving-marriages/, Eric Schmidt https://tim.blog/2019/04/09/eric-schmidt/, Michael Lewis https://tim.blog/2020/05/01/michael-lewis/, Joe Gebbia https://tim.blog/2018/03/08/joe-gebbia-co-founder-of-airbnb/, Michael Pollan https://tim.blog/2018/05/06/michael-pollan-how-to-change-your-mind/, Dr. Jordan Peterson https://tim.blog/2021/03/01/jordan-peterson/, Vince Vaughn https://tim.blog/2017/05/31/vince-vaughn/, Brian Koppelman https://tim.blog/2020/04/23/brian-koppelman/, Ramit Sethi https://tim.blog/2019/05/07/ramit-sethi/, Dax Shepard https://tim.blog/2020/11/18/dax-shepard/, Tony Robbins https://tim.blog/2014/10/15/money-master-the-game/, Jim Dethmer https://tim.blog/2020/05/18/jim-dethmer/, Dan Harris https://tim.blog/2020/11/19/dan-harris/, Ray Dalio https://tim.blog/2017/09/13/ray-dalio/, Naval Ravikant https://tim.blog/2015/08/18/the-evolutionary-angel-naval-ravikant/, Vitalik Buterin https://tim.blog/2021/03/08/vitalik-buterin-naval-ravikant/, Elizabeth Lesser https://tim.blog/2021/03/16/elizabeth-lesser/, Amanda Palmer https://tim.blog/2019/04/18/amanda-palmer-2/, Katie Haun https://tim.blog/2021/02/18/katie-haun/, Sir Richard Branson https://tim.blog/2017/10/09/richard-branson/, Chuck Palahniuk https://tim.blog/2020/09/02/chuck-palahniuk/, Arianna Huffington https://tim.blog/2017/10/18/arianna-huffington/, Reid Hoffman https://tim.blog/2015/08/31/the-oracle-of-silicon-valley-reid-hoffman-plus-michael-mccullough/, Bill Burr https://tim.blog/2017/09/17/bill-burr/, Whitney Cummings https://tim.blog/2015/06/26/whitney-cummings/, Rick Rubin https://tim.blog/2015/05/15/rick-rubin/, Dr. Vivek Murthy https://tim.blog/2020/03/26/vivek-murthy/, Darren Aronofsky https://tim.blog/2017/09/09/darren-aronofsky/, Margaret Atwood https://tim.blog/2022/02/22/margaret-atwood/, Mark Zuckerberg https://tim.blog/2022/03/24/mark-zuckerberg/, Peter Thiel https://tim.blog/2014/09/09/peter-thiel/, Dr. Gabor Maté https://tim.blog/2018/02/20/gabor-mate/, Anne Lamott https://tim.blog/2021/07/09/anne-lamott/, Sarah Silverman https://tim.blog/2022/01/12/sarah-silverman/, Dr. Andrew Huberman https://tim.blog/2021/07/06/andrew-huberman/, and many more. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

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

• 0:00Tim Ferriss?

  This episode is brought to you by Shopify, one of my absolute favorite companies, and they make some of my favorite products. Shopify is the commerce platform revolutionizing millions of businesses worldwide. And I've known the team since 2008 or 2009. But prior to that, I wish I had personally had Shopify in the early 2000s when I was running my own e-commerce business. I tell that story in The 4-Hour Work Week, but the tools then were absolutely atrocious, and I could only dream of a platform like Shopify. In fact, it was you guys, my dear readers, who introduced me to Shopify when I polled all of you about best e-commerce platforms around 2009, and they've only become better and better since. Whether you're a garage entrepreneur or getting ready for your IPO, Shopify is the only tool

• 0:44Tim Ferriss?

  you need to start, run, and grow your business without the struggle. Shopify puts you in control of every sales channel. Doesn't matter if you're selling satin sheets from Shopify's in-person POS system, or offering organic olive oil on Shopify's all-in-one e-commerce platform. However you interact with your customers, you're covered. And once you've reached your audience, Shopify has the internet's best converting checkout to help you turn browsers into buyers. Shopify powers 10% of all e-commerce in the United States. And Shopify is truly a global force as the e-commerce solution behind Allbirds, Rothy's, Brooklinen, and millions of other entrepreneurs of every size across more than 170 countries. Plus, Shopify's award-winning help is there to support your success every step of the way if you have questions.

• 1:29Tim Ferriss?

  This is possibility powered by Shopify. So check it out. Sign up for a $1 per month trial period at Shopify. That's S-H-O-P-I-F-Y. Shopify.com/Tim. Go to Shopify.com/Tim to take your business to the next level today. One more time, all lowercase, Shopify.com/Tim.

• 1:52Tim Ferriss?

  This episode is brought to you by Eight Sleep. Temperature is one of the main causes of poor sleep and heat is my personal nemesis. I've suffered for decades tossing and turning, throwing blankets off, pulling the back on, putting one leg on top and repeating all of that ad nauseam. But now I am falling asleep in record time. Why? Because I'm using a device that was recommended to me by friends called the Pod Cover by Eight Sleep. The Pod Cover fits on any mattress and allows you to adjust the temperature of your sleeping environment, providing the optimal temperature that gets you the best night's sleep. With the Pod Cover's dual-zone temperature control, you and your partner can set your sides of the bed to as cool as 55 degrees or as hot as 110 degrees.

• 2:33Tim Ferriss?

  I think generally in my experience, my partners prefer the high side and I like to sleep very, very cool. So stop fighting, this helps. Based on your biometrics, environment and sleep stages, the Pod Cover makes temperature adjustments throughout the night that limit wake-ups and increase your percentage of deep sleep. In addition to its best-in-class temperature regulation, the Pod Cover sensors also track your health and sleep metrics without the need to use a wearable. Conquer this winter season with the best in sleep tech and sleep at your perfect temperature. Many of my listeners in colder areas, sometimes that's me, enjoy warming up their bed after a freezing day. And if you have a partner, great, you can split the zones and you can sleep at your own ideal temperatures. It's easy.

• 3:16Tim Ferriss?

  So go to eightsleep.com/tim, spelled out, eightsleep.com/tim, and save $250 on the Pod Cover by Eight Sleep this winter. Eight Sleep currently ships within the US, Canada, the UK, select countries in the EU and Australia.

• 3:56Tim Ferriss?

  Noah Kagan.

• 3:57Noah Kagan?

  Tim Ferriss.

• 3:58Tim Ferriss?

  It's been a minute. Nice to see you.

• 3:59Noah Kagan?

  Great to see you.

• 4:00Tim Ferriss?

  So our last rodeo, from an audio perspective, was ages ago. Number 75 on the podcast, now close to 700 episodes.

• 4:10Noah Kagan?

  Wow.

• 4:11Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah. And at that time, it was how Facebook's number 30 employee quickly built four businesses and gained 40 pounds with weight training. I feel like my headlines have deteriorated over time. They've become very pedantic and pedestrian and descriptive. That is better copy. So I need to, I need to work on that copy. Maybe you drafted that copy yourself, actually. For all I know, that could have been the case. We have a lot to talk about. But for people who don't have any context, could you give a little self-intro?

• 4:41Noah Kagan?

  Great to see you, first off.

• 4:42Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, great to see you too.

• 4:43Noah Kagan?

  Great to see you. Now we're at eight million dollar businesses, which is pretty amazing. I was number 30 at Facebook, number 4 at Mint.com. I was a cubicle monkey at Intel for a very brief moment, which sucked, which led me to this entrepreneurship journey. And then I've started so many different businesses that failed, some worked, and now I help run AppSumo.com, number one site online for software deals. We do about $80 million a year, which is unreal. It started bootstrapped in a weekend.

• 5:05Tim Ferriss?

  I couldn't believe it when I saw that.

• 5:06Noah Kagan?

  I can't believe it.

• 5:07Tim Ferriss?

  I remember, I remember day one of AppSumo, effectively, back in the day.

• 5:12Noah Kagan?

  It's been crazy, and you were a big help with it. You're a super big help with getting it going. So thank you.

• 5:17Tim Ferriss?

  You're welcome.

• 5:18Noah Kagan?

  YouTube channel's done pretty well, a million subs, got a book, Million Dollar Weekend, coming out to help people, very similar complimentary for our work week. And we're here today.

• 5:27Tim Ferriss?

  So let's, let's do a little trip down memory lane, because ages ago, 2011, so this is going back a ways. We've known each other a long time. I remember we first met, I want to say at a coffee shop in Mountain View, California.

• 5:42Noah Kagan?

  Yes.

• 5:42Tim Ferriss?

  On Castro.

• 5:45Tim Ferriss?

  I remember that and a lot has transpired since. We're gonna cover quite a bit of it and get into a lot of tactics in this conversation. Noah always is able to deliver specifics, concrete, recommended actions, scripts, you name it. So we're gonna get into all that juicy stuff. But you had a guest blog post on my blog in 2011. And it's easy for me to forget, it's easy for some people to forget or just not realize that the blog for me was really the connective tissue that permitted everything else, including the first book, because the blog came out before the book. And what was that blog post that you put together?

• 6:25Noah Kagan?

  How to Create a Million Dollar Business in a Weekend Featuring Chihuahuas.

• 6:31Noah Kagan?

  And that started this book.

• 6:33Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 6:34Noah Kagan?

  That started a lot of me sharing my approach.

• 6:37Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 6:38Noah Kagan?

  And that was wild.

• 6:39Tim Ferriss?

  And it resonated incredibly well. Funny sidebar also, if you're curious about some of the ingredients in the cocktail that contributed to Ryan Holiday becoming the face of modern Stoicism way back in the day, I think it was called Stoicism 101 on the blog.

• 6:58Noah Kagan?

  Yeah.

• 6:58Tim Ferriss?

  So people can take a look at Tim's blog for that. But let's start with a completely oblique question, which is a geographic question. So we're sitting here in Austin, Texas, and before we started recording, you said something along the lines of Barcelona is the new Austin.

• 7:16Noah Kagan?

  Hmm.

• 7:17Tim Ferriss?

  Can you expand on this?

• 7:18Noah Kagan?

  You know, in our last show, which was you were talking like, hey, you're in Austin, I'm living in, you were living in San Francisco, you know, tell me about it. And you're like, yeah, I thought about it. And now we're here, living in Austin.

• 7:26Tim Ferriss?

  Now we're here.

• 7:27Noah Kagan?

  And I do think in my, my life, I've been able to pick things a little early. Facebook a little early, Mint a little early, social games a little early, Groupon kind of, appsumo.com early, SaaS businesses early. And so even choosing Austin early. And

• 7:40Tim Ferriss?

  Super early. When did you get to Austin?

• 7:42Noah Kagan?

  Fourteen years ago.

• 7:43Tim Ferriss?

  Fourteen.

• 7:43Noah Kagan?

  Yeah, which people were like, what are you doing out there? And I was like, I don't even know where it is in Texas, but it's great. And, uh, you know, for me, six years ago, my buddies, Dan and Ian from Tropical MBA, they're like, come out to Barcelona for a month. And I got there and I was like, that's okay. And I was like, it's very hot here in Austin. So I was like, all right, I'll go out there. And after a few weeks, I'm really into cycling. I'm into the spandex, but really the cycling out there was just, it's world class. It's where Lance Armstrong got famous. Like, it's what he made famous, actually, in a city called Girona. And so I got out there and we started training, started drinking at night, started eating. The prices are amazing. There's a beach right there. It's basically California without all the bullshit and a lot cheaper.

• 8:23Tim Ferriss?

  That's a good sales pitch.

• 8:24Noah Kagan?

  Yeah, yeah. People like, want to go to California? I'm like, no, thank you. I do love California. It's definitely one of my homes. And so I just started going there every single summer. And now this year I spent 143 days. And it's just amazing. And then what's even wild is my girlfriend who I met there, and now she's pregnant, which is insane. She was saying that the life expectancy of Spaniards is actually higher than Americans.

• 8:46Tim Ferriss?

  I believe that.

• 8:47Noah Kagan?

  I was talking to her about this and that's kind of interesting. It's like, well, wouldn't you want to live where people live longer? It's like, yeah. So it's, you have fresher food. Everything is walkable. So you're like going downstairs, you're like, well, I'm going to go get a tomato. And there's a vegetable store. And then there's a meat store and a cheese store. You have community there. We're here, we're, she comes, she lives in my house here. We live out in the West. She's like, do you see anyone ever? Do you ever talk to anyone? She's like, where, where is everyone? And so all these factors combined, plus the, the cost of living is cheaper. It's just been where now we're spending at least half a year out there.

• 9:15Tim Ferriss?

  Lot more social fabric too, I would imagine, right? I haven't experienced Barcelona much. I've spent a little bit of time there. Great tango scene for people that may be interested. But in Madrid, where I spent a bit more time, people are out, they're socializing, groups of friends, families, you just see more cohesion. And at least it seems, maybe technology has changed this and people are more ready, player one now in Spain. It's possible. It's true, most places, but less self-imposed isolation. Then I observe in the US normally.

• 9:47Noah Kagan?

  Less isolation, better looking people.

• 9:50Tim Ferriss?

  Straight up, it's got a higher density of really gorgeous people. Yeah, I mean, Austin's a pretty attractive town. Hmm, it's okay. Depends on what you're looking for. It depends, yeah, but it's just, you know, for cycling, it's world-class, that all the. I like men with man buns and leg tattoos. That's Austin. Okay, okay, you're in the right place. If you're, but like, just everything about it has been, it's been such a blessing to be able to find that and be able to live my life there and here. You can do both. So we're gonna move on to other things, but before we do, Barcelona. Let's start with a contrast. So Austin, for a host of different reasons, has become a nexus for a few things that I think we could have expected, looking back from five years ago, we could have expected tech, right? Tech was already here.

• 10:34Tim Ferriss?

  From a taxation perspective, et cetera, it made a lot of sense. Covid accelerated all of that. So you've seen an explosion of tech. I mean, within striking distance of where we're sitting, there is an entire skyscraper, who knows how many floors, 40, 50 floors, that is going to be exclusively Google, and which has not yet been

• 10:52Tim Ferriss?

  opened, commercially speaking, right? There are a few retail shops at the bottom. That I think is somewhat predictable. Things I couldn't have predicted or wouldn't have predicted. Austin has become the mecca of Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu in the world, not just in the United States. It is, if not already, certainly becoming an epicenter for comedy, stand-up comedy. Hmm. In many ways, thanks to Joe Rogan and his club that he has opened here. What do you think, if anything, you're like, you know what, next five to 10 years, I bet Barcelona could be hot for X. Is there anything that comes to mind? Because I always looked at Austin as this highly diversified

• 11:34Tim Ferriss?

  town that was not dominated by a single industry. That's part of what appealed to me compared to, say, SF Bay Area, right? Yeah. Now.

• 11:42Tim Ferriss?

  Hasn't quite worked out as I anticipated, but certain dominant communities and industries are becoming clear now in Austin. Any thoughts on Barcelona?

• 11:55Noah Kagan?

  I would say with Austin, I'd also add content creators. There's a lot of pretty sizable YouTube podcasts that have become in Austin, in Holiday, me, you.

• 12:04Tim Ferriss?

  Yep.

• 12:05Noah Kagan?

  Definitely a lot of other people that have moved out here. I would say for Barcelona, for me specifically, it's, I can see it being the remote working capital of the world. Right. Where, yes, the hours are a little off, so maybe you'd want to go South America, but potentially like just for having a metropolitan city, especially in Austin. It's hot here. Four months a year.

• 12:20Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah. And to be clear, what we mean by hot, sorry, centigrade folks, I don't know how to convert this, but we're talking like 110 to 120.

• 12:27Noah Kagan?

  It's like 38.

• 12:28Tim Ferriss?

  A lot of the time.

• 12:29Noah Kagan?

  38 to 40 Celsius.

• 12:30Tim Ferriss?

  Your dog cannot walk outside. My dog's feet will literally turn into omelets.

• 12:36Noah Kagan?

  Well, you were showing me your floor is literally burnt in your place from the sun.

• 12:39Tim Ferriss?

  From the sun. Yeah. The previous owner, the previous owner left the solar shades up and the entire floor was bleached by the sun.

• 12:46Noah Kagan?

  But yeah, you know, you go to Barcelona, I get a coworking spot, go to one cowork, but there's so many out there. 500 bucks a month, you get an awesome desk, you get really, really fast wifi everywhere. You can use ukio.com, U K I O dot com. It's like Airbnb, but even cheaper. Super sick apartments. Don't use it yet because I need to book my place.

• 13:04Tim Ferriss?

  Good luck.

• 13:05Noah Kagan?

  Yeah. And then you have like, you can go to all these amazing cities in a weekend. So you've got like Pucirada, which is like better than like Tahoe, bigger mountains, not as crowded. You've got Costa Brava, which is California coast, but even better. It's like European style. You have naked beaches, both genders. So whatever you want. We were going to the wrong beach, depending on how you look at it for a long time. And my buddy says, let's go down the beach. All these varietal things that, that really make it a nice summer. And I like the balance of having both, where there's the intimacy of being here in Austin, where you can go to Uchi. You have people like you and me, and there's a lot of interesting people here. But then also when it's hot in summer, wow, now with entrepreneurship, now with remote work, Barcelona is a great second home for the rest of the year.

• 13:43Tim Ferriss?

  Tactical question for people listening, and I know this exists in some European countries. Is there the equivalent of a digital nomad visa? Or is it?

• 13:52Noah Kagan?

  So I

• 13:53Tim Ferriss?

  Something that's more complicated.

• 13:54Noah Kagan?

  It's way more complicated than people sound. So I literally got off the phone with a immigration lawyer for US and Europe yesterday.

• 14:01Tim Ferriss?

  And this is ties into our entire conversation and I'll make that connection in a minute, but please continue. So you got off the phone.

• 14:08Noah Kagan?

  It's not as easy as it seems. There's basically, there's a nomad visa for Spain, right? And to be clear, it's taken me 18 months and I still don't have it.

• 14:16Tim Ferriss?

  Wow.

• 14:16Noah Kagan?

  And I have a pretty sizable company, a pretty sizable bank account. I went to a college, which you have to do. And I've used a law firm to follow all these papers and I'm still not there. So sometimes when you're dealing with other countries, even in America, there's a lot of bureaucracy. So that's one way to do it. That could take a lot of time. Second one is the golden visa. So you spend half a million.

• 14:32Tim Ferriss?

  In Spain.

• 14:33Noah Kagan?

  In Spain on a property and then you can be able to get a visa there. The other one that we're going to be approaching the way I'm going to do it is called a Paridad de hecho.

• 14:40Tim Ferriss?

  Okay.

• 14:40Noah Kagan?

  So if you can meet someone who is actually a citizen, you don't have to actually be married. You just have to live with them and be with them. You can get your residency there.

• 14:47Tim Ferriss?

  Hmm.

• 14:48Noah Kagan?

  So that's what I'm doing with my girlfriend.

• 14:49Tim Ferriss?

  I see.

• 14:50Noah Kagan?

  And so that is one approach.

• 14:51Tim Ferriss?

  Getting your green card.

• 14:52Noah Kagan?

  To be able to get my green card. I'm coming through the border legally over there. But otherwise it's a three month tourist visa. I think the nomad visa, it sounds great. It's just literally 18 months and I don't know, 1500 bucks, still nothing.

• 15:06Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, that's a lift. I mean, in terms of energy commitment. And the reason I wanted to cover this and the reason it ties into everything is that I enjoy our conversations in part because I learn a lot about the latest and greatest, whatever you've experimented with personally and professionally. And the personal part is not a small thing, right? Because you can create a business that is a monster of your own making, a jail of your own making. It's very easy.

• 15:30Noah Kagan?

  Yeah.

• 15:31Tim Ferriss?

  It's very easy to do. That is the default, I would say. And you can also design a business that allows you to do the type of thing that you're describing and those are fundamentally different approaches. They seldom happen by accident. So why don't we hop into

• 15:48Tim Ferriss?

  The Million Dollar Weekend.

• 15:50Noah Kagan?

  I can do one more bonus visa thing that everyone can consider.

• 15:53Tim Ferriss?

  Great.

• 15:53Noah Kagan?

  This is like a little secret thing that it's actually kind of interesting. A lot of countries, if you can find your genealogy, use 23andMe or talk to your grandparents, you can actually get your citizenship through that. So my great grandfather is from Poland. So that's been one avenue I've been considering where if you can actually find documents, which we've been able to find some, I can get Poland citizenship, which is then part of the EU citizenship.

• 16:14Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 16:14Noah Kagan?

  So that is another way of getting in if I didn't have a girlfriend. So for people out there, go look up your ancestry and see if that country will be able to give you a citizenship.

• 16:21Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, and different countries have different degrees of leniency slash acceptance, depending on how far back you go.

• 16:27Noah Kagan?

  My buddy Dan Andrews always says, he's like, be mindful of marrying the passport. Cause my girlfriend is Venezuelan, but lives in Portugal that we were in Spain. So it's just a lot of things now to get her in America has been a nightmare.

• 16:39Tim Ferriss?

  You have this super challenging.

• 16:40Noah Kagan?

  Real, I'm like ridiculously challenging. The people are trying to get across the border down south. I'm like, if that's easier, maybe we'll just do that. I'll put you on my back and carry you.

• 16:49Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah. Side note, if we look at, this is a whole separate conversation, but we look at the plummeting birth rates, right? We are not meeting replacement rates for population growth, which is then correlated to GDP growth and so on, in so many industrialized countries. The one advantage the US has really is immigration, attracting talent globally. So making it easy or easier is really mission critical to the economic and sort of national security future of the United States.

• 17:19Noah Kagan?

  A hundred percent. It's also not as easy as people realize. Like I was talking with the lawyer to get her into America, the other, the other visa lawyer. And you know, in 90 Day Fiance, that show, it's like, okay, you get a fiance, boom, boom, boom. No, it's not like that. You have to wait a lot of time. You have to spend a lot of money. You can't leave the country. Either you, if you do it in America, she can't leave for months.

• 17:37Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 17:37Noah Kagan?

  Or if we do it in Spain, she can't come into America for years.

• 17:40Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah. It's incredibly tricky, incredibly complicated. So let's zoom out for a second and we're going to talk about starting. We're going to talk about the initial stages and process for building a business or concepting a business in a very short period of time. So we are going to get to that and we are going to have a challenge slash competition offer from Noah later that you're not going to want to miss. So stick around for that. I absolve all responsibility. Noah has. Has verbally committed to all the indemnities in the world for me. So this is Noah's thing.

• 18:19Tim Ferriss?

  But I want to talk about running AppSumo because prior to doing the homework for this conversation, I had no idea that it had grown so much. It was wild, right? I mean, so 80 million a year business. That's bananas. And what I'm curious about is being the CEO of such a company. Could you give us an idea of what the company looks like? First of all, just in terms of basic org chart, like how many full time employees? How you think about structuring the company?

• 18:53Noah Kagan?

  It's been interesting. And one thing, especially for Million Dollar Weekend, which is what I've been able to, it's the playbook I used. And it started with just me in a basement in Haight Ashbury for 48 bucks. And that's what's crazy to then, okay, everyone doesn't have to have a lot of money or time to be able to get to this point. And so that is kind of wild.

• 19:12Tim Ferriss?

  There are playbooks for starting low cost, starting low risk, incrementally building something that can become the type of business that you're describing or larger.

• 19:21Noah Kagan?

  Yeah.

• 19:22Tim Ferriss?

  Or not, depending on your priorities.

• 19:24Noah Kagan?

  Exactly. And for me, it's being able to, that's why I left SF. I wanted to live. I'm not here just to work all day.

• 19:29Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 19:29Noah Kagan?

  And that's why I'm in Barcelona. It's like, I want to have a good balance of enjoying life and making money the way I want. And so appsumo.com today, we have about 75 full time teammates. I think the word employees is just kind of archaic. And then maybe 25 full time contractors. And so that's broken out about six different departments. So we have product engineering department, sales, business development department, marketing department, operations. So we go get the best deals on the planet, AppSumo, negotiate and seeing prices. And then we have to get it on the website. So there's a team that helps to do that, customer support team, people team, and then a finance and business intelligence team.

• 20:03Tim Ferriss?

  And are those employees distributed? Do they have locations?

• 20:09Tim Ferriss?

  I think they're real.

• 20:09Noah Kagan?

  I guess they all have locations.

• 20:11Tim Ferriss?

  They could be real.

• 20:13Noah Kagan?

  We've gone back and forth over the years, man. Like, I started in a basement. I made everyone move to Austin and then we got an office here. Now we're remote and we're doing stipends for coworking spots for some of the teammates as an experiment to see if we can actually help them either get their home office set up or coworking set up. We've tried the office. It didn't seem like people actually go. We have one now. I don't know if people go. I literally have no clue, but we've definitely downsized from about 50,000 a month. I think our office now is 3,500 bucks a month.

• 20:41Tim Ferriss?

  I was gonna ask you about CEO frameworks that you use on an ongoing basis. So we're gonna come back to that. But since you talked about downsizing and I want to give somebody who's listening something tactical right away, because we want to front load some of those Scooby snacks to keep everybody listening. You are a very proactive negotiator and that can range from asking for a discount on coffee, which I think we should revisit briefly.

• 21:07Noah Kagan?

  Yes, dude.

• 21:08Tim Ferriss?

  To the 35 plan, I believe, that you had for COVID. I think it was maybe dropping sales goals, assuming a 5% profit margin, something like that. And I'd like to know how you negotiate things down. Like, what are some of the key approaches? So let's say somebody's looking at lease of a space for an office that's not really being used, or they're looking at their credit card statement and they're trying to tighten the belt because they want to take some swings in entrepreneurship, but they want to feel a margin of safety, right? How do you approach this? What are some of the keys to that? Because this is something I know you have a lot of practice with.

• 21:49Noah Kagan?

  Okay, I'm not gonna do Jewish jokes, but I love a good deal. That's absolutely, that's all.

• 21:54Tim Ferriss?

  No, it is Jewish, to be clear.

• 21:57Noah Kagan?

  Okay, a few things of how I like to approach negotiating and getting better prices on things. First off, this is gonna be counterintuitive, but I always say I'm really bad at negotiating. That's my first line.

• 22:06Tim Ferriss?

  You say that to the person you're negotiating against?

• 22:09Noah Kagan?

  Right, every time. And the idea here is, one, I am bad, because what I'm interested in is like, I don't really want to spend a lot of time. I want to understand what you want. And if I know that what you want and you're happy with what you get and it's within my circle, that's it. I don't want to spend so much time actually negotiating. So, and I think that lowers people's defenses as well, where I'm just not really good at negotiating, I want to make sure you get what you want. And then if you're like, oh, great, so that's number one. Second thing, no one really wants to be guilted. I have a Jewish mother, I know about guilt.

• 22:36Noah Kagan?

  Right, there's a reason Jewish chocolate's called gelt, right? It's not a coincidence. But the second thing is, no one will be guilted into being excited to work with you. And the internet is a small place. The world is a small place. Me and you, how long have we been together? You started, what, your book 2007? Yeah, the book came out in 2007, started writing in 2005. So we met 2007, 2008. 2006? Maybe earlier, it was before us, 2006. It comes around. Yeah. So when people try to dick you over, people kind of grind you, you're like, okay, I know. I'll see you again. Yeah. Right? And so for me, it's like, how do I have a positive experience where, do you want to do another deal with Noah? Do you want to do another discount with Noah? And then lastly, I think a lot of times pricing, so one, be positive. Have a good experience because you're probably going to do this again. And then I say lastly, what's the actual value you're negotiating around?

• 23:20Noah Kagan?

  I think a lot of times it's like, why want five versus 10? Why? So have clarity about why you think it's that price. Like, hey, here's comps, here's something that you can actually base this on. So have something where you're like, okay, I'm paying, what we do at appsumo.com is we do a bi-annual review over every single contractor and every single software subscription. We don't use software, we literally just have a list on spreadsheets. So twice a year, you go through the list? Every single thing. Of your sort of recurring costs? Yeah, so our server costs and electronic costs a month, give or take, is 250,000. Contractor teammate cost is somewhere around one and a half million a month. So you add that up over a year, it's a lot. So every bi-annual, Anna, who leads our people team, she's amazing, goes over that. And then we basically have two columns, which is price of it.

• 24:02Noah Kagan?

  And then we have the return on investment, or how valuable we think it is to the company, low, medium, high. And then they literally go through every single one and see if they can contact anything that says low, and then just get it canceled. Either get it canceled or get it negotiated down. Anything that's high, we still ask for a discount as well. But we more or less leave those alone. Last tip I'll give for negotiating prices, and again, I recommend everyone doing a bi-annual review personally or professionally, when you give the number, shut the hell up. I don't know if you've heard this, but this is one of my favorite, I do this all the time, I literally did it two days ago. And when you say, when you give the number, that's effectively what you're asking for? Yeah, so, you know, Million Dollar Weekend, and even appsumo.com, and in life in general, everything is an ask. And so how I like to do it, I bought a sauna. And they didn't deliver it for six months and I was a little frustrated. So I did a

• 24:45Noah Kagan?

  chargeback. People in Europe don't know about chargebacks. You know this? Americans are like, I'll charge you back. Europeans are like, what is, what's happening here? So I charged back and they contacted me.

• 24:55Tim Ferriss?

  You define a chargeback. That's basically you're asking your credit card company to reverse a charge.

• 24:58Noah Kagan?

  Yes, which everyone should do, not all the time. And it happens at Epsom when we do our best to rectify what customers think is wrong, but it's a really nice way of getting a company's attention because they get charged for it. They get $35 bill and they get notified like, hey, here's a chargeback. You need to solve this. And so I wouldn't do it all the time. I'm not, it's not something I'd do rightly, but if someone, I try to return something or they didn't deliver for six months, I did a chargeback. Now I'll talk to the negotiating part. So the owner of the company, three months later, after he notices it is like, hey, I got a chargeback, man. Like, what the hell? And I was like, on my integrity, I'm going to pay for your sauna. But let me just tell you my, my experience. We have a chat. This is literally three days ago. And he's like, all right, man. He's country, actually. He's like, all right, man, I got you. I'm gonna hook you up a little discount there, Noah. I was like, all right, there, Craig. He's like, I'm gonna give you 10%. I was like,

• 25:44Noah Kagan?

  okay, Craig. I was like, Craig, you know, let me just, I think what times in your negotiating, people do like, they go back and forth emotionally. And it's like, get off the emotion and get to the solution.

• 25:53Tim Ferriss?

  Get the result.

• 25:54Noah Kagan?

  Yeah.

• 25:55Tim Ferriss?

  Get the result.

• 25:55Noah Kagan?

  Instead of being right, instead of. Yeah, 100%. 100%. You're like, well, Craig, you know.

• 25:59Tim Ferriss?

  Instead of being righteous.

• 26:00Noah Kagan?

  Exactly. 100%. And so with Craig, he said 10%. And I said, all right, you know, well, Craig, let me just, let me just walk through what happened. You guys charged me 13,500 for my sauna, which I love. It didn't come for six months. You lied to me every week. I think what's, they lied to me it was coming every week. I'd ask every week and they're like, oh yeah, it's coming this week for six months.

• 26:20Tim Ferriss?

  Five minutes took it.

• 26:21Noah Kagan?

  For those people who've seen Snatch.

• 26:24Tim Ferriss?

  Movie reference. People who get it, doesn't matter.

• 26:27Noah Kagan?

  It's a movie reference.

• 26:28Tim Ferriss?

  People who get it will get it. Yes.

• 26:29Noah Kagan?

  So the last negotiating technique, and this is, you know, million dollar week and we talk about how to sell better. And there's a very simple framework everyone can copy. But with Craig, I said, all right, Craig, let's do 20%. This is the power move. You say your ask or your number and you shut up. That's it. I don't know if people already do this or know about this, but that is the power move. So the final

• 26:48Tim Ferriss?

  Let the silence do the work.

• 26:49Noah Kagan?

  Just be like 20% and Craig is like, all right, now you got a deal. Let's get done. And so then we got 20%. I was able to get an extra thousand bucks off the sauna. I'm happy. He's happy. We can move forward. So that is a lot of how I like to negotiate.

• 27:02Tim Ferriss?

  And if you flashback to earlier days, smaller company, maybe it's when you're solo.

• 27:06Noah Kagan?

  Yeah.

• 27:07Tim Ferriss?

  Maybe it's what you did before starting AppSumo. This is not a new habit. This is a habit you've developed over a very long period of time.

• 27:14Noah Kagan?

  Yeah.

• 27:15Tim Ferriss?

  And I'm looking at transcript of an interview from MixerG. So I'll, I'll throw in, I know, going into the archives and wanted to throw this out there just in case it's helpful to folks or for just jogging other techniques in terms of tightening the belt, which is something I did also before starting my very first company, the sports nutrition company. I went through my credit card statements. I was like, okay, what can I cancel? What can I get rid of? So I feel like I have more of a buffer, right? My burn rate is as low as possible. Here's what we have in front of me. Fact check. Can't trust everything you read on the internet, but here's what we have. My most important thing is that when you're emailing someone, I think you've got to do a few things. First, tell them the exact price that you want. So you kind of alluded to that.

• 27:59Tim Ferriss?

  Number two, say, hey, I can't afford this right now. And number three, say, this is what I need for now. We can revisit it in six months if the economy recovers. This is a great way to keep me as a long-term customer. It's a pretty good line, right? Any other thoughts on negotiating prices down?

• 28:15Noah Kagan?

  Yeah.

• 28:15Tim Ferriss?

  Or out, right? Just deciding what to cut.

• 28:18Noah Kagan?

  I think the bigger concept that I reflect on for everyone out there is that you can actually ask for discounts. And I don't think people realize that.

• 28:24Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 28:24Noah Kagan?

  I think that's actually the bigger, one of the bigger things, not the only biggest thing, which is I went to, you know Ali Abdo?

• 28:30Tim Ferriss?

  I do. Yeah. I don't know him personally, but I've had a little bit of contact.

• 28:33Noah Kagan?

  Oh, he's awesome. He's like a beautiful person. I love this guy. And I went to hang out with him in LA two weeks ago.

• 28:39Tim Ferriss?

  It seems like he's done a very good job on a whole bunch of different levels.

• 28:42Noah Kagan?

  And he's, yeah, and he's kind about it, which I really admire. And I go to his hotel room like, dude, sick hotel room, really sick hotel room. It's like literally a corner, Santa Monica, facing the beach. Me and Isaac, the videographer, were sharing like a tiny one bedroom. Like cuddling on a bed, like poor people. I was like, not, not poor people, but like I call it small rich. That's the new poor. That's my new term, small rich. Cause it means, you know, there's still a chance to get rich soon or yet. So anyways, I asked Ollie, I was like, how much is this room, man? This must be like a thousand a night. He's like, you know what, mate? He's, he's in London. He's like, you know, I mean, I just emailed them and said, I'm doing videos and stuff in the room. Do you think you can give me a little discount on the room? They gave him the room for free. Yeah. They give him the room for free just by asking. Doesn't hurt to ask. And so I think the bigger thing is not necessarily how to grind other

• 29:27Noah Kagan?

  people. And I don't think that's what we're encouraging at all. It's just thinking like, if you can't afford something, if you want something, how can you just ask for it? And I think what Tim said, what you highlighted from what we were talking about is I like the phrase whiffed. What's in it for them? Just think with like, how can I tell them I'll be a long-term customer? That's what you called out, which is great. Or like, hey, I can't afford this, but I can't afford this price. So I could do something now. And thinking about how you make it in their interest. Like maybe I'll leave you a review and thinking, you know, more in that instance makes them more likely to do it.

• 29:54Tim Ferriss?

  So let's give an example of an optional practice. And I know we've talked about this and for any number of reasons, I'm just in love with it. And that is the coffee discount. Because don't practice your first round on the important stuff. That's ridiculous. That's asking for all sorts of problems and all sorts of like self-imposed PTSD if it goes sideways. And then you're not going to do it again. So practice on things that don't matter. Right? It's kind of like, if you were going to have a really important job interview with your top pick, don't make that your first interview.

• 30:26Noah Kagan?

  A hundred percent.

• 30:27Tim Ferriss?

  Like just go get a bunch of practice rounds with other companies where you don't care about the outcome. So in this case, what is the coffee discount?

• 30:33Noah Kagan?

  Yeah. The coffee discount, it ties all into starting a business, which people are like, really? I'm like, yeah, it is the thing. It's you go to anytime you buy coffee, tea, anytime you go to a store, even a restaurant, you do it anywhere. You go up to the counter, you make your purchase and you say, can I please have 10% off? And then they look at you really strange. And you say, well, Noah Kagan, a million dollar weekend. I'm doing this course. I'm trying out this book. They said I should do it. And they keep looking at you weird. They go, let me talk to my manager. Okay, fine. You get 10% off. Or they come back and say, no. And you get your coffee and you move on. And then I always love asking people like, what did you learn about yourself? And everyone's always like, I was scared. I had courage because I faced my fear and I realized I can do more things and it's not as scary as it actually seemed. And now you

• 31:14Noah Kagan?

  can start applying that frankly, in everything in your jobs for raises with your dating, asking someone for a date and especially in business, which is, hey, will you come on my show? Hey, will you be my customer? Hey, will you give me feedback? Hey, can I interview you? That's all this whole life is, is asking people things. And if you ask, guess what? You can get.

• 31:30Tim Ferriss?

  I don't know when I originally said this or wrote it, but I've, it resonated so much that I was like, huh, maybe I should think about this even more myself, which was this line, can't believe I'm quoting myself for God's sake. Save me. This is what the internet does to you. I haven't started quoting myself with my name signed. I haven't started doing that yet, but the life punishes the vague wish and rewards the specific ask. And this ties into my earliest beginnings prior to the four hour work week. And I don't know if I've actually talked about this publicly, but when I was giving the guest lectures and high tech entrepreneurship at Princeton twice a year from 2003 to 13, I think. And I was invited

• 32:13Tim Ferriss?

  by a professor. I didn't have any special credentials other than everyone else he invited in as a guest speaker was venture backed and traveled that route. They had some type of external financing. I was one of his students. We kept in touch. We got along really well. Ed Shao, I've had him on the podcast and he wanted me to come back to share my experiences on the front lines because I was a recent grad. Also, I wasn't decades out.

• 32:35Noah Kagan?

  Yeah.

• 32:36Tim Ferriss?

  Bootstrap it. Right? So I went back and the crux of my presentation every time, and it modified, you know, grew and it evolved and the notes for that ended up becoming the backbone of the four hour work week as I ran all these experiments. But the opener was effectively, who here wants to be a salesperson? And no hands would go up. Nobody would raise their head, right?

• 33:00Noah Kagan?

  So good.

• 33:00Tim Ferriss?

  Especially because this is Princeton, right? And they're like, sales, like makes my skin crawl. You know, so you had people who were maybe going into entrepreneurship, more likely investment banking or management consulting, probably, but a lot of them had aspirations to be an entrepreneur. And I said, okay. Whether or not you want to be a salesperson is irrelevant. And if you don't like that label, that's fine, but you have to become a really good dealmaker. You have to become a good dealmaker.

• 33:25Noah Kagan?

  Love that.

• 33:26Tim Ferriss?

  And a lot of those presentations focused on the kind of stuff that we're talking about. Asking for what you want, deciding how to position it, deciding how to really determine what the other person wants. Because maybe you are causing a fuss over something that is just an indicator of what they actually want. And there are books that help with this. Getting Past No is one of my favorites. There are many others. And that is why we're spending some time on this. Are there other, let's just call them comfort challenges, let's say, besides the asking for a discount on a cup of coffee? And I want to make one modification to what you said, which is when you first, maybe the first time you do this, we'll make it softball. Fine. So you can ask for the discount and then you can mention you're doing it as an exercise for a book or something else. But then when you've tried that once or twice, now you can't say that.

• 34:11Noah Kagan?

  Yeah.

• 34:11Tim Ferriss?

  Make it more uncomfortable.

• 34:12Noah Kagan?

  Yeah.

• 34:12Tim Ferriss?

  Are there other small challenges like that where people can build their tolerance to discomfort in a similar way?

• 34:19Noah Kagan?

  Yeah. And let me give you two, one you could do right now. And so this is something from the book about, and it's the only book I think that you actually make money in the first few pages. And it's something that literally everyone can do right now. Ask one friend to invest a dollar in you right now. Literally go on your phone, Venmo, PayPal, crypto, whatever it is, and just message someone on WhatsApp, whatever it is, and say, hey, I've got this idea for a business or I want to start a business, but I'm looking for one person to be on my board of advisors or my investor. Will you Venmo me? $1. And I did this with a guy named Jake about a month and a half ago, and his hand was trembling. He's like,

• 34:53Noah Kagan?

  and then you want to make it harder, call the person. Don't just text message them. Call them. And it's silly, right? And I think business should be fun. I don't think we should have these day jobs that we hate all day. That seems horrible. But this is a fun thing that you can do, just a little dollar, one tiny little dollar. And that's, but guess what? Every billion dollar company started with a dollar. And so building up that practice where you just kind of ask for the dollar and then you get it. Like, oh shit, that's the beginning.

• 35:20Tim Ferriss?

  This is gonna be such a mundane, procedural, stupid question I'm gonna ask anyway. If they're like, what am I getting for my dollar as an investor? What do you say?

• 35:28Noah Kagan?

  Exactly. So the line I like to use is, I love your support as I'm starting my business and I'd love for you to be on my board of advisors. So I can keep you informed as I'm working on my business. And it's a way to have people that that care about you are just a part of your journey. And I think people are surprised how much people want them to succeed. And so Jake called his brother, Jake called his other friend, Tom. And they're both like,

• 35:48Tim Ferriss?

  Who's Jake?

• 35:48Noah Kagan?

  Jake is a guy who read Million Dollar Weekend and lived at my house for 48 hours.

• 35:54Tim Ferriss?

  So I wanted to see the book work. So he read basically a prototype,

• 35:58Noah Kagan?

  Yeah.

• 35:58Tim Ferriss?

  galley, something like that.

• 36:00Noah Kagan?

  Yeah. And so he called these two people. He said, Hey, Tom, I really love for you to support me. Can you send me a dollar right now? And he was shaking. Tom sent a dollar live. We saw it on Venmo. And Jake was like,

• 36:12Noah Kagan?

  and everyone can do that right now. Especially if you want to start a business and you want to get going. Or guess what? If you have a business, do it to one friend, do it to a colleague, do it to your significant others. So that's one I highly recommend. The other one that this is stuff I still do to this day. They're silly, right? And business should be fun. And guess what? As you called it out really well, practice on the small stuff. So when you get to bigger stuff, it's not as big a deal. Like I'm going to people's houses and knocking on doors. That's pretty scary. Most of my videos on YouTube are me going up someone's door. I don't know them and I ask them, what do you do for a living? That's a very big ask to a stranger. Imagine me knocking on your door here. You'd be like, get the hell out of here. So the other one that I'd recommend, and this is a, again, these are universal. You don't need money. It doesn't matter your gender, doesn't matter how rich or poor you are. You can practice these and build your skills up and your confidence up to be successful in business.

• 36:57Noah Kagan?

  As you said, sales is the basis of billionaires. A lot of billionaires were really good at sales.

• 37:02Tim Ferriss?

  Just footnote, don't lose track. If you're not selling customers, you're selling people on your ideas. You're selling people on why they should use your design specs instead of something else. You're selling them on why you

• 37:17Tim Ferriss?

  Deserve, or at the very least, it's okay that you take a week of paid time off. Like you are persuading, you are going to be in the persuasion business. Even if you are the most antisocial of coders, at some point you have to interact with these bags of flesh called humans.

• 37:33Noah Kagan?

  Yeah.

• 37:34Tim Ferriss?

  And this is part of the game.

• 37:35Noah Kagan?

  It is. The other one that's universal, and I do it, I did it last week, it was actually pretty fun, is the compliment challenge. The compliment challenge, it's what it sounds like. And so specifically what I like to compliment people on is clothing. I've never been a good dresser. You grew up in California, Mervyn's?

• 37:51Tim Ferriss?

  I grew up on Long Island, so forget about clothing.

• 37:54Noah Kagan?

  But yeah, you know, you moved to the Bay Area, like, you know, Mervyn's, remember that store?

• 37:57Tim Ferriss?

  Mervyn's vaguely.

• 37:58Noah Kagan?

  No, man, it was bad. That's the only place my mom bought his clothes from. And it was rough, most of my life. As I got older, I was like, I kind of want to dress well. And so the compliment challenge is anytime you see anyone with something nice, that you're like, that's kind of a cool hat, cool jacket, cool shoes. So two weeks ago, I was at the Best Western, and as I like to call it, it's the okay Western hotel. It's definitely not the best. She rebranded. This lady had shoes on, and I was like, and then the way I like to think about it specifically with these challenges is you have a three second rule. For me personally, is I won't negotiate with terrorists, I will not negotiate with myself. So within three seconds, I have to make the decision to do it. Just go do it. Don't even think about it. And by the time you do it, you're like, that was never so scary. And I still have the fear. It's not like, at points, it goes away, just get a little bit easier over time. So this lady was sitting, having breakfast with her husband, and I'm like, I'm bothering

• 38:41Noah Kagan?

  her. I'm definitely bothering. And that's actually a really misconception in big in sales, where we're like, we're bothering the other people. Here's what's fascinating, I go up to her, like, I'm really sorry to bother you guys, but I love your shoes. She's like, thank you so much. I was like, do you mind telling me where you got them from? She's like, yeah, I got them from JCPenney's. I was like, awesome. I think my girlfriend might like those. Have a great day. And she's like, thank you so much. That was really nice of you. I was like, okay, went back to my chair. And so that's, that's one misconception in sales is that we're actually harassing or bothering people when maybe it's actually a good thing. And people need to maybe reconsider their perception of what a sale is.

• 39:12Tim Ferriss?

  Quick pause. If the book title keeps coming up, we're gonna have to cut it.

• 39:16Noah Kagan?

  No, no, did I say it again?

• 39:17Tim Ferriss?

  You're good. We can mention it, but if there's too much density, we'll have to thin it out a little bit.

• 39:21Noah Kagan?

  No worries.

• 39:21Tim Ferriss?

  So, back to the story.

• 39:23Noah Kagan?

  By the way, great feedback. Thank you. That's like a superpower. I mean, that alone is great. I don't know if you want to include that in your content.

• 39:29Tim Ferriss?

  We could include it. Actually, I mean, shit, if you're okay with it.

• 39:31Noah Kagan?

  Yeah, I think this is like, like, one of my superpowers at AppSumo, we could say is not just my superpower, one of our values is feedback is a gift.

• 39:38Tim Ferriss?

  That is also on walls at the artist formerly known as Facebook, right? Feedback is a gift.

• 39:44Noah Kagan?

  Is that what they said in there?

• 39:44Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 39:45Noah Kagan?

  Oh, wow.

• 39:45Tim Ferriss?

  That's the thing. But it is, and this is fun. Okay, yeah, if we can, if we can keep it in, that'd be great. Because when I was, as an example, right, when I was early on preparing for the four hour work week, I went to media training. I'd never done real media before. And they were like, you must say, as in my book, right? In my book, mention the title. And I did it. I got really good at it. And what I would say to folks, if you're on morning television, and you have 45 seconds, and they're gonna mispronounce your name and get your book title wrong, yes, it's a good idea to get it in. With longer format, you have the time to work with nuance.

• 40:26Tim Ferriss?

  And I will tell people right now, look, I'll keep it simple. Just go buy the fucking book. Because, because I've seen what the blog post has done. I've spent enough time with you. I've seen you in action. We've collaborated way back in the day on the Tim Ferriss Experiment, the TV show. Got to see a lot of this stuff live, got to practice a lot of it live. So you know what you're talking about.

• 40:51Tim Ferriss?

  Just a quick thanks to one of our sponsors, and we'll be right back to the show. This episode is brought to you by LinkedIn Jobs. Every small business owner I know, and that includes me, is asking themselves the same question. What is the one key move? The one key decision that'll take my business to the next level in 2024? Very often, that move is hiring the right person for the right job. I've seen this personally in my own companies, when a new member comes on board, brings in fresh ideas, challenges the status quo, shakes up some systems which can propel the entire company. The entire team forward and it sometimes changes the entire business model or gives you an entire new revenue stream. I've seen this personally. That's why LinkedIn jobs has created the tools to help you find the right professionals for your team faster and for free. LinkedIn has

• 41:36Tim Ferriss?

  a vast network of more than a billion professionals, which makes it the best place to hire. In fact, 86% of small businesses get a qualified candidate within 24 hours. That is also why small businesses rate LinkedIn jobs number one in delivering quality hires versus leading competitors. LinkedIn also knows that small business owners, that's you, me, maybe, are wearing so many hats, so many goddamn hats, that they might not feel they have the time or resources to hire well, to really dig in, take the process seriously from start to finish, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. Thankfully with LinkedIn, the process is intuitive, fast, and easy. Post your job for free at LinkedIn.com/Tim. Why not try it out? You can go to LinkedIn.com/Tim

• 42:19Tim Ferriss?

  to post your job for free. Terms and conditions do apply.

• 42:26Tim Ferriss?

  So coming back to the sales, I will say, don't assume that complimenting someone or approaching someone is going to be bothersome or harass them. However, there are times when that can be the case in the sense that I remember in Silicon Valley, man, this is part of the reason why I was like, I need to take a break from this place geographically. I would be at dinners, dinners, sometimes with my girlfriend, we'd be on a date and a dude, it was always a dude, it was always a dude. Some dude in his like mid twenties would come over and be like, hi Tim, and pull up a chair and just sit down and pitch me on a startup. And I remember on multiple occasions, there were

• 43:10Tim Ferriss?

  times when I was not as delicate about it, but I would just be like, John, is your name John? You didn't even mention your name. John, I'll just call you John. I mean, John, it does not matter how good your pitch is right now. It could be the best pitch in the world. The timing is not good. And I'll just share one more that I thought was amusing, which is a counterpoint, although I will say oftentimes the it's going to bother someone, it's going to be rude, it's going to be fill in the blank negative label is an excuse for us to avoid doing the thing that is uncomfortable. However, one counter example, we're sitting here in Austin. I was here at South by, South by Southwest. So that is a huge festival here in Austin, great fun.

• 43:50Tim Ferriss?

  And I was on an escalator and I was exhausted because I'm an introvert, which people may not realize because I have one-on-one conversations and then broadcast it to millions of people, but very introvert, I get depleted. When I go to events and I do things like book signings, I'm toast for two, three days. So I'm on the escalator and literally like putting my face like nuzzling into my girlfriend's neck because I'm trying to hide from the world. And she is above me in the escalator. A guy reaches over her shoulder and taps me on the shoulder to pitch me on a startup. So don't do that. So don't do that.

• 44:24Noah Kagan?

  Dude, I got a guy and I was in Barcelona. I was in Spandex, just to be clear. I just finished a bike ride and this guy pulls up a seat next to me and he's like, you're no okay. And I'm like, yeah, I'm okay. And he's like, dude, give me a hug. I was like, I don't know you. And then he's like, he's like, you gotta come meet my friend. I was like, dude, I'm just getting a beer. Just let me get my Australia dam and chill out, dude. And yes, I'll come talk to you. And it was just a little bit too imposing.

• 44:47Tim Ferriss?

  But just, just look, I don't want to turn this into a like total kvetch marathon, but I will say that for me, this is very much an Austin thing too. If you meet anyone for the first time, and perhaps I've spent too much time in Japan, who knows, but. If I stick out my hand and you say I'm a hugger.

• 45:06Noah Kagan?

  Oh, the worst.

• 45:07Tim Ferriss?

  Don't do, don't do that.

• 45:08Noah Kagan?

  And then they bear hug you.

• 45:10Tim Ferriss?

  They bear, those are always.

• 45:11Noah Kagan?

  Or they do like, like Will Ferrell comedy extended hug.

• 45:16Tim Ferriss?

  Don't do that, guys. Don't do that, guys.

• 45:19Noah Kagan?

  Do the fist bump, do the bow.

• 45:20Tim Ferriss?

  Just about anything is fine. Please don't.

• 45:23Noah Kagan?

  That's so imposing, like I'm a hugger. It's like, all right, I'm a kicker. Doesn't mean I'm gonna kick you though.

• 45:27Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, I'm a slapper. Great.

• 45:31Tim Ferriss?

  So pro tips.

• 45:33Noah Kagan?

  Let me drop, I'll drop one thing, especially in sales. We were talking about challenges. And by the way, all these challenges do lead up in what I think has helped me be successful is asking and practicing. And so for sales, I have a little framework that works super well. It's called LOT. Listen, options, transition. And this is the same thing in asking. Just listen to that person. So first off, I'm going to listen to Tim. Talk to him about their problems, especially if you're starting a business. You're like, let me talk to you about your shirts. What do you like about your shirts? What do you not like about your shirts? Tell me more about your shirts and just listen. Just think of you're doing a podcast interview and you're just interviewing them and getting feedback. Okay. Then you present an option to your person. Say, hey, oh, you like shirts? What about this shirt at this price? And they say, yeah, that actually solves my problem. Or if you can't, you don't. And then you transition them to, all right, pay me. All right, let's move on to a next step.

• 46:16Noah Kagan?

  Let's put in the calendar, which I'm always a huge, like lock it in the cow. If you're trying to get sales, always in the cow.

• 46:22Tim Ferriss?

  Or how do you lock it in the cow in a case like this? What goes into the calendar?

• 46:25Noah Kagan?

  So what I'm doing, I'll give an example. Yesterday I was talking to this woman at a company that I want to work with. And it was like, all right, well, we'd like to do something together. Cool. I'll follow up an email. And I'm like, you know, let's just do it right now. And so my phrase is always this, I have my calendar open. How does this date work at this time? And that is such an easier decision for her to then make and say, actually, yeah, cool. Let's placeholder it.

• 46:46Tim Ferriss?

  It also saves so much bandwidth over time.

• 46:48Noah Kagan?

  A hundred percent.

• 46:49Tim Ferriss?

  Right. Like you add that up over as a process, right? If you're constantly doing follow up emails.

• 46:54Noah Kagan?

  Yeah. And I want to make sure I have a next step.

• 46:56Tim Ferriss?

  10% of your life is dealing with those follow up emails. So let's talk about what we left maybe 10, 15 minutes ago. Just because I like to bookmark practices at different stages because I do find that they inform a lot. And I'm also personally curious. These conversations are ultimately always personal to me. So CEO frameworks.

• 47:17Noah Kagan?

  Yeah.

• 47:18Tim Ferriss?

  Things that you do on a daily, weekly or monthly basis. You mentioned the bi-annual, for lack of a better descriptor, recurring expense review. Right? You mentioned that already. What are some other things? Because you've had quite a bit of practice now.

• 47:30Noah Kagan?

  Yeah, let me show you a few because I think it's kind of cooler when you get to see it. So every single day at appsumo.com, can I say the website? Or is it, am I saying too much?

• 47:38Tim Ferriss?

  That's fine.

• 47:39Noah Kagan?

  Everyone, every single day, rrrr.com.

• 47:43Tim Ferriss?

  Bleep.com.

• 47:44Noah Kagan?

  Yeah, we'll bleep it out. You can check this out. I think you can, and you can talk through it. I'm happy.

• 47:47Tim Ferriss?

  Oh, wow.

• 47:47Noah Kagan?

  You can share these numbers. So every single day, this is something Keith Raboy does and.

• 47:51Tim Ferriss?

  Okay, so this is in.

• 47:52Noah Kagan?

  So every day we have a daily pulse. That's what we call it. And let's zoom out for one sec. Have one singular goal. That's what I learned from Zuckerberg and that's what I do at appsumo.com. And so with appsumo.com this year, our one singular goal is $45 million net revenue. That's net. Gross sales is definitely around 77 to 80 million, depending on how the year ends. And then every single day, there is this Slack bot that posts like all of our key metrics that lead to our number one goal.

• 48:16Tim Ferriss?

  Uh huh. And it's tied into automation.

• 48:19Noah Kagan?

  Yeah.

• 48:20Tim Ferriss?

  So what are you using there?

• 48:21Noah Kagan?

  We're using Zapier and then we use Snowflake. We have a two-person business intelligence team. But anyone could do this on a spreadsheet. Just every day, you have one goal. How are you doing that?

• 48:30Tim Ferriss?

  Could I say this for a sec?

• 48:31Noah Kagan?

  Yeah. Yeah, a lot of time. Talk out some of the numbers. It's pretty interesting.

• 48:33Tim Ferriss?

  So we have data updated through. This is a pulse box. It's being automatically posted. You're not manually pulling this. But you could.

• 48:42Noah Kagan?

  Yeah. And you can also, by the way, if you're just starting out, just have a spreadsheet and check it every single day.

• 48:45Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, so you have month to date actual as compared to goal. So that's in and of itself meaningful, right? And so you got total gross sales, 4.3 million, let's call it versus 4.438 million total net revenue gross profit, AOV, which is average order value.

• 49:03Noah Kagan?

  Yep.

• 49:04Tim Ferriss?

  And new buyers, total buyers plus members. Those are subscribers.

• 49:09Noah Kagan?

  Those are our VIP customers.

• 49:10Tim Ferriss?

  VIP customers. Daily sales, which is broken out, new buyers, new buyer conversion rate, new versus existing buyer gross sales month to date. That's an interesting one. And then daily KPI report with monthly projections. So the KPI, key performance indicators. So this is quite a bit of stuff. And I'm wondering if you had to 80/20 this for your business right now? Because I'm not sure how Keith Raboy does this or describes it. There are, I believe, examples that say Y Combinator of talking about. The single weekly metric, right? Picking one or two weekly metrics that are tracked over time and you're trying to get that to compound at 10% a week or whatever the number might be. So what, what would you?

• 49:53Noah Kagan?

  Yeah.

• 49:53Tim Ferriss?

  For everyone. Choose as your kind of 80, 20 priorities in that list right now?

• 49:57Noah Kagan?

  For everyone out there, it could be different, right? We're more of an e-commerce site with our business. There's three numbers that I would just look at. Three numbers add up. So again, start with one goal. What is your goal and what's your date for that goal? So our goal is from zero January 1, to the end of the year, how do we get 45 million net revenue? And the three goals, the three KPIs that lead to that, it's basically just three for us. Traffic. So how many people are coming to the site? How many people actually buy, which is our conversion rate? And then how much do they spend, which is our average order value? That's it. That's all I would look at. Now, that's the, the most simplest version of it. So if you have traffic, times so much people buy, how much they spend, that gives you your revenue numbers. But then we have sub numbers. That's where it gets complicated. But if I had to do 80, 20 would be that. Now, what other people need to be thinking about though is what are the things that impact those three KPIs? That's how you now get way more complicated.

• 50:41Tim Ferriss?

  For sure. Just for fun. If you had to pick one of those three to optimize for 2024, which would it be?

• 50:47Noah Kagan?

  Oof. With appsumo.com.

• 50:49Tim Ferriss?

  Top of the funnel. So traffic, conversion, or average order volume?

• 50:53Noah Kagan?

  Yeah. If I only could pick one thing out of all of it.

• 50:55Tim Ferriss?

  Yep.

• 50:56Noah Kagan?

  I would actually pick just number of deals for our business.

• 50:59Tim Ferriss?

  Number of deals.

• 51:00Noah Kagan?

  Yeah. So every business has.

• 51:01Tim Ferriss?

  So the number of products that you're offering, which should help with, I imagine the conversion and.

• 51:07Noah Kagan?

  Traffic. And so for every business out there, what's the core input that leads to your main outputs? Let's just take a lot of different examples. So YouTube lately, and this has been a big transformation for me is I'm setting unambitious goals.

• 51:20Tim Ferriss?

  Okay. Tell me more.

• 51:22Noah Kagan?

  You know, I think it's Silicon Valley. If you're not 10x-ing, and I was with our board a month ago, like if you're not 10x-ing, no, you're failing. And I was like, okay, I've read that book. And, and so.

• 51:31Tim Ferriss?

  I got that T-shirt too, guys.

• 51:32Noah Kagan?

  I know. 10x everything is written by people that haven't 10xed the business. And the reality, and let's tell you, there's two parts there, but there's cores for everything. So the core for my YouTube channel is two videos a month. That's it. That's what I found gets me to the main metrics that I need. And there's supporting metrics around it, but that's my core there. Appsumo.com. As of now, it's give or take around. I'd have to ask Sean, he runs the high level, but it's about 35 deals a month. If we can do 35 amazing software deals a month, we hit our targets, more or less. And so for your business, what's the core numbers? We talked about this in the past, but what's the core number you can really just like, everything kind of works backwards off of. And so for us, it would be deals.

• 52:09Tim Ferriss?

  Okay. So we're going to talk about other frameworks and then we're going to, at some point, we are going to come back to YouTube because I have questions around that.

• 52:16Noah Kagan?

  Sure.

• 52:17Tim Ferriss?

  Top three, bottom three.

• 52:18Noah Kagan?

  Hmm.

• 52:19Tim Ferriss?

  What is that?

• 52:20Noah Kagan?

  You know, you gave me feedback early in the show, which is great. And this, that's awesome. That's how you improve. I don't know if people don't realize that, like the only way you look at yourself is with a mirror. And that's the same thing in your relationships to ask your partner today, right now. Hey, what am I doing well? Or what do you want me to improve on?

• 52:34Tim Ferriss?

  And we're going to come back to this, but how much money have you spent on coaches? Would you say in the last five to 10 years?

• 52:41Noah Kagan?

  Myself and the team. Easily over a million.

• 52:44Tim Ferriss?

  Okay.

• 52:44Noah Kagan?

  Easily over a million. So we'll, we'll get into that.

• 52:46Tim Ferriss?

  Coachable.

• 52:47Noah Kagan?

  Yeah, I like feedback. That's how I can get better. It doesn't mean I accept all the feedback, but it means I can acknowledge all the feedback and make a decision. So T3B3, something, it's from Travis actually at Uber. And so the idea there and Andrew Chen was one of my best friends and advisor brought it to me. He's been on the show, basically just like every quarter, it's so light. I just don't like sometimes feedback because it's like these 18 pages that I'm like, I don't know what to do. You have 18 things to fucking do, but so much. Just tell me the top three things.

• 53:11Tim Ferriss?

  You're in great here.

• 53:12Noah Kagan?

  Don't worry.

• 53:12Tim Ferriss?

  We can guess.

• 53:14Noah Kagan?

  What are the top three things you love that I'm doing? So I know I can continue it. And what are the bottom three things I can improve on? Three things is definitely doable. If not three, just even do one. You can do T1B1 and I just have it in my calendar. I think more things you can just have automatic in your calendar, the better. So I just have my calendar, ask team, T3B3 every quarter. And so right now in your business, if you're in the junior department, if you're the leader of the company, or even in relationships, whatever it is, just go ask your partner, ask someone that you trust and respect. Hey, what is top three things I'm doing? What are the bottom three? And do that regularly and you will be able to keep improving.

• 53:45Tim Ferriss?

  Can you give any examples of real?

• 53:47Noah Kagan?

  Yeah.

• 53:48Tim Ferriss?

  T3B3?

• 53:49Noah Kagan?

  So on my desk, I print mine out because I want to see it. What you're doing well, you're probably going to continue, but what you can improve is cool. So the team gave me feedback that I'm, they want more autonomy, that I'm too much up in their ass. That I'm like, and this is the funniest part. Everyone's like, I'm not a micromanager. I'm like, dude, everyone who says that is.

• 54:06Tim Ferriss?

  It's kind of like if, yeah, if you see on a dating app, anyone who says no drama, you're like, oh, you love drama.

• 54:13Noah Kagan?

  Huge red flag.

• 54:14Tim Ferriss?

  Huge red flag.

• 54:15Noah Kagan?

  So they wanted more autonomy and then asked for an example, like what's an example or what's a moment? Give me a solution that we make sure that as it comes to it. So for instance, with appsumo.com, I love going through our credit card bill. You know, our credit card bills, sometimes like November, because Black Friday, it's about a million dollars. Almost a million dollars and normally it can vary between three and five.

• 54:34Tim Ferriss?

  And that's on customer acquisition, like paid acquisition.

• 54:37Noah Kagan?

  Facebook, our Amazon bill, 50K a month, a lot of different ads.

• 54:41Tim Ferriss?

  Just so I understand, Amazon bill, you're talking about AWS?

• 54:43Noah Kagan?

  AWS, yeah. So I was going through every transaction and it'd be like a $9 transaction.

• 54:47Tim Ferriss?

  I would love if your Amazon bill was just shit your employees are buying as gifts. AWS.

• 54:51Noah Kagan?

  I mean, you know, there's, well, as you get bigger, you also have checks and balances. Someone actually tried to scam us for 30K a few weeks ago, which is super impressive. But I was going through these credit card bills and if we talk about coaches, we have a CFO coach for the VP of Finance. She's the CFO, she was the CFO of MailChimp. Pretty good job, you know, pretty good company. And we're in a meeting and she's like, Noah, you know, we talk about autonomy, we talk about trust. Do you think going through the credit card transactions and messaging people about a $10 purchase is really autonomy? And not trusting your VP of Finance, Kevin, who can do this? And I was like, good point. I stopped looking at credit card bills. So that was one of them. The other B3 from this quarter was around longer term vision. I'm much more of a tactician and I like getting action. I like getting movement.

• 55:33Noah Kagan?

  And the team was like, you need to chill out and think longer for us and come back with some type of longer plan. And so the last six months of the year was really thinking about what do we want to do in the next three years? Cause I've been so focused in business and generally about one year segments. So we spent so much time and now we have like a 2026 vision.

• 55:49Tim Ferriss?

  I think this is also very common. It's not true for everyone, but very common for people who've done a lot of bootstrapping.

• 55:55Noah Kagan?

  Yeah.

• 55:55Tim Ferriss?

  More so than people have raised a bunch of money.

• 55:58Noah Kagan?

  Yeah.

• 55:58Tim Ferriss?

  Where a board. Understandably wants to know what the hell your long-term.

• 56:02Noah Kagan?

  Yeah.

• 56:03Tim Ferriss?

  What your long-term plans are because they want to realize their equity.

• 56:08Noah Kagan?

  Their return. Yeah, that was the feedback I got from the team. They're like, get out of the day-to-day. Let us do it. We got it. And just start moving the process forward. So I was thinking about like talking to customers, talking to partners, thinking about ourselves, like what do we like doing? What are we great at? And where can we be in three years? And then bringing that back to the team, incorporating and getting them buy-in. That was something I got feedback in the past, like, hey, you're just making decisions without us. So yeah, by the end of the year, I think mid-November now, we have a three-year vision and base camps towards that vision.

• 56:36Tim Ferriss?

  Base camps, project management.

• 56:38Noah Kagan?

  Not necessarily basecamp.com, but basecamp specifically, what are milestones?

• 56:42Tim Ferriss?

  I.

• 56:42Noah Kagan?

  So our destination is to be able to distribute software tools for entrepreneurs. That's what we love doing. I love promoting things. And so how do we be the number one place to distribute software tools, not just deals, but software tools? And then what are the different key milestones numerically? As well as from what we want to do in the business within these separate years to be able to get there in 2026. So that was feedback directly from the team that they told me. And then we do this for everyone in the company.

• 57:05Tim Ferriss?

  The top three, bottom three.

• 57:06Noah Kagan?

  Yeah.

• 57:07Tim Ferriss?

  How do people track that? Or how do people keep it present, right? Because it is one thing, having just come off of an offsite myself, and I actually think we did a good job with this because we sort of assigned ownership, next steps, and then did working sessions during the offsite, like, okay, let's actually get these things in motion because it's great to have a bunch of meals, have some wine, walk around, talk about big ideas. Oh, we're so excited. Let's take a team photo next to the paper on the wall and then wah-wah, like right back to status quo. How do people keep these top three, bottom three present? Or maybe a better way to word it is, how do they keep themselves accountable?

• 57:46Noah Kagan?

  A few things that work for us. So one is scorecards. Everyone gets a scorecard. If you're in AppSumo, you get a scorecard. And so I can show you an example of it. I focus on the leadership scorecard. So I have a company scorecard. What are our top three things we're trying to do in Q1? And Sean, he's our head of revenue alone. She's our COO. They each have a scorecard with just what are your top three things based on what we're trying to do in Q1?

• 58:07Tim Ferriss?

  Okay, this will be for Q1.

• 58:08Noah Kagan?

  Yeah. And so that is a helpful way where maybe it's something they want to improve, or maybe it's just something that they need to work on, or it's just an outcome that we want. And then we agree on what those are. They propose it, I review it, and then we decide it. Got it. It doesn't mean necessarily like, hey, it's going to be one of their B3s, but that for me is like the three things that they want to get better at, or they want to accomplish. The other thing I would say, you know, it sounded like you guys had a planning session and all this stuff. We had, you know, I told you, we have a three-year vision, and then we have like all this stuff. But on Monday, I was with one of my coaches, Dan Putt from Reboot. And I was talking to Dan, I was like, I don't know if we're on the same page with what we're doing, because I'm not really clear. He's like, well, if you're not clear, they're definitely not clear.

• 58:48Noah Kagan?

  And I was like, oh, that's interesting, right? It comes from the top. How are you leading by example? If I'm not clear where we're going to go necessarily in the next quarter, like, does everyone else know? So we had a meeting, and I saw that, and I was like, everyone needs to bring their top scorecard projects. We need a line on them, make sure they're tied to the main thing, and have a one pager around it. Had a meeting the next day, everyone brought their stuff, and I know we have a one pager that ties all this together. And so now being very, very clear, like, what's our number goals? What's our key projects? And by the way, this is something that's counterintuitive in businesses. It's like, if there's not fighting, you're not really getting the best ideas. I want more people saying no. Like, the best people at Facebook when I was there, were always saying no to Mark. And I was always like, yeah, Mark, that was a pretty good idea. That's maybe why I got fired. But over time, I've realized that challenging respectfully is very healthy.

• 59:33Noah Kagan?

  And so you ask about feedback and all that, it's ask for feedback really, be clear in what success is. That's what a scorecard is. It's like, here is success for me with our work. And then you can be able to measure against that in a very clear amount of time.

• 59:46Tim Ferriss?

  Okay, we are going to come back to saying no, pretty quickly, because a big part of enabling yourself to say yes to the things that matter is being able and equipped to say no. Yeah, so I do want to come back to that. Other frameworks that you would like to mention?

• 1:00:01Noah Kagan?

  The other one I do that this changed everything for me in the past two years, especially as a CEO. Was a weekly review. And so I only have three questions and really noticing what you actually do. A lot of people are like, I have all these frameworks. And then you ask them like a year later, like, yeah, I don't use it again. So maybe they've evolved it, but really it's not sticking. And this is one that sticks with me. And I could show you, it comes up on my phone. So every week, I get a Slack bot. Here it is. You can see. So it says, complete your Friday weekly review. So today's Friday is we're chatting. You can click on it. And there's three questions. And the three questions are very, very simple. It's how was the week? One through five and why? And this is you could do whether you're CEO or whether you're a junior person. And so we track it. We track the ratings every week.

• 1:00:44Tim Ferriss?

  One is sucked. Five is fantastic.

• 1:00:46Noah Kagan?

  Yeah. So this week was a five. This week crushed. And that's thinking about, okay, what made this week a five? What happened this week? I gotta hang out with you. We had lack of clarity on Monday. On Tuesday, we dialed in our Q1 planning and everyone was like, super hyped on that. Finished executive compensation, which was challenging about how much people get paid. So this week was a five and then explaining line adding all those different things. And it's not always like, I just bullet point. I don't necessarily need to write stories. Number two thing, especially as my leadership style, I noticed I was very inconsistent.

• 1:01:13Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah. Were you consistent?

• 1:01:14Noah Kagan?

  Yeah. So my number two question is, was I consistent this week? One through five? Basically because I'd go into a meeting and I would just start fucking ripping on people. Like I was in a meeting with Mitchell and Ullman and I'm just like shitting all over them. I'm like, your ideas are sucky. And I wasn't coming with solutions. That week was a three. That was not a good idea because if as a leader, you want consistent experience for your, the people you work with.

• 1:01:36Tim Ferriss?

  And you're being consistent based on feedback you've received from the team and your top three, bottom three? Is that sort of a?

• 1:01:42Noah Kagan?

  A little bit. It's also, this is more my own subjective opinion.

• 1:01:45Tim Ferriss?

  Got it. This is how you feel?

• 1:01:46Noah Kagan?

  Yeah. I found this really, really helpful. And then the last question is, what are my top three for next week? So it makes me be very more focused about, okay, I have a singular goal. We have Q1 priorities. Now I can break these down to smaller levels and say like, okay, this upcoming week, what are the three things you want to work on? Then with my executive assistant and our chief of staff, we can help realign my schedule. Like, is that actually what I'm working on next week? Or is it a bunch of other things? One tool we stopped using because it costs money. So we stopped paying for it. But there is a tool that does this T3 B3 and then follows up and you can have all of it. But I was like, I think we can do it in Google Forms for cheaper is Lattice. Lattice. Latticehq.com. It's Sam Altman's brother. Hmm. Jack. Got it. But it was like 15,000 a year and I was like, I think Google Forms for free a year can do pretty equivalent.

• 1:02:31Noah Kagan?

  And just it's a little more work on the team. Shout out Charlotte and Anna and Angelina for helping facilitate it. But yeah, that actually will do your tracking and then you could double check how you are against it versus honestly, Google Spreadsheets is comparable. Q1 top and singular goal. Do you want to talk about either of these? A lot of it, when you're trying to go anywhere in your business is like, where do you want to be by the end of the year? So right now, for anyone who's watching this, it's coming out in January, where do you want to be December 31st, 2024? And just pick a destination with the time. Most people don't do either. They're like, dude, you've influenced so many people on health. Like, I just want to be healthier. What does that mean? Yeah. Be healthier. So be more clear on your goal and your destination. That's something that Zuckerberg, I've talked to you about it where he brought me in a room. He's like, I want to get a billion people.

• 1:03:12Noah Kagan?

  Oh, like, wow, that's pretty cool. And this is when we had 10 million. Yeah, it's a big one. That was amazing. It was exciting. And so have a very clear singular goal that you want to accomplish. But maybe it's like a thousand subscribers. And my goals lately are much more unambitious because I want to focus on goals I can sustain. Could you give an example of what that looks like? So with AppSumo.com in the past, if we didn't 2X a year, I'm like, oh, it failed. And you'll hear this, you'll say like, shoot for the stars and if you're in at the moon, you're good. But also that means I'm running really fast. You burn out because you're working really hard and you're not getting where you want to go. And so now with AppSumo, our general growth range is five to 10% a year. And so this year for 2024, I believe it'll be around 7%.

• 1:03:54Noah Kagan?

  And the reason that is, is because if I can do 7% over year after year after year after year. Yeah, you end up the Warren Buffett of AppSumo. Exactly. And the other thing that I've noticed through these unambitious goals, and I'll give more examples, is that it creates more freedom for taking 10X experiments. So we're doing a lot more content this year by the time this comes out. We're going to be trying doing like an alternative to product time and some of these other options. But if we're so focused on having to grow revenue and do all these things, you don't really have oxygen to experiment in a way that feels confident. So same thing with my YouTube channel. I'm going from one million to 1.25 million this year. You know, like 25%, but you know, we've been going 50%. And that's because I would say we've had less aggressive goals. And so thinking about that for everyone out there, I do think Silicon Valley and what they're telling you,

• 1:04:39Noah Kagan?

  oh, you got a 10x, that's because these investors don't care if people fail.

• 1:04:42Tim Ferriss?

  I would add to that. This is super important. I'm glad you're bringing it up because I do like how some of these outrageous questions break your mental models or your assumptions about what you can't do. Right. So how could you achieve your 10 year goals in the next six months?

• 1:04:56Noah Kagan?

  Love that.

• 1:04:57Tim Ferriss?

  Great. That's an excellent thought exercise, but if you're applying to yourself as a bootstrapped entrepreneur, 10x or bust. And if, let's just say, well being or happiness is reality minus expectations.

• 1:05:14Noah Kagan?

  Yes.

• 1:05:15Tim Ferriss?

  You can paint yourself into a precarious corner and you can paint your team and employees into a very precarious corner. In the venture backed power law distribution of startups and venture capital, there are a few things you got to realize. The first is that investors are banking on that kind of power law return within tech. So they're looking at huge possible multiples, right? So they can make a thousand X on something that breaks out. This happens and that pays for all the losses. Other invisible, I would say invisible to the public factors include the incentives you may not see in the headlines. For instance, if a founder is able to take money off the table with large rounds of financing, they're already in the black.

• 1:06:00Tim Ferriss?

  And then for the company outcome to have a huge impact on their quality of life, they're willing and able to make enormous outsized bets with ridiculous ambitions. Because guess what? It's not in the news, but they already have 20 million in the bank. They're good. And this is why I think what you're saying is really important. The consistency matters. And I want to tie this because everything is related to everything in some respects. And I want to talk about YouTube briefly. We are going to talk a lot about building, but guys, these are the ingredients that allow you to build and experiment consistently. You need to develop certain attributes and frameworks. We can talk about KPIs and goals

• 1:06:44Tim Ferriss?

  and what we want to achieve. There's a survivorship bias in entrepreneurship where you tend to hear about the success stories.

• 1:06:50Noah Kagan?

  Hundred percent.

• 1:06:51Tim Ferriss?

  One of the things you have done on YouTube, I'm not sure if this is going to be fertile ground for harvesting, so we'll see. But you've asked a lot of millionaires, billionaires, versions of was it worth it? What do you regret, et cetera? Are there any takeaways from that that were either not obvious or that have really stuck for you? Because it's easy to find every year, some version of the article that is like so and so talked to people on their deathbed and they all said, I wish I'd spent more time with my family and less time in the office. It's like, okay, fine. Right? Don't neglect your health. Fine. I get it. Like, these are all kind of predictable things you would expect. And

• 1:07:33Tim Ferriss?

  no one on their deathbed, if they don't want to be considered like a miserly cunt, is going to say, my family sucks. I really wish I'd spent more time in the office. They're just not going to say that as their legacy.

• 1:07:43Noah Kagan?

  That's what I'm going.

• 1:07:45Tim Ferriss?

  So has anything really stuck with you from those conversations or lines of questioning? Was it worth it? If there were any regrets, things they would have done differently?

• 1:07:57Noah Kagan?

  For context, for the listeners, interview John Paul DeJoria, founder of Patron Tequila, Paul Mitchell Hair Care, Paul Orfelia, founder of Kinko, sold that for 2.4 billion. John Paul sold Patron for 3.5 billion. Founder of Qualcomm, 100 billion dollar company.

• 1:08:14Noah Kagan?

  There's a few things that have stood out from chatting with them. One, none of them became billionaires within 20 years. Not one, not paper money where it's coming up and down super quickly or crypto billionaires where it can go away. Took a long time, long, long time. Number two, they all got rich and this is kind of, people know these things, just like you said, like deathbed, no to spend more time with their family, but they don't do it. This is another one. They all got rich in one way. Just one thing. John Paul DeJoria, just Paul Mitchell hair care. Then he able to do it again, which is, we can talk about that. There's something there. Kinko's, just copiers. Larry Janeski, just basements. Right. Michael Hudner, just ships. But all of us were like, no, I'm going to diversify.

• 1:08:55Noah Kagan?

  But then you think about all these people, it's like, ah, they just did one thing. Two other things I would comment from billionaires two to three. They're all entrepreneurs. They weren't W2 employees. They hired W2 people. The richest people on earth, they hired W2 people. And so it's realizing like, oh, maybe this entrepreneurship is, there's some upside to that. The one that you commented on, another highlight there. And this is from John Paul DeJoria, which I thought was super powerful. And this is something you start noticing with billionaires, they're actually all really good at sales. And that is the skill you're like, oh, it's asking. How can I practice it? And John Paul DeJoria, I don't have hair, you don't have hair. He was like, give me your hand, I'm going to put on lotion. And he like rubbed it on my hair. He's like, how's that feel? I was like, it feels actually pretty good. He's like, how are your hands feel? I'm like, they feel good. I literally went home and bought Paul Mitchell hair care.

• 1:09:41Noah Kagan?

  I went home and bought it. And he was just like, what I like to do is find the best product that exists. And make sure it's a product people reorder. I'm like, oh, that's smart. And then I'm really good at selling. And I was like, ah, that's really interesting. So there's something about selling, I would say that stood out for me. And then lastly, yeah, I think. I would say 50 50 seemed like they could be happier. I just don't know if they all seemed as happy as I would have imagined. I'm like, dude, you're a billionaire. You can literally do anything you want all day forever. And I think like John Paul DeJoria for me stood out where he was just very kind. He was kind with me, he was kind with the staff, he was kind, like he sold Patron and he sent a $50 million check that day. And he felt like he had a good balance, like I would say the Austin balance of like, I'm not trying to be a Silicon Valley workaholic, but I'm trying to work, make a lot of money and have a great life. And I admired that.

• 1:10:26Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah. He gives me that impression. I've had him on the podcast.

• 1:10:29Noah Kagan?

  Yeah.

• 1:10:30Tim Ferriss?

  And. What that proves to me is that it's possible. Yes. There are a lot of, there are a lot of prick billionaires. A lot. But you don't have to be a prick. It's not a, it's not a prerequisite. You don't have to be Gordon Gekko. Yeah. You don't have to. But I would add to that is that there are many different ways to be good at sales. When I first graduated from school and when I first moved to Silicon Valley and I was selling fiber channel, storage area networks. And I was the lowest paid sales guy, which I learned because of spreadsheet got emailed to the wrong place. And one of my buddies was like, bro, you're gonna love this. And he showed me, he showed me the annual salaries and I was like,

• 1:11:15Tim Ferriss?

  barely above the receptionist, which I was actually okay with because it was commission based. But didn't love the fact that I hadn't negotiated harder on the front end. But at the time I was pretty desperate because I had gone without a job for a while. My parents were like, so you can stay here as long as you want, but what's going on? The point I want to make is I had a desk and a chair in an emergency exit. It was like shoehorned into a fire exit, totally not up to code. But I took a lot of opposite approaches from other sales guys who had come in from bigger companies like EMC. And there were some great salespeople from EMC as an example. They had a really good training culture, really good hiring practice, generally competitive athletes or former competitive athletes.

• 1:12:00Tim Ferriss?

  But the approach I took was two things. I'll just mention this briefly because it might alleviate some of the allergic reaction that people have to this word, sales. The first is that I looked at the biggest block in the vein of the task that hinders your task is your task. And what I realized, I couldn't get the deal makers on the phone. I couldn't get the CEOs and CTOs who would have to green light a seven figure investment on the phone because there were so many gatekeepers. So I just did the opposite of what I saw around me, which was instead of making calls during nine to five, I just made calls before and after nine to five. And guess what? Those people who are working dogs, you know, men and women who have really gotten to the top still tend to work a lot by and large. And so they would pick up the phone. The second was.

• 1:12:45Tim Ferriss?

  I studied the tech inside and out to the extent that when we got to the point of closing a sale and sometimes they'd get handed off to accounting and the accounting department or the VP of Finance would ask them, who's your sales guy? And they would say, I don't know who my sales guy is. And then eventually they'd be like, oh, wait, is Tim my sales guy? Because I came in with not quite the knowledge of an engineer, but I spent all my time with the engineers. So I had technical conversations. I'd be like, oh, let me guess, like you probably have this solar system and this and this and this and using this and this. You might have problems with this, da, da, da, da, da. And you can approach it in a technical way, as one example, with certain products.

• 1:13:27Tim Ferriss?

  It doesn't have to be Glenn Gary, Glenn Ross. So I just wanted to mention that.

• 1:13:32Noah Kagan?

  The following, I'm curious for you, and this is something I've been thinking about a lot about, is how come immigrants are so successful? And specifically, I think, one, you can control their attitude and I think they have good attitudes about like, I gotta figure this out. And the second thing is effort. There's no limit on effort. There's only a limit on time. So I was really curious, because especially with 4 hour work, I just remember your effort was insane. And so I wanted to know, and this is sales, right? Sales is like, all right, well, I'm going to put in effort to see if I can help this person if I believe I can. So I wanted to hear more. I was curious to hear more about like what effort you put in. Cause I just remember the time, I was like, who is this guy? And how hard it meant? He's working hard.

• 1:14:06Tim Ferriss?

  Into the book itself, like the writing or the launch?

• 1:14:08Noah Kagan?

  The launch.

• 1:14:09Tim Ferriss?

  The launch, yeah. Let's see, where to begin? So if I think back to the launch of that first book, I still approach my launches very similarly, believe it or not. As the tools have changed and the technology and the platforms have changed, the general principles that I used, I still use to this day, for instance, for every launch, book or otherwise, I have looked at the landscape and interviewed people. So for the book, for instance, I interviewed, and you can interview people who might seem out of reach, keeping in mind, I had no platform, no nothing at the time.

• 1:14:48Noah Kagan?

  I know, I remember.

• 1:14:48Tim Ferriss?

  But I just had to reach out and ask. And if you get somebody on a good day and you've, you know, maybe you take your hat off, put it in your hand and do a little begging. Best writing authors were very forthcoming with their time. So in a number of instances, I was able to interview best writing authors. What I mean by that is real prose masters and prolific nonfiction writers who had very, very high-quality output on their writing process. So I did that prior to writing the book. Then, seeing that the end was near, and this was all on a schedule, although I faced a lot of hiccups and a lot of challenges along the way. So it wasn't a straight line. But when I knew that my book was probably going to be delivered,

• 1:15:32Tim Ferriss?

  was scheduled to be delivered in, let's just say, three months, I started interviewing bestselling authors, which are not always the same as best writing authors. And the questions revolved around their most recent launches, and specifically, the vehicles, or formats, or people who seemed to be diminishing in impact, and those that seemed to be ascending in impact. And those that were ascending in impact, I assumed rightly at the time, and this has been true almost every time, would be uncrowded. So for instance, for the Four Hour Work Week, it became clear even then that television and radio seemed to be,

• 1:16:13Tim Ferriss?

  television especially, television seemed to be diminishing in its impact on sales. Nonetheless, the dominant playbook included tons and tons and tons of, say, morning TV. But almost every bestselling author I spoke to said, "By and large, not worth the effort." They said, "However, there are a few other things that have been impressive and notable." Number one is that certain radio programs, like NPR and so on, move a lot of books. This is again, 2000, let's just call it '06, prior to the publication in 2007. And... Then, towards the end of 2006, and I actually remember this because we're recording

• 1:16:57Tim Ferriss?

  this at the end of December, and I remember sitting at my parents' kitchen table after Christmas and sitting down to really put together a plan for the first book. And another pattern that had emerged is people said, "You know, I'm not really a tech person, but there are these things called blogs." And for whatever reason, these single-author blogs move a lot of books. And not a single person I recall in publishing gave a shit about blogs. So what I decided to do, I also had a very self-imposed and also practically limited budget for the launch. So for me, it was like five to 10 grand. I can't remember. I had a huge whiteboard and decided to make my target blogs.

• 1:17:42Tim Ferriss?

  And there were many conversations that went into this. But decided to put my effort into blogs. What's the most crowded channel? So I'm not asking it just about the formats, but also the means of reaching bloggers. What's gonna be most crowded? Blog comments? Email? These are the most crowded. So I took my budget and allocated it to in-person travel, to events where, in the hallways and at after-parties and so on, I could have drinks around or with bloggers. And I spent all my time in the lounges, spent all my time in the waiting areas, and that is where I committed my investment of time and money.

• 1:18:27Tim Ferriss?

  Who knows if that was the right thing to do, the only thing to do? Maybe I just got lucky, but it worked incredibly well. And I'll just give one more recommendation. And actually, people can find a talk I gave ages ago at South by Southwest, which is called "How to Build Your Network in Record Time," or some clickbaity sounding headline, but it does deliver. It explains a lot of this, and also how I use South by Southwest. Similarly, for the book, because... South by was where the book really broke out. Yeah. But there was a bunch leading up to it, so this is going a little long, but it might be helpful for folks. Rule number one, be nice to everyone. And this isn't some feel-good, Snow White, you know, hummingbirds landing on your hands kind of thing.

• 1:19:10Tim Ferriss?

  This is, this is the right thing to do, but it's also the most practical thing to do. And I'll give a real example. I went to Blog World Expo or something and I'm hanging around, didn't go to any sessions. In this particular case, a lot of folks had pointed out Robert Scoble as a power broker, hugely influential, which, which he certainly was, and a super sweet guy as well. And at that time, I had no contact with him. He was the hottest girl at the prom, right? Everybody wanted to talk to him. And I didn't really know how to navigate the event, but I knew there would be people who were familiar with it. So I went to a lounge and I think it was a Seagate Lounge or something like that way back in the day.

• 1:19:51Tim Ferriss?

  And there was a woman checking people in and kind of handling the inbound traffic. And I just struck up a conversation. I was like, I bet you're meeting everybody. I don't know what I'm doing. I'm working on my first book. I'm kind of lost here. And we just talked, like all that was true, right? And we talked and we talked and we talked and I was explaining to them here. I laid out my whole plan, right? I was like, well, really my best option is to focus on the blogs because the publisher owns a bunch of different territory. This is not their first rodeo, but it's my first rodeo. So this is kind of key. There were a bunch of things that I assumed were off limits for me. I don't understand radio. The publisher's going to handle radio. I don't understand television. Publisher or other publicists are going to handle that.

• 1:20:34Tim Ferriss?

  So the one area I felt where I could play and potentially leverage things was blogs. So I'm explaining all of this. Well, guess what? That woman who was checking people in turned out to be Robert Scoble's wife. And she was like, oh, you should meet Robert. And then that led to meeting Robert. I'm pretty sure I gave him, sent him a galley. And I made it absolutely zero expectations. So first of all, I was like, if it would be of interest, I can send you a galley after I described the book for certain facets of it. And I said, what I can do also, because you're not going to probably have time to read the whole book, I'll just put in a couple of post-its for like the four or five pages that I think

• 1:21:13Tim Ferriss?

  you'll find most interesting, most tactical. And he's like, great. Sent it off. That turned into a blog post he put up about what I'm reading, something like that. Went nuts. I don't recall the exact timing. That was before or after South by Southwest. And South by Southwest was in March. Talk about sales, right? I pitched myself to Hugh Forrest at the time, who I believe was Director of Programming just for South by Southwest, interactive, not music, not film. At the time, it was like the redheaded stepchild. Nobody gave a shit about interactive or tech. It was just Nerdville. It was small. That was also the year that Twitter launched publicly at South by. You could see all the tweets in the world on one big screen TV where they were scrolling through in real time.

• 1:21:57Tim Ferriss?

  And Hugh, to this day, I feel a debt of gratitude. So part of the reason I come back to South by every year is because I feel like it's just karmically the right thing to do. And Hugh is now running pretty much the whole show, I believe, at this point. But I got a last minute cancellation in like the cafeteria, like the Adobe sponsored cafeteria. Somebody backed out. I took a last minute spot. I gave a presentation on the four hour work week. I was able to print up flyers beforehand, which I did very last minute. And I am blanking on his name. I feel really badly about this, but it was the developer behind Firefox.

• 1:22:38Tim Ferriss?

  I think so. Like Ross? Yes. He had very graciously given me a quote for the Four Hour Workweek. He read a galley and I can't remember how that came together. I owe him a debt of gratitude as well, but I printed up flyers with that quote, Yeah. with a couple of other quotes based on galleys and encouraged people to attend this cafeteria. You put up flyers for the event? I handed them out. Like I had people handing them out. I put them up all over Austin, right? Printed them out. I'm sure it kinked those. And I practiced in my friend's garage because I was crashing on a friend's couch. And I remember practicing in his garage with his chihuahuas. You mentioned chihuahuas. He had three chihuahuas and clearly the chihuahuas did not understand

• 1:23:20Tim Ferriss?

  the content of my talk, but I used them as the gauge of whether I was engaging or not. If they started like wandering around, then I had to change my mode. I had to be more Tony Robbins and I prepped, I prepped, I prepped. I prepared my ass off for this thing like it was my first and last opportunity to nail it. And got up on stage. I had this entire presentation with all the visuals. Of course, what happens laptop dies. And so I had to improv and just do voice only, which I think ended up being a very good thing. And made auto responders available. I gave people, this was key, and this is something you do very well. I gave people real time challenges. I was like, here's something you can try today.

• 1:24:04Tim Ferriss?

  You're going to be going to a lot of sessions at South by. You're going to take a lot of notes. Here's what I suggest. Everybody gets busy. Things get lost. Here are a few things you can try today. Here are a few things you can try in the next week related to auto responders. Send me feedback. Let me know how it went. Go on my blog. Let me know. I will give you also feedback, like constructive advice and.

• 1:24:28Tim Ferriss?

  It just went ballistic. It went ballistic. And that set the conditions such that I could execute on other things. But lest people think this was this home run international phenomenon from the get go, that's not what happened. It did hit the extended bestseller list in its first week. But keep in mind, the publisher only printed 10,000 copies. Nobody expected it to do anything. And with those copies, sold the vast majority of them, but that was not enough to hit the real print bestseller list, for advice how to especially, which was hyper competitive at the time. It hit the extended list. So people in the, in the business knew that it was on the list, but not in the print edition.

• 1:25:12Tim Ferriss?

  It took an additional five or six months, if I'm doing the math correctly, to get to number one on the New York Times for the monthly business list. And then it just stayed there for years. But to answer your question, in terms of effort, effort isn't enough. Effort is not enough. You need a means of focusing that effort. So for me, I used this what's uncrowded, what's overvalued, what's undervalued. That's how I found podcasts for The Four Hour Chef. That's how I found other things for the earlier books. And that's how The Four Hour Chef sold whatever 100,000 plus copies in its first week was because I jumped on these new things called podcasts.

• 1:25:54Tim Ferriss?

  That is also the impetus behind me then starting my own podcast in 2014. But you're right, I put a lot into it because first and foremost, and now I'm getting on my soapbox again, but I really, really, really, really put everything into that book. Like I did not leave anything behind. I put it all on the playing field. And based on early feedback and based on also the many feedback forms, many questions I had asked, many revisions I had made for years, workshopping it in classes. I knew this stuff worked. I knew it worked. I knew, in other words, right, talking about AppSumo and your metrics,

• 1:26:36Tim Ferriss?

  like I knew it converted. I just needed top of the funnel. And that led me to the blog. So

• 1:26:44Noah Kagan?

  Wow.

• 1:26:45Tim Ferriss?

  Very similar approach that I would take today with most things.

• 1:26:49Noah Kagan?

  Wow. You seemed a lot happier when you were counting that story. Like I was noticing like earlier in the show, you're kind of like, I don't know if you felt frustrated or I don't know how you're feeling. You seemed excited and like proud.

• 1:27:01Tim Ferriss?

  So tempting and often the case, right? When you're in the weeds and you're just like running through this jungle with a machete, trying to make shit happen and it's hard and things are going wrong. And you think about that as the thing you have to do to get to the other thing. But then you get to the other thing, meaning like you've reached some escape velocity with your business success. And then you're like,

• 1:27:26Tim Ferriss?

  okay, this is the thing I thought that I was getting through other things for, and I'm happy with where I am, but I'm making trains run on time. And that's cool, right? Like I'm like a, like a Swiss operator on some type of transport platform and I'm tweaking things and pulling levers. I have other people doing a lot of the grunt work. But those early chapters, when I look back, that's where so much of the juice is, like so much of the excitement for me.

• 1:27:56Noah Kagan?

  Yeah.

• 1:27:56Tim Ferriss?

  Right? Where you're like, fuck, my computer broke. I gotta fix it. Gotta figure it out.

• 1:28:00Noah Kagan?

  I gotta print out flyers.

• 1:28:01Tim Ferriss?

  Fuck, you know? All right. Flyers, like flyers. Okay. Like I'm going to give out flyers. Like

• 1:28:07Noah Kagan?

  Flyers.

• 1:28:07Tim Ferriss?

  Okay. Like I don't have anybody who's around because my friend has to work. Like, all right, I'll give the talk to the dogs. Like, all right. Like,

• 1:28:13Noah Kagan?

  Yeah.

• 1:28:14Tim Ferriss?

  You get a chance. This is true later too, but like you really get a chance to prove how resourceful and creative you can be. Because you don't have a huge bank account to play with. You don't have tons of employees to delegate to things that oftentimes they shouldn't do in the first place. Right?

• 1:28:35Noah Kagan?

  Yeah.

• 1:28:36Tim Ferriss?

  And for me, that is the real heart and soul of entrepreneurship and the fun of it is making something from nothing because you are resourceful, right? You look at a set of tools or a complete lack of tools and you see something different. You see a little gap. And you're able to pursue that and manifest something in the world that otherwise doesn't exist. And the later stages are amazing. And there are people who are so good at the later stages. I'm not convinced that I'm one of them. Okay. But the early chapters where at the time

• 1:29:17Tim Ferriss?

  we're like, you know, it's gonna be great. One at some point, I have X. One at some point, when I cross my number, which is a moving goalpost, right? You cross like a million, and then you cross this, and then you cross this, and it keeps moving. That when I think back to those early chapters, I get, I get excited. It's like, I remember how unknown it all was too. Right? And how fun some of the unknowns were. They're definitely hard times. There were all sorts of difficult chapters that I'm sure I've blocked out from my memory. But I wasn't frustrated earlier at all. I think it's just the juice of thinking back to those very nascent stages. That's my guess.

• 1:30:02Noah Kagan?

  Yeah. Well, it's also, I try to remind myself that a lot of my nostalgia is a liar.

• 1:30:07Tim Ferriss?

  Oh, totally.

• 1:30:08Noah Kagan?

  I'm like, oh, starting up CMO, I would drink most of the days which we were doing. I was just like drinking with Neville, fucking around, getting some deals. And then you remember like, oh, I felt lonely. I felt really insecure. I thought.

• 1:30:20Tim Ferriss?

  Oh, for sure.

• 1:30:21Noah Kagan?

  And I guess I'm wondering, is that something you're exploring now? To like, what, what is that creation or thing that you can bite into?

• 1:30:29Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 1:30:30Noah Kagan?

  That was something I was wondering for you in that, you know, I've obviously known you a long time. I remember, it's funny, when I'm doing this whole book thing, which I'm not talking about what the book's called. No, no, no, no, dude. No one knows. Don't even look it up. And I think about you because I think that guy fucking worked hard. I remember you working hard. And it made me wonder where you're at today, because I, I see you not chasing. I think in my, in my older age, we're both in our early 40s. I'm, I think I was chasing a lot. Like, I want to get famous, or I want to get money. And then I was like, I wonder, not what you're chasing anymore, but like what you're enjoying, or what you're, not after is the right word, and not what's next. But I'm noticing, oh, Tim's not really going aggressive on YouTube and chasing what other people are doing. And so I was, and it's not just YouTube, but I, it made me,

• 1:31:15Noah Kagan?

  I was like, I wonder how he's evaluating things.

• 1:31:18Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, totally. I think to your point of nostalgia being a liar oftentimes, right? Where we have this rose colored picture of the past. If I look at the chapters around, say, the beginning of the four hour work week, four hour body, et cetera. I was very hungry. I was moving very quickly and certainly using processes and automation and so on. But there was a lot of uncertainty and I would say that as I have prioritized mental health and just overall wellbeing, which includes physical, but at the time I was in physical prime condition. I mean, I was in very good shape. I was still competitive in sports. I would say that, looking back, a lot of those adventures were formative

• 1:32:01Tim Ferriss?

  and I enjoyed them, but I, in retrospect, should have enjoyed them more for what they were, which were these seminal moments. And I think part of what you're reading in me in terms of less chasing is that I feel like, and I suspect many people feel like, you know, the dog that catches the car or the greyhound that catches the mechanical rabbit. And you're like, this is what I was chasing?

• 1:32:29Tim Ferriss?

  Fuck. That's funny. Like, it's kind of like tragic comic, but, which is not to diminish money, it's not to diminish financial success. It's, I think, easier for us to have these conversations because there's a degree of security and stability and comfort. So it's not to diminish any of that because I know what it feels like to be like, fuck, I'm not sure what I'm going to do about healthcare next month. I'm not sure what I'm going to do about this next month. I know what that can feel like and it's not a good feeling. Eating from Jack in the Box. I remember eating so many meals from Jack in the Box on Shoreline across the street from my shitty apartment with my terrible roommate who just ditched and like, almost got all my stuff yanked because there were all these eviction

• 1:33:12Tim Ferriss?

  notices. Like, I remember those days. I don't want to return to those days. But having caught the thing that I was chasing, I've realized.

• 1:33:22Tim Ferriss?

  That none of these targets are fantasies. They're kind of placeholders to keep you motivated. And I've also, if you look at patterns in my life, I tend to do things, if I'm going to do something well, seems to be in the five to 10 year range. Books, startup investing predominantly, I focused on from say 2008 to 2015. And then I published this blog post on taking a long startup vacation. And stopped that categorically. I stopped doing it completely for a period of time because the game got saturated. It got more complicated, much more competitive, much riskier from a terms perspective. So I stopped and then you have podcasting.

• 1:34:05Tim Ferriss?

  I'm coming up on 10 years next April and it's a good time to pause and reflect. And I feel like podcasting also, and I will have questions for you about YouTube because I go back and forth on my thoughts on YouTube. But when I see best practices emerge or converge, maybe is, is a better way to put it with a lot of the algorithm driven growth slash lack of growth that we see. I really want to step back and see if I am in a position where I'm uniquely differentiated or have some type of competitive advantage, not because I care about competition per se,

• 1:34:45Tim Ferriss?

  but it's like, am I in a red ocean that used to be a blue ocean? Or am I developing practices that are going to lead me to a point of not just uniformity with others, but like, are we all running towards a cliff like a bunch of lemmings? In the sense that, for instance, email, I'm going all over the place, I realize, but like, No, no, this is great. With like email blog, especially if you're open source, like I'm based on WordPress, you effectively own your audience. You don't own your audience. You have a direct relationship with your audience. Your audience is portable. If you're on a platform, that includes almost any platform, there's some technical workarounds for these things, but you're renting your audience. And so I've seen multimillion dollar Facebook pages back in the day when that was a huge thing.

• 1:35:31Tim Ferriss?

  Get turn off, just like PG&E might turn off your power during a rolling blackout in California. It's like one day you're on and you have employees and a big business, the next day you are turned off. And I've seen that over and over again. I've seen, for instance, organic reach get throttled. Now you have to pay. I think it's foolish to assume that can't happen to whatever platforms you're using today. And as we've seen a number of precipitating events, COVID, for instance, the writer's strike, another example, drive people to what they've realized can be a profitable model in the form of

• 1:36:07Tim Ferriss?

  podcasting, YouTube. As the mimicry of TikTok has engendered a drive to video and short form video, I feel like I have fewer and fewer differentiators and advantages. And the human basis of recommendation has been replaced by, in large part, kind of top-down corporate directives and algo modifications. So I feel like I'm in a transitional period right now, potentially where I'm taking my foot off the gas because I'm not sure the car is going in a direction where I want to take it to 120 on the Autobahn, you know?

• 1:36:51Tim Ferriss?

  So that's where I am. And I'm also not in a rush because maybe it's just fatigue, frankly. I mean, like I started the podcast 10 years ago, and there are people with incredible longevity, and not very many, but like Rogan as an example. I mean, the guy's a machine and he's very good at what he does. 10 years is also a long time for me. That's a long time to do, to do one thing consistently. I'm going to continue doing the podcast, but from a growth perspective, I feel like YouTube is probably one of the more appealing avenues for growth currently. But offsetting that is a desire to increasingly be less publicly visually recognized because there are compromises that I've made related to

• 1:37:34Tim Ferriss?

  that. There are safety issues, there are privacy issues, there's lots of weird stuff that happens. I'm not sure I want to, actually, I'm quite sure I do not want to make my face more recognizable. On the counter argument side, I know we're going all over the place. No, dude, by the way, this is fire. Okay, this is fire. Keep going. I want to know.

• 1:37:54Tim Ferriss?

  On the counter argument side, and this is both a reason not to do YouTube, but also a reason maybe I'm over evaluating the risks. And I've talked to some folks, I don't want to name them, but very well known iconic writers, photographers, creators who did one thing very, very well. One thing, which also makes me question sort of the jack of all trades approach that I think is in some respects a norm now where you're present and growing on many, many different formats. But putting that aside for a second, the half life of fame, I think, is going to drop precipitously as algorithm chasing becomes more and more dominant and more and more

• 1:38:38Tim Ferriss?

  determinant of what has surfaced in the sense that there will, I would be shocked if there's ever again someone as dominant as, say, Oprah was for effectively, let's just call it, who knows, a third to a half of all the women in the United States, one person, one show. The sort of long tail of personalization, I think, has largely removed that possibility. And if you even think about like the personal half life, which I think we can extract, like studying the micro to study the macro, because the macro can seem super intimidating and abstract and ungraspable. But if you just think about your personal experience, and I've talked

• 1:39:22Tim Ferriss?

  to friends about this, 10 years ago, if you got sent some crazy video from friends, like that video would stick around for a while, right? It might be the video that sticks around for like a week. Oh, my God, you see that crazy video of the thing? How many of those do you get per day now, right? Something that would win the gold medal of the meme Olympics, crushes all of the stupid things that you would have looked at 10 years ago, infinitely more attention grabbing. And the half life is what? 30 seconds? 60 seconds? So I think fame as a phenomenon in most cases online will have a very, very short half life. And that worries me.

• 1:40:06Tim Ferriss?

  A bit from a psychological adaptive perspective, because I think that has supreme implications for the sort of dopamine hit, rat stepping on a cocaine pedal aspect of content creation. If what you do is less and less persistent, meaning it has less and less durability, what game are you signing up for? And what does winning that game look like? These are really critical questions, right? Okay, we're all playing games right now. Beyond food, shelter, a handful of things at the lower rungs of Maslow's hierarchy of needs, we're all playing games. What games are you playing? And just as important, like, what does winning that game or those games look like? And is that the life you want?

• 1:40:50Tim Ferriss?

  So, looking at how things are developing, and maybe this is a very fancy way of rationalizing, just being older and more fatigued, I don't know. But I find where things are trending, super, super worrisome. So if I could be long a number of things, I'd be like, okay, mental health therapeutics, dialysis, which seems pretty dystopian, but like, I would be very long those things. I think we haven't even seen a glimpse of some of the mental health challenges that are on the horizon. So, probably a long answer to a very short question, but that informs, I think, a certain, it's not just calmness, although there's a lot that goes into that on my side compared

• 1:41:31Tim Ferriss?

  to my earlier self, but a not wanting to rush into committing at high speed in certain directions that are very appealing right now at face value. I'm like, you know what? If you have, here we go, I'm gonna shut the fuck up in a second. But it's like, here's the thing, if I think about the authors I respect the most, if I think about the filmmakers I most aspire to be like or admire the most, they're not playing a volume game, right? Like Miyazaki, who just put out, I think it's The Boy and the Heron, the Japanese name is, like, How Do You Live? It's a totally different name, but-

• 1:42:10Tim Ferriss?

  They put out great work that is uniquely their own. You watch that movie and if you've seen other Studio Ghibli Miyazaki movies, you're like, that is the signature. That could not be anyone other than Miyazaki. You see like a Daniel Day Lewis film. There are so many examples of this. These people have unique capabilities. They've harnessed. They don't need to rush, right? So if I find myself feeling compelled to rush, either it's a false signal I should ignore, or I'm about to do something that a lot of other people could do. And that for me is a cue to really chill the fuck out and be like, wait, wait a second. Let me go back. Let me read Blue Ocean Strategy. Let me go back. Let me read 80/20 Principle. Let me go back and read any

• 1:42:54Tim Ferriss?

  number of things. I mean, I do like reading. Let me go back and watch these following documentaries about people who really took an unorthodox path. And then let me sit down and ask, why do I feel like I am compelled to rush? So there you have it.

• 1:43:11Noah Kagan?

  Wow, that was, one, that was fucking fire.

• 1:43:15Tim Ferriss?

  Thanks. This has been on my mind nonstop for the last couple of months.

• 1:43:19Noah Kagan?

  I think people confuse inaction with patience.

• 1:43:23Tim Ferriss?

  Okay, tell me more.

• 1:43:24Noah Kagan?

  What I heard, and I'm curious how you approach it, is that instead of rushing really quickly, you're understanding yourself and thinking patiently, okay, what is my right play for me to move? And I think in the past, you know, and maybe you can revisit it is, okay, let's go rush and find things and maybe stuff will happen. But now you're like, you're observing. You sound calm. You sound, you're thinking about what's happening, where my advantage is, what's going on, and where is a place that you frankly want to play? And instead of rushing into, let's say YouTube world, which does feel like a lot of people rushing into these kinds of things, really thinking about what your play is. I love that. I guess the question, I was curious about, what is your approach for thinking about what's underserved? Because what you said, I thought was fucking powerful. It's like you can put effort, but in the wrong thing.

• 1:44:08Noah Kagan?

  When you did your book, you're like, oh, blogging is it? And then your second book, podcasting is it? How are you approaching thinking about getting to like even now, you're like, all right, I like podcasts, doing podcasts?

• 1:44:18Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, I love doing podcasts. I love doing podcasts. It's going to get a lot harder as a business. It is already, I'm very fortunate in the sense that, and this was not accidental, right? Like this podcast and the audience for this podcast, this podcast is intended to be long form, thoughtful, dense, and incredibly practical, tactical. And I'll mention it because you've been very good at receiving feedback, but million dollar weekend, we are going to get to it and talk about very practical steps. All of this is practical, though, if you look at it through the lens of making decisions.

• 1:44:52Tim Ferriss?

  This has been positioned as high ultra-premium as far as podcasts go, advertisers, audience, right? And we've done all the polling and so on. So it's like, if you want to reach Ted, this is the podcast, right? If you want to hit millions, or at least let's just say thousands of very, very well-known creators with one podcast, like this is the podcast. So the premium positioning means that like for the next year, we're basically already sold out with advertising, right? So I'm in a very good position, but I think overall it is, this is true on YouTube too, but, and it relates to everything I just said, it is going to get and is getting harder to differentiate, right? Like back when I had like Jamie Foxx and Arnold Schwarzenegger on the podcast-

• 1:45:31Noah Kagan?

  I remember that, that was insane.

• 1:45:33Tim Ferriss?

  -blew people's minds, right? Like that was just not something that really happened. And now that you have incredibly talented people, comedians, entertainers, writers, right? That's why I mentioned the writer's strike earlier, who for a period of time did not have the option of doing what they normally do, and they dipped their toe into podcasting, they dipped their toe into YouTube, and they're like, wow, actually, I'm really good at this, and I can get paid. Interesting. There are exceptional, exceptionally skilled people producing things for podcasts and YouTube. What I'm saying is the bar for quality has gone up dramatically in all of these areas. But the possibility for originality, I would say, has diminished as a result of the sheer

• 1:46:16Tim Ferriss?

  volume of entrants. So in terms of thinking about like what's unserved-

• 1:46:20Noah Kagan?

  Yeah.

• 1:46:21Tim Ferriss?

  -I would say that I'm looking for a Venn diagram, because asking, if you ask any of the questions I'm asking myself in isolation, which I've done in the past- You can lead yourself to bad decisions. So if you ask yourself, what can I uniquely do? And that's your question. And you use that to determine what you do. You can end up doing things that you dislike, that are draining, that don't have any type of market fit whatsoever. So that's not enough, right? Although for me, that is necessary. Like, what am I uniquely suited to do? Because that will give me not only an immediate, say, first mover or early mover advantage. It gives me endurance. So being uniquely suited to something doesn't mean that you are the only person that can do it.

• 1:47:06Tim Ferriss?

  Maybe you just love it more, right? Like with me and language learning is an example. Now, that's not a business. I mean, it did lead to me being one of the first investors into Lingo. So that worked out. But I have infinite endurance for that in a way that most people don't. That's a huge advantage, even though other people could technically do it. So there's what am I uniquely suited for? What do I find easy that other people find hard? Then there's what is underserved. But if you approach that by itself, you can make some really bad decisions. And I've done that in the past. Like, what do people need? Now, I'm not the boss of myself. I've turned my audience into the boss of me. This is also how people get shaped in horrifying ways by social media or their audiences on YouTube, right?

• 1:47:49Tim Ferriss?

  Your most extreme behaviors get reinforced. So you repeat those, you exaggerate them. And your stage presence, your social media presence becomes you. This is really important. You have to be careful about the masks you wear because you will become those masks. And I've seen that. I'm sure you've met people. Like, it's terrifying. You will be shaped by your audience and by these creative decisions. So not just asking, what is the unmet need? But the question I might ask is like, what experiments can I run? That I think will meet the needs intended by, say, the podcast in a different way? And also, I mean, another question that I ask is like, instead of like, what is the new, new thing? Like, what is something old that is being neglected?

• 1:48:34Tim Ferriss?

  Doesn't have to be new, by the way, right? So for instance, that led me to start. Five Bullet Friday in the newsletter ages ago because people are like emails dead. Nobody's going to use email anymore. Email's dead. You hear that every year. And that was particularly true when I launched Five Bullet Friday because social media, Snapchat, ah, young kids are never going to use email. And I was like, well, it's true until they get a job and then guess what? They're going to use email. So in that particular case, I wasn't looking for the new, new thing. I was looking for something old that was kind of neglected and I wanted to also own my audience. So that led to, you know, millions of people for the newsletter. So those are some of the questions that I ask. I think I've learned for me personally, I make better decisions when it's a bit of a Venn diagram.

• 1:49:16Tim Ferriss?

  If I go after any one of those, which could include profit, by the way, that's one that gets people. Boy, oh, boy, I've succumbed to that too. Right? If you're like, what has the most leverage for revenue, profit, et cetera? That can lead you in directions that end up compromising well being, end up compromising long-term growth, end up compromising fundamentally, blank, personal and professional and organizationally speaking. So.

• 1:49:42Noah Kagan?

  Damn. Yeah, that was fine. I mean, someone said to me recently, like, don't trade your nine to five for a 24/7. And it's like, the cool part about entrepreneurship is that you can create a life you want. Whether you want to live in Austin, you want to live in Spain, you want to live wherever, Tokyo. But it's then, are you actually living the life you want? I think that the two comments, one comment, one question, I love that you said experiments. I mean, you, that was, you know, kind of super early for you and how you developed a lot of your stuff. And I think for a lot of people, it's like, oh, well, I gotta make this big decision. It's like, well, how can you test it right now? How can you just really cheap? How can you test it and see if that's actually the case? So I love that you said that. The other thing I was curious, when's the last time you read Four Hour Work Week? You know, you were talking about books you read that you come back to. I was like, I wonder, you know, sometimes we come back to our own things.

• 1:50:25Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, yeah, for sure. I was looking at Four Hour Week a couple of weeks ago, actually. Yeah. Because my books I make, I mean, they reflect things that I am doing and have done, but they also act as references for me. Like I go back to the Four Hour Chef all the time for various things. Like Four Hour Body, I go back to it all the time for various things. And Four Hour Work Week, in this particular case, because I'm thinking about virtual assistants, which have really upleveled in the last handful of years with technology and also different companies and types of training. I've been thinking again about virtual assistants. So I wanted to revisit like scripts, principles, et cetera, because I've shifted from VAs to in-person, full-time.

• 1:51:05Tim Ferriss?

  Work chart type stuff and I'm experimenting again. I have a full-time VA also on the payroll now. And I wanted to revisit some of what worked in the past because very often the things that worked then are still gonna work. And the principles of the principles for a reason. The tactics, the tools, the platforms, the hardware devices, those all change. But in terms of human communication, clarity, lack of clarity, the words are still words. So I wanted to revisit some of that. So as an example, I mean, I've been thinking about going back to text. I've been thinking about going back to blog posts. It's so antiquated. It's so out of fashion. And it's so high labor too. I mean, because that is something where I do not feel comfortable delegating.

• 1:51:48Tim Ferriss?

  If I'm putting my name to something, I want to be the one who has put those words on paper or on a screen in this case. But I've thought about it. I've thought about it quite a bit. We'll see. I mean, that's a heavy lift. It is a heavy lift. But that's also something I want to be aware of or cognizant of, and that is, am I doing this because it fits into the Venn diagram or am I doing it because it requires less work? Because requiring less work does not automatically mean elegant combination of things that leads to my goals, right? And if you don't have those KPIs like you mentioned, watch out for vanity metrics too. Like, okay, this matters. Why does that matter? Because it leads to this. Okay, why does that matter? Why does it? Because of this. Okay, because of this. Ultimately, it's gonna come down to, all right, you want this amount of money?

• 1:52:30Tim Ferriss?

  Okay, why do you want that money? Because I want to trade it for this experience or this possession. Okay, why do you want those? Because you want this feeling. Okay, well, let's keep that in mind. You want to sleep well at night? Don't do all this other shit that is gonna cause you anxiety. And let's come back to-

• 1:52:45Noah Kagan?

  Can I highlight what they-

• 1:52:46Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, of course.

• 1:52:46Noah Kagan?

  So two parts. One, I want to shout out for people looking for VAs. The site I use is haremymom.com.

• 1:52:53Tim Ferriss?

  Really?

• 1:52:53Noah Kagan?

  Yeah.

• 1:52:54Tim Ferriss?

  Okay. All right. Amazing.

• 1:52:55Noah Kagan?

  So haremymom.com, I'm not affiliated, no cuts, no nothing. They can sponsor my podcast or Tim's podcast. But you basically, it's moms who want to spend time with their kids that are super elite moms. And they just don't want to work full-time though.

• 1:53:10Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:53:11Noah Kagan?

  And so you can basically get these super impressive parents at pretty affordable prices. So I hired someone recently was the executive assistant for the Dallas Stars, the hockey team.

• 1:53:20Tim Ferriss?

  Oh, wow. Okay.

• 1:53:21Noah Kagan?

  Right? She has two kids. She wants to stay at home. She did quit last week.

• 1:53:25Noah Kagan?

  Telling you real, she quit, but, but it's like you're finding that level of caliber at, I'll say, cause she's not working, she was thirty bucks an hour.

• 1:53:31Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 1:53:31Noah Kagan?

  Which is insane.

• 1:53:32Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 1:53:33Noah Kagan?

  Yeah, for someone who's a really impressive woman.

• 1:53:35Tim Ferriss?

  Why'd she quit?

• 1:53:36Noah Kagan?

  She is an executive assistant and she thought I was asking to do some assistant level work. So I asked her to schedule some appointments. I asked her to make some purchases and she's like, I just want to do the business work. And so I really admire and respect when people know what they want. I was a little frustrated because like you quit all of a sudden abruptly, sent me a voluntary termination letter. I've never received one of those ever, but she's professional.

• 1:53:57Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 1:53:58Noah Kagan?

  But you go back to it and that's part of business. I think a lot of people do once and then they like you go, you know, it doesn't work. It's like, yeah, that's part of business. It's like, okay, I'm going to go and find another one and improve my process to understand like, hey, in the hiring process, you're going to have to purchase something from a store. Is that going to bother you? Good. Doesn't? Okay. We can move you forward.

• 1:54:15Tim Ferriss?

  My recommendation there.

• 1:54:16Noah Kagan?

  Yeah.

• 1:54:17Tim Ferriss?

  Especially if you're considering a full-time hire, test them for a few months and have them do that stuff. Because people know how to interview and a lot of people will say, absolutely. No task too small. No problem. And that's horseshit. In the same way that they say they're going to buy whatever you're offering, ask them to pay you.

• 1:54:33Noah Kagan?

  Yeah.

• 1:54:33Tim Ferriss?

  Then you know, then you know it's real. So.

• 1:54:36Noah Kagan?

  Yeah.

• 1:54:36Tim Ferriss?

  If you can try before you buy, especially on the E A V A P A.

• 1:54:41Noah Kagan?

  Hiring in general.

• 1:54:41Tim Ferriss?

  Hiring in general, make them do some of the grunt work, not grunt work, but just smaller things. And by the way, like anyone who's got real chops, right? It's kind of like, Jean Paul Dejere, like putting the lotion on your hands, right? Like that guy has done every job.

• 1:54:56Noah Kagan?

  He's.

• 1:54:56Tim Ferriss?

  He's done every job. And this isn't always going to work, but it's, you want someone with that same type of ethos.

• 1:55:04Noah Kagan?

  Yeah, we will. I mean, it's how we hire every, almost every person at AppSum who's a contractor to start.

• 1:55:09Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 1:55:10Noah Kagan?

  And it's like, hey, we're going to, and even with my YouTube channel, I'm going to pay you to do your trial video. Great. You can see if you like me, maybe you hate me, maybe I don't like you, maybe we'll do like each other, but you're at least getting paid. So there's not really as much downside for both of us.

• 1:55:21Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 1:55:22Noah Kagan?

  The other thing I thought was really cool is looking back on our old lives that you said, looking back in your old work. I used to live in this really eight hundred square foot shitty house and I went back at it. And then I also looked back to my photos. Every month I do a month review. I look back on my photos and it's, it's nice to look where we've been and where we are. So if you know, everyone I do a month review, you can literally just scroll up on your phone, go to your photos, scroll up really far. And almost every time you're pretty proud of where you are now. So those times were frustrated. I went back to that old house and I felt, wow, man, I'm so proud of where I am now. But I didn't really always notice that I do, but going back there and help that for sure.

• 1:55:55Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, totally. Especially if you're used to looking ahead, right? Always forward.

• 1:56:01Noah Kagan?

  Yes.

• 1:56:01Tim Ferriss?

  And you've developed a certain set of habits and attributes, being in sixth year, always being in the fast lane. It is a practice to augment that with other abilities.

• 1:56:13Noah Kagan?

  A hundred percent.

• 1:56:14Tim Ferriss?

  This is why a lot of people self-destruct when they quote unquote retire. If they're trying to go from like autobahn to park, it's like, well, hold on, maybe we should get used to some other gears. Let's see what happens. So let's talk about tests. Let's talk about experiments. Let's talk about small steps. Million dollar weekend. Number one, what is the, well, here, let's do the subtitle. The surprisingly simple way to launch a seven figure business in 48 hours. So for people who find this tantalizing, I guess, number one, why should they believe it? Let's start there. Like, why the fuck should they listen? Because they're going to come across a lot of promises, a lot of clickbait on YouTube. And then they click on, they're like, oh, come on. So why should they believe it? Maybe there's a case study or two or example you could share.

• 1:56:57Tim Ferriss?

  And then if somebody wants to test drive something from this podcast, are there things they can do?

• 1:57:02Noah Kagan?

  I've come up with simple rule because what's crazy on YouTube and podcasts now, you can make whatever title up you want. There's people saying, oh, I'm worth a hundred million. I'm like, really? You can just write that? And so don't trust any author that has gotten rich from their, any business author, I would say, that's gotten rich from their book or their course. I think that's a pretty straightforward approach. Like, if that's how they got rich, teaching you how they got rich, like, double check who they are and maybe look for someone else that's maybe, I worked for Zuckerberg, I helped start Mint.com, I helped start Kickflip.com, I helped start Canva.com.

• 1:57:33Tim Ferriss?

  Somebody who has a very well-groomed mustache.

• 1:57:36Noah Kagan?

  The, my Latina girlfriend loves the mustache. I don't normally like it, but she's like, you gotta keep that. I was like, yes, baby. See, see. And, uh, you know, running app, sumo.com. And so you can, I'm not getting rich on the book. And I think that's a very simple test to think about who you want to listen to, specifically in business.

• 1:57:51Tim Ferriss?

  Yep.

• 1:57:52Noah Kagan?

  And, and secondly, can you see their businesses? A lot of times like, oh, I've got these businesses you'll never see it though. Why not? Because you can't know about it. Why not? Yeah. You never get to the answer. That's probably why you don't ever have them on your shows. Now, in terms of the surprisingly simple way, in that, I'll just give you a case study of Jake. So Jake lives up north, Texas. He's got three kids, got a day job. And he's had dreams, just like a lot of people have had, and he's had it for two years. I was like, Jake, how do we change you in 48 hours? Because everyone has a weekend and now I'm about to have a family and I'm realizing like family, YouTube, book, prioritizing my partner and our kid, it's hard to have time to start a side hustle. It's hard to have time to like get going. And the reality though, is we do all have weekends. We have 52 of them. So we can do something in a weekend, even if it's really small action.

• 1:58:36Noah Kagan?

  And by the way, it doesn't have to be a million in a weekend. It's through every weekend you can pound it over some time. It can get there. Now, the things that people can do in a weekend right now. This is the thing with books. I think your book is phenomenal. If everyone gets two books, it's yours for a work week and one for a weekend. Your book has such a great recipe, such a great recipe. But what I noticed when I've worked through my course, which I'm going to call it, I've worked through a course, 10,000 people have gone through it. YouTube channel, millions of people. You can give them the recipes, but they still may not do something. And I was kind of like, what the fuck is going on? Right? Like you have a big dream. You have a dream like, hey, I want to work here. I want to make a thousand bucks a month. I want grocery money. I want whatever it is, but then you haven't done nothing for two years like Jake. And the reality is that most people are afraid of starting. They're not ready.

• 1:59:20Noah Kagan?

  They feel they're not ready. They're actually already. There's a lot of rich people who are really ordinary. I think people think it's all like, oh no, grew up in Silicon Valley and Tim did these things. Like, no, there's a lot of really normal people that are rich, but they all got started. And we got started over and like, how many times you did Brain Quick and you've done all these things, opening the kimono. Yeah, yeah. You've done a lot of things. And so how do we overcome the fear of starting then? You could do that right now. That's why I asked people and we did it earlier, do the dollar challenge. Just get a dollar right now. Just go get going right now. And we surveyed, just like you did with your book, and the number one takeaway from the book by far was now, not how. I was like, what do you mean? Not now. They're like, yeah, no, you always just do right now. I'm like, what do you mean? Just right fucking now. What's the smallest action you can take that will get you momentum?

• 2:00:02Noah Kagan?

  So you want to be a content creator? Post a video right now with your phone. My first YouTube video was with my phone. Just shirtless in my little house, eight and square foot house.

• 2:00:10Tim Ferriss?

  You say shirtless?

• 2:00:11Noah Kagan?

  Yeah. Yeah, it's not impressive. It wasn't like ripped shirtless. It was just like sweaty, just got off a bike in my spandex. I actually just watched the video a few weeks ago because I was like, is this true? And I was like, wow, it really, it's on the channel. And now my videos are, you know, give or take around $30,000 to make per video.

• 2:00:25Tim Ferriss?

  Wow.

• 2:00:25Noah Kagan?

  From all the salaries.

• 2:00:26Tim Ferriss?

  Oh my god.

• 2:00:27Noah Kagan?

  But that was a shirtless thing with an iPhone 10 that everyone can do right now.

• 2:00:30Tim Ferriss?

  My most popular YouTube video of all time, and we're sitting here with like, pretty nice video setup. Got a basically a studio, the whole nine yards. My most popular YouTube video of all time is me in my kitchen. Somebody was like, God knows what kind of old phone, the resolution's terrible. De-shelling hard boiled eggs without peeling. That is my most successful YouTube video of all time. A bit sad about that.

• 2:00:54Noah Kagan?

  Yeah.

• 2:00:55Tim Ferriss?

  Which effort goes into other things, but yeah.

• 2:00:56Noah Kagan?

  Yeah, dude. I mean, one of your favorite videos of mine is microwaving eggs.

• 2:01:00Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 2:01:00Noah Kagan?

  We talked about last, I love microwaves and I love microwaving my eggs. Sometimes I use a stove. My girlfriend's like, let's use a stove, baby. All right, see. So what can we do right now? Let me give you a great example as well. I'm a big pinballer. So I have two pinball machines at home and this morning, literally, I was watching how to make a pinball machine. By Godzilla. It's the number one rated pinball machine in the world. Sick. That's what I have at home. And, you know, when most people think I want to start a pinball business, what do they think? Holy fuck, I gotta build this machine. I've gotta go figure out software. I've gotta do, oh, I gotta probably get a website, maybe on Shopify. Shout out Shopify. They sponsor your podcast. Which you'll eventually need. Maybe I need a lawyer because I've got a patent idea. And then that's six months, 12 months, two years of nothing. Now, what's crazy, Stern Pinball, the number one maker of pinball machines, they put out this video behind the scenes of a Godzilla.

• 2:01:44Noah Kagan?

  They literally took like a board and then bent some metal and just kind of threw the ball. You could do that right now. You could do that in one day and go to people, literally on your phone, in person. Hey, we're working on this pinball machine. Let me just, let me show you to you right now and see what you think. And you could get people to purchase your pinball machine before you spent six months, six years doing nothing. Same thing with the Cybertruck, six years and barely it's getting delivered. And so there's things that people can start realizing, let me actually see if people really want this and find out right away. So that that's really around surprisingly simple. It's like, there's business models, there's all these things you can do. It's like, well, if I only have a weekend and I don't have a lot of time, how do I break it down to the essence of the simplest form? And so in terms of the book where I think a lot of the breakthroughs happen is how do I get going right now?

• 2:02:26Noah Kagan?

  Like with the pinball machine or with Jake, Jake had a dream to do golf trips. He wants to do golf trips, like super bougie, high end and do golf.

• 2:02:34Tim Ferriss?

  I don't golf. I have golf, I wouldn't say I golf.

• 2:02:37Noah Kagan?

  Yeah, I don't golf. I like disc golf.

• 2:02:39Tim Ferriss?

  Hmm.

• 2:02:39Noah Kagan?

  Yeah. You know, disc golf?

• 2:02:40Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 2:02:41Noah Kagan?

  Yeah, like I'm a cyclist, but he wants to do golf trips. And so he's been thinking about it. It's one of these people, I'm sure you've noticed them, they'll like talk to you about a dinner. They're like, ah, man, I hate my job, but I'd like to try this. And so it's like, all right, we have 48 hours, Jake. How do we actually do right now to see if other people want golf trips? Cause that's what you think is a problem. Now, I think the best problems in business are your own.

• 2:03:01Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, I agree.

• 2:03:02Noah Kagan?

  Like your show really, I mean, if you think about it, you getting to talk to people you want.

• 2:03:05Tim Ferriss?

  That's all, that's what it is.

• 2:03:06Noah Kagan?

  Yeah, that's a problem you have about learning different areas, business, science, health, fitness. And then you publish it and make a lot of money doing that. Like, how cool is that?

• 2:03:15Tim Ferriss?

  Best job ever.

• 2:03:16Noah Kagan?

  Dude, it's a sweet work. It's super sweet. So in terms of the book, it's one, how do we just get going fucking right now? Right now. And then giving people more momentum, stories, actions like the dollar challenge, now not how? Freedom number, which is understanding what is the number you need to quit your job? For me, it was 3,000. Do you have a number?

• 2:03:31Tim Ferriss?

  Oh, yeah. Yeah, yeah, slightly different moniker, but same idea, like target monthly income, which was not just the replacement. It was a bit more part of this exercise called dreamlining.

• 2:03:40Noah Kagan?

  Oh, yeah, yeah, exactly.

• 2:03:41Tim Ferriss?

  But very similar idea.

• 2:03:43Noah Kagan?

  Totally.

• 2:03:43Tim Ferriss?

  More like figure out the basic math, because maybe you need less. Very often you need less than you think you need.

• 2:03:50Noah Kagan?

  I live in Barcelona, I think our apartment's a thousand dollars. It's not huge, to be clear, but it's like, you can live actually a lot cooler life than you think for a lot more affordable than you realize.

• 2:03:58Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 2:03:59Noah Kagan?

  So part one is around that. And then we came into the recipe and I think before our work recipe is fire. You know, I shout out you in the book and honor how you approach it as one way. But even before that, it's how do you understand the upside of asking? And how do you become an asking machine? How do you build an asking muscle?

• 2:04:14Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah. So what did Jake do?

• 2:04:16Noah Kagan?

  So Jake, I mean, first off, we did the coffee challenge. So we drove over to Taco Deli and I was like, all right, Jake, let's go ask for 10% off. He's like, ah, he just done sales before. He's like, it's easy. It's always easy until you do it. And then guess what? It's not as hard as he thinks. And that that's really true for a lot of life. We're afraid of things. And you know, this every, almost every time we face the hard thing, it's never as hard as it thought. Like ayahuasca for me. Part of it, I was so afraid. And thank you for giving me time and coaching me around it before I went in. But a lot of ayahuasca was just like facing something hard. More than all the other stuff. It was just like, it's so for me, it felt so challenging and being able to overcome it. Same thing with the coffee challenges. Go do it today. Commit to do it right now for yourself. So Jake did it. Bam.

• 2:04:53Tim Ferriss?

  Just to be clear, I wouldn't do the take ayahuasca today as a translation of that.

• 2:04:57Noah Kagan?

  No, no, I would say the coffee challenge.

• 2:04:59Tim Ferriss?

  Coffee challenge.

• 2:05:00Noah Kagan?

  Coffee challenge. Then Jake did the dollar challenge. Just get a dollar. And he was so nervous, but then he was like, wow, I haven't done shit in two years. And literally in like six hours, he already had a lot of momentum. Now, once you kind of get practice on those different things, really the book breaks down into two parts, which is how do you build and find something that people are excited to give you money for? Now that you're better at starting and asking, all right, let me start swinging. So it's thinking about, okay, how do I come up with ideas? How do I see if there's a million dollar in money I can make on it? Check out a one minute business model. And then the third part, grow it is like finding social media for customers. Email to actually, as you were saying, sell them and communicate with them. And then the growth machine, which is the playbook I use at mint.com and appsumo.com, YouTube, the book. It's the same marketing playbook I use over and over. And then these are all things, by the way, people are like, I want it more complicated. And I need it's like, it's 48 hours.

• 2:05:43Noah Kagan?

  And you know this, like by having these limitations, bring out a lot more creativity, bring out a lot more resourcefulness.

• 2:05:48Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, I mean, I would go so far as to say like, this is going to be a broad statement, but like the best creativity comes from constraints. You need constraints. Those sound bad. They sound like restraints, like you're strapped into, you know, electroshock therapy or something. But you need constraints and weekend is a constraint. Less than a hundred dollars is a constraint. Two hours is a constraint. These are all.

• 2:06:12Noah Kagan?

  Four hour work week.

• 2:06:13Tim Ferriss?

  Four hour work week, right? Which is.

• 2:06:16Noah Kagan?

  It's a constraint.

• 2:06:16Tim Ferriss?

  It's a constraint.

• 2:06:17Noah Kagan?

  And how is it an advantage? I think most people think I don't have money. It's like, that's a great thing. Okay, what do you do now that you don't have money? Okay, how can you make it happen? And then you realize like, oh, maybe there's something here for the, just like a pinball machine, which is crazy, like, no, you need to build it, engineer, no. Take a piece of wood, bend some metal, see if you can get a three, I generally say three people in the weekend. If you can get three customers, to me, that's validation, meaning that is something you can invest in. That's it, you can do that in 48 hours. And I think people give themselves so much time and so many excuses. That's why the book starts with frequently made excuses.

• 2:06:46Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, frequently made excuses, yeah.

• 2:06:49Noah Kagan?

  To be able to get them past that so they can get going on their journey.

• 2:06:52Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, totally. And there's so many examples of low stakes, low cost, say, prototyping, right? I'll just mention one guy, people can look him up, Stephen Key, fascinating guy. And he has licensed tons of toys to huge manufacturers. And so his game is licensing, right? He's not actually in the venturing business. He's not in the manufacturing and the distribution business. He comes up with ideas, it's like, this is a great game. And he sells it to Hasbro or whoever might be in these huge companies. He uses construction paper, some glue, Scotch tape. He'll prototype it, take some photos of how it might work. And then off to the races he goes. And he just does that over and over and over and over again.

• 2:07:37Noah Kagan?

  There's a lot of examples of this, like Airbnb, 60 billion, 100 billion dollar company? That literally started in a weekend. They posted to some design conference, like, hey, we have a couch, does anyone want it? There wasn't some fancy website, there was no Mark Andreessen funding, there was none of that. And now that's a hundred billion dollar business. So the thing that we talked about a long time ago is that you only need to get lucky once. But to get lucky, you have to be doing things consistently every single weekend to eventually get to that point. And I think people miss out on that.

• 2:08:02Tim Ferriss?

  So once Jake had a little bit of movement, so Taco Deli, et cetera, what happens then? For someone like a Jake, it doesn't need to be Jake, but like for someone like a Jake.

• 2:08:13Noah Kagan?

  Let's break it down, I think the more concrete tactical, I know that that's what we both appreciate. So now it's like, okay, well, what do I sell? And so again, there's a lot of different ways. I'll just give you one. Literally just make a list of your day, do breakfast, lunch, dinner, and try to write everything that sucked. So for you right now, you've already told me one. Finding a VA, EA, opportunity. Jake, his different ones, he has kids, so toys. He found it really annoying to that his kids get older. Now to find toys, he's like, ah shit, I need to get rid of these toys and get new ones. Maybe there's a toy rental business. Oh, it's kind of cool.

• 2:08:43Tim Ferriss?

  Well, I mean, look at Chegg for textbooks, right? Huge business.

• 2:08:47Noah Kagan?

  Chegg for toys doesn't exist. So if someone does that, sorry Jake. He didn't end up doing it, but it was going through different problems that he was excited to solve for himself. He had a coffee problem. And what he stumbled upon him is that he went on a golf trip with guys a year ago, and he was like, I really love that. I want more of that in my life. I want to have something to look forward to on my calendar. And I didn't want him to do that business. I wanted to do the toy rental.

• 2:09:06Tim Ferriss?

  So one additional approach I'll throw in there, because it's actually how I started Brainquick, you know, the first business, sports nutrition, et cetera, which is where I cut my teeth for all the things I followed. But I, as part of my calculus, I went through all my credit card statements. And at the time I was making, I don't know, like base salary is like 40 grand a year in the Bay area during like one of the peak rushes. It was, it was partially explains why I was eating Jack in the Box. Like with California taxes and like rent, it was like gone before you know it. So I went through my credit card statements and I looked at what I spent a lot of money on, like what did I spend a lot of money on disproportionate to my income? And that's how I landed on sports nutrition in part.

• 2:09:49Tim Ferriss?

  I also had some knowledge around it and the ability to find people involved with that. But another approach I've heard from several different entrepreneurs who ended up building huge businesses is they, they looked at where they were cobbling together solutions. Like where are they paying for multiple things? Or using multiple things to MacGyver some half ass solution to a problem that they have. Opportunity, right?

• 2:10:14Noah Kagan?

  Yeah, another one I've liked. And to be clear, you can have that and then still there's no business there. So we did that. We tried to compete with Klaviyo in e-commerce and we were cobbling together.

• 2:10:23Tim Ferriss?

  I don't know what they do.

• 2:10:24Noah Kagan?

  Their MailChimp or ConvertKit, but just for ecommerce.

• 2:10:27Tim Ferriss?

  I see.

• 2:10:28Noah Kagan?

  And so we cobbled together a solution and we're like, oh, we could sell this to people. And then when we tried to sell it, no one wanted to buy it.

• 2:10:33Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 2:10:33Noah Kagan?

  And that's what we get to later in the book. And so I think the other comment I would actually highlight that it's great. You called it out is what's on your to do list that you're just avoiding doing? That is actually a really interesting business. So for you, your to do list is to find an EA. What else is on your to do list that's maybe been there over two weeks?

• 2:10:48Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, yeah, that's a good one. That's a good one. Let me think about that for a second.

• 2:10:52Noah Kagan?

  Yeah, what is? I can tell you one of mine.

• 2:10:54Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, let's do one of yours.

• 2:10:55Noah Kagan?

  Fuck dude, I'm, I need a house manager. Yeah, I need someone to.

• 2:10:59Tim Ferriss?

  Just handle property stuff.

• 2:11:00Noah Kagan?

  My painting fell, my grass died because I put my car over it. It didn't get watered. I have a cold plunge that needs to get refilled. And I have my girlfriend who's pregnant, so I'm taking care of her and prioritizing her. I don't have time to even find the house manager.

• 2:11:14Tim Ferriss?

  Yep, so there's one. So in the case of, and if a better example exists that we want to run with, but let's, since we've introduced Jake.

• 2:11:21Noah Kagan?

  Yeah, we can stick with Jake and we can also do the VA one, but Jake's thing was, I want to do golf, let's stick with that. Next up, is it a million dollars of money that you can make in that? So how big is the market?

• 2:11:30Tim Ferriss?

  Over what period of time, a year or what period of time?

• 2:11:33Noah Kagan?

  I'm more and more just looking at the market. I'm not necessarily looking at a timeframe on that. It's just like, are there people now, today, that at least a million dollars? Like I would literally, what's crazy is apps seem to have success. I would say it's significantly because the market just grew. We chose a great market.

• 2:11:46Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 2:11:46Noah Kagan?

  When I started apps, there was 10 software products. Now there's at least 10,000 software products, if not more. And so we chose the right market. So with Jake, he was, basically there's two ways you can do it. One, just look at Google Trends, which is super basic. Everyone, most people know this, like is Google Trends is a flat, declining is it growing? And look at relatively.

• 2:12:01Tim Ferriss?

  In terms of search terms, right?

• 2:12:03Noah Kagan?

  Yeah, go to trends.google.com and just double check it. And this is, again, this is almost identical to the blog post we had. It's just been evolved on your blog, on Tversa blog for our workweek.com. And then the second part is, all right, is there a million people or not even a million people? How many people and how much do they spend on this? Same thing with Chihuahuas. How many people have Chihuahuas? How much they spend on Chihuahuas? So for Jake, it's how many people are golfing? How much they spend on golf? And can you get any other data points? But that's probably the most straightforward way, because again, we only do it in a weekend, to see is there at least a million dollars in there? Golf is a billion dollar industry, multiple billions of dollars. So you can look at the clubs, you can look at things, but simplest way to do it, go on Facebook, do an ad, how many people are searching golf? And then you can Google, how much do people spend on golf a year? Okay. Is there at least a million dollars in there I can make in it?

• 2:12:44Tim Ferriss?

  I would imagine at this point too, I'm just throwing this out there, but that some of these tools like chat GPT or Bard could also be incredibly helpful for this.

• 2:12:52Noah Kagan?

  Hundred percent, hundred percent. How much money do people spend on golf a year? How big is the market on golf? You could put that in right now. And again, people are like, well, I need to do more research. It's like, no, we really just want to understand like generally, because we only have a weekend. Otherwise, that's the thing that like two weeks, four weeks, six weeks, 10 weeks, and nothing's happened. So next up, how do we actually understand what the business model looks like? Again, not I went to Berkeley, went to Princeton, like there's all these complicated discounted cash flows. You've done a lot more investing than I have. I just want to know, can I make a million dollars in the business? So the real simplest business model, one minute revenue, cost, expense divided by a million. And I have a bunch of templates on the website, but really, again, I'm trying to understand, is this realistic? Trying to sell a business that, let's say a golf trip, that's what he was excited about.

• 2:13:34Noah Kagan?

  $5,000, it's like 3,000 to do it, 2,000. Can I sell this many golf trips and how long will that take me? Help him adjust the business model, like when I did Sumo Jerky, and even when I've done AppSumo, I had to do the same change. When we did AppSumo, I did bundles, remember?

• 2:13:49Tim Ferriss?

  I do.

• 2:13:49Noah Kagan?

  Yeah, because you're productivity model, you helped put it on the map. We did these bundles and I was like, dude, I'm doing fucking two months of work, sell them for 50 bucks, I made $5. Andrew Chen came and he's like a math genius and he's one of my best friends. He's like, let's just do this quick model. And that's what we've replicated. Stop doing bundles, just do one and do one a week. What's the margin? I went from $5 margin to $25 margin.

• 2:14:11Tim Ferriss?

  Can you say that one more time?

• 2:14:12Noah Kagan?

  Yeah. So let me back up. So when you're doing these quick models, and again, I don't want people to spend a lot of time. People like, it's so simple. I'm like, that's the point. Have a one minute.

• 2:14:18Tim Ferriss?

  By the way, not to interrupt, but like the vast majority of incredibly profitable, elegant businesses are simple.

• 2:14:30Noah Kagan?

  Yeah, right.

• 2:14:30Tim Ferriss?

  At their very core, they're simple.

• 2:14:33Noah Kagan?

  Beautifully said.

• 2:14:33Tim Ferriss?

  At their core, like Google, at its core, I know there's a lot of complexity that goes into delivering it. But as a business model. Very straightforward. Uber at its core, very straightforward. Airbnb at its core, very straightforward. And Patron, right? I mean, like at their cores, these businesses are Geico even, right? Like very simple.

• 2:14:57Noah Kagan?

  And one thing I want to take a step back on is entrepreneurship is awesome. It can create a great life for you. And that doesn't mean you have to be a millionaire. That could be even grocery money. And I don't think people realize they can change their life and have that option. Like I was fired. Have you been fired?

• 2:15:09Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, for my first job, fired. Ice cream shop. It's a long story.

• 2:15:14Noah Kagan?

  You have to like try to get fired there.

• 2:15:15Tim Ferriss?

  Well, it's actually kind of funny. I mean, my first job, so the way this guy was doing stuff, the big boss, I was like 14. I don't even know if it was legal. But I was working at this ice cream shop and I was the cleaner. So I was cleaning the machines and doing this, that and the other thing. And the way that I was taught to do it made absolutely no fucking sense. So I came up with my own system for cleaning and I did it in like one tenth the time. The mistake I made was I stayed at work for the rest of the time and I read Black Belt Magazine and I took the broom handle off of like one of the mops and I practiced karate moves or something in the parking lot. And the boss, understandably, didn't find that terribly inspiring. So he was like, I don't care if you already cleaned it, clean it again. And I was like, but it's clean. And that was early proof that I'm

• 2:15:57Tim Ferriss?

  effectively unemployable. So yeah, I got fired. I'm sure maybe I got fired from other stuff, but I definitely got fired from the first job.

• 2:16:05Noah Kagan?

  I was trying to wish I could see that, dude. I wish you could have like some cameras and I could see you with your broomstick.

• 2:16:09Tim Ferriss?

  There's a good chance I had a rat tail or a mullet too. There was a very high likelihood that I had a rat tail or a mullet at the time.

• 2:16:15Noah Kagan?

  My point of going back and what we'll stick with the Jake example is that I was fired. And that was one of the most traumatic moments of my life. And then I was like, I'm never fucking again going to be dependent on someone. Yeah, ever fucking again. And so I, at that moment, was very clear, like I need to get to my own level.

• 2:16:29Tim Ferriss?

  It's taken 30 years to.

• 2:16:31Noah Kagan?

  It's taken.

• 2:16:31Tim Ferriss?

  Therapy to work.

• 2:16:33Noah Kagan?

  It has. I mean, therapy has been an amazing thing.

• 2:16:35Tim Ferriss?

  Oh, I get it. I'm laughing because also, I get it.

• 2:16:38Noah Kagan?

  Yeah. But that was a realization that like one person determined my fate. Yeah, I never wanted that again. Yeah. And so it doesn't mean you have to quit. Like what's crazy at AppSumo, dude, we have a lot of people with really interesting side hustle. Amy does flowers. She's like, she heads our customer support. Nick has our growth. He has a teeth whitening clinic.

• 2:16:54Tim Ferriss?

  Amazing.

• 2:16:55Noah Kagan?

  Yeah.

• 2:16:56Tim Ferriss?

  Oldman and his wife have a facial clinic.

• 2:16:58Noah Kagan?

  Yeah.

• 2:16:58Tim Ferriss?

  I don't know. It's kind of cool.

• 2:16:59Noah Kagan?

  But at least they have the option. They seem to like their jobs with AppSumo, but they have the option that they can do that. And that's why I do think people should consider it no matter what they're doing.

• 2:17:06Tim Ferriss?

  Totally.

• 2:17:06Noah Kagan?

  It does take time to kind of get to these places. Like I didn't, my first sell at AppSumo was 12 bucks. Yesterday was 200,000, but that did me getting going.

• 2:17:13Tim Ferriss?

  And I'll throw this in there too, that much like despite everything that I've said in the fricking Ted Talk that I gave earlier about all the things I'm thinking about, despite all of that, I still think everybody should start a podcast. Because you will learn a lot about yourself and your own thinking. You'll need to get better at communicating. And there's a lot to be taken from that, even if you stop it after five episodes, right? So I still believe that for improving your ability to communicate, identifying verbal tics, cleaning up your thinking by going through that process makes it worth starting a podcast. Similarly, I think everybody should start a business. Does not mean everybody should be a lifelong entrepreneur.

• 2:17:54Tim Ferriss?

  There are upsides to nine to five. The ability to just like turn off your work, go home, like throw on the TV or watch some YouTube and like have a couple of beers with your friends or family. Like there are arguments to be made that that in the right circumstances.

• 2:18:08Noah Kagan?

  I'll tell you, like Monday, we have a lawsuit because someone doesn't like something. Two people are upset about their salary. That was Monday.

• 2:18:14Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, right, right. I'm just saying like.

• 2:18:17Noah Kagan?

  There's trade offs.

• 2:18:18Tim Ferriss?

  I was at this rock climbing gym not too long ago, last week, actually here in Austin. A lot of good rock climbing gyms. There's a new one, Mesa Rim, that is much taller in terms of their top roping areas than anything else I've seen here. In any case, I was there and I saw this woman climbing and she had a shirt on that said, no solutions, only trade offs. And I looked at it and I said, okay, maybe that doesn't make sense. Maybe it's like a Japanese billboard. Who knows? It like seems like English, but it's not quite like it's grammatical. They're English words, but wait a second, like bear is the best friend. Wait a second. What does that mean? That doesn't mean anything. But I sat with it and I was like, you know what? That's actually a very healthy way to look at a lot of decisions. So there is no one best. Like there are always trade offs. So coming back to Jake.

• 2:19:04Tim Ferriss?

  Jake and business model. How did you tackle this? And it can be Jake, it can be other examples, but to the extent that you can give real world examples.

• 2:19:14Noah Kagan?

  All right, so let me give you two examples, one Jake and one, you know, very clear as well with AppSumo. So Jake's

• 2:19:18Tim Ferriss?

  Oh, with Andrew Chen when he came in and modified it.

• 2:19:20Noah Kagan?

  So that was one example. The other example, and I'll show you that there's dials, you know, kind of like we're meets with your finance dials. There's revenue dials in your business. And so with Jake, he was like, I'm going to do 10% profit. I was like, okay, hold on, let's look at a one minute model, see what you can actually make and how you can make a million dollars doing this. So we put it into the one minute model. And again, it's very simple. We don't have a lot of time, revenue, costs, profit. So let's be specific with Jake, I was like, Jake, how much can people pay? And again, let's just try to see what we can put together as an offer that will bring to people. How much you pay on your golf trip before? I spent 2,000. What do you think is reasonable for a 48 hour amazing experience for people to go golfing? 4,000, great, 4,000. Now, what are the costs that go with that? Do you have to play for travel? No, make them pay for travel. Okay, hotel, golf, whiskey, cigars, food. Great, how much is that?

• 2:20:05Noah Kagan?

  Just real quick, 2,000 bucks. So your old model was like, you took a percentage, but now we just do a one minute model. It looks like you're making like $2,000 to $3,000. Let's just call it 2,500 per each golf trip. Divided by a thousand, that's not that many sales. That seems actually very doable to create a million dollar business, just having golf trips. So just by understanding that, it's like, okay, cool. We have an idea we like, we see that there's a million dollars, because a lot of times you're going to work really hard in the wrong direction or in a market that's really small. And you actually understand that this is a business model relatively that can work now. We talked about revenue dials, let's just say the average order value, like people are going to pay 1,000. Holy shit, that's never going to get there. That's a thousand people you're going to have to sell, or is it a thousand? Yeah, 1,000 people, that's a lot of people. So if we can 5X that, maybe we make it more expensive. Can we get people to buy it twice?

• 2:20:50Noah Kagan?

  Is there another types of products? And I've written down the revenue dials in the book and there's free on the website as well, that you can be like, how can I change this model so that it's easier to get to the million dollars?

• 2:20:59Tim Ferriss?

  So people can find some of these resources for free at milliondollarweekend.com.

• 2:21:02Noah Kagan?

  Totally. And now with that, it was like, oh, okay, cool. It's $2,500, I don't have to sell that many people to get to a million dollar business. Now let me see if I'm going to get even just three customers today. And I will tell you, at this point of the day, Jake was really frustrated because we had no sales. You know, we finished this model and it's like, shit, man, like, I don't know, like, I don't know if this is going to work. And I think that one of the most powerful things you can do is go for a walk. And that's all we did. It was like, Jake, For two years, you've thought about this idea. For two years, you've wondered what if? And you want to be an example to your kids. And in 24 hours so far, you have an idea. You have a business smaller around it. And now we can actually find out if we can make a real business out of this. And I think that's just kind of amazing for all of us. Like, how can we change our lives in a very quick amount of time?

• 2:21:45Noah Kagan?

  Give yourself a fucking break if it's not immediately a million dollars. Like, go for a walk, get a good night's sleep. Go look at old photos to realize how far we've come. So the next morning, woke up. And what we did within, I don't know, an hour is he put together on a Google Doc? Pictures of a golf trip. Golf course, food, cigars. I don't think people do golfing. Clothing, polo shirts. And then a price. 4,000 bucks, 5,000 bucks. And I was like, all right, cool. Let's just call people. So there's three different validation methods to see if people want to have a business. And number one is pre-selling. This is one of the most popular. Oh, I see. See if people will purchase. Yeah. So you have an offer. He literally put together a Google Doc because I do think it's nice when you sell something that you can get people like, oh, wow, I can visualize it. I can see it.

• 2:22:29Noah Kagan?

  Same thing that Elon's done with Cybertruck Model 3. Those are six years and 10 years before he actually delivered. And he pre-sold thousands, tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands of them. So it's a very effective model. Same thing with airplanes, hotels, they all pre-sale to see if someone wants it. Apartment buildings. I mean, we're looking around here. Like, the vast majority of these were sold before construction was finished, certainly. But often before construction started. 100%. And when you're doing businesses, find a problem you're excited about. As you said with your stuff, like, if you only do that and make sure that no one else wants it, you don't really have a business. You just have a hobby. So Jake has that. The other thing I think is a super common mistake for new entrepreneurs is like, well, I want to do AI. I'm like, okay, have you done anything? Yeah, it's so funny. I was going to bring up this exact. Oh, people, I love, yeah. I'm like, have you used ChatGPT? Not really.

• 2:23:14Noah Kagan?

  Have you coded anything? No, not at all. Who saw? What do you do? What's your day job? I'm in sales. Okay, what do you sell? I sell solar. Okay, maybe it's easier for us to start a business selling. Anyone can sell AI. And do something within your zone of influence and your zone of expertise versus so far outside of it. People make it way more complicated on themselves, especially new entrepreneurs. Like, what are problems you like? What are groups or zones of influence you have? Doesn't mean you can't, but just makes it so much harder. And so Jake, he plays a lot of golf. So you know golf. He has a lot of golf friends. So the pre-sell method makes-

• 2:23:47Tim Ferriss?

  He also knows how to find those people, right? Like, he knows what, which websites he goes to. He knows which celebrities he follows. He knows where to go fishing.

• 2:23:58Noah Kagan?

  Yeah. I don't, what's a golf course?

• 2:24:00Tim Ferriss?

  And he has more credibility in selling it too. If he's like, this is the trip that I have always wanted to design for myself. There's a lot of weight behind that when you're talking to someone.

• 2:24:09Noah Kagan?

  Yeah, it was cool. It was cool to see him excited to create a business around that. And there's some, some mistakes that he ended up making that others can avoid that I'll cover. But through that, it was like, all right, Jake, you have a doc, you got a model, let's contact these people. Let's just call them right now. You already practiced it. Remember in the beginning, we talked about starting? You got started. Let's start asking. And he called his brother and be like, nah, my brother, like, it's too easy. It should be easy. Make it fun. Like, feel, no, it's gotta be hard. I gotta make it challenging myself. Like, why? Why do you want to make it hard on yourself? What's the advantage in that? Because that avoids you actually facing reality. So he called his brother and his brother's like, and again, we talked about that, listen, option transition. Hey, man, I need feedback. I'm doing this process. I'm trying to start a business in a weekend. Do you remember the golf trip you went on? He's like, yeah. How did you

• 2:24:52Noah Kagan?

  like it? Oh, I liked it. Is there anything you missed on it? Would you want to do it again? Do you have another one scheduled? Oh, you don't? Oh. So you're listening to see if you, what problems they have. Then you provide an option. Hey, I've got a golf trip. It's gonna be in April. It's gonna be to this place. It's gonna be 5,000 bucks. And it sounds like something you'd be excited to do. Transition. Do you want to give me a hundred dollars right now as a deposit that's totally refundable for this trip? And then shut the fuck up. His brother sent him a hundred dollars right away? Okay, brother, fine, easy. Jake, who else have you golfed with? Let's make a dream 10 list of everyone you've ever golfed with. Just 10, super easy. This is inspired by Chet Holmes, so I gotta give him a shout out. Ultimate Sales Machine, one of my favorite books all time. And he has a dream 100. I'm like, hundreds is a lot. Let's just do 10.

• 2:25:37Noah Kagan?

  We only got a weekend. So then let's just go through your list. Who else plays golf with you? Who else have you gone on a trip with? I went on a guy named John, calls up John and actually recorded the calls. He's like, yeah, fuck you, John. I'm like, that's how you talk to your friends. But they're friends. And then he calls John, he's like, yeah, man, can I just get your feedback? Cause again, when you're selling, you don't have to make this big scary thing. Talk to someone. Hey, I'd love to get your feedback. This is what I'm working on. Is that something you're interested in? You are? Okay, cool. Do you want to give a deposit to commit that you're actually serious about doing it? Because a promise of a deposit is a rejection. A promise is a rejection. Hey, yeah, yeah, I'll do it. Just when you get closer, that's rejection. That's actually a no. You know this, you've sold a lot, you've done a lot on this. And so getting them to actually tell you the truth with their wallet. And for me, a lot of times with rejection, it's do I actually want to do this business?

• 2:26:22Noah Kagan?

  Do I actually want to make this thing possible? And so it's a test if you want something. That's it. And so when you're getting rejected, be like, as I'm doing this book and as I'm doing other things, even with asking people for on my YouTube videos, do I really want this? I'm like, fuck, yes, I do.

• 2:26:35Tim Ferriss?

  Do you want the thing that is being rejected?

• 2:26:37Noah Kagan?

  Am I proud of what am I doing? Like, is this the thing I actually believe I want to do? And that rejection is just a test for yourself and everyone can pass. It's up to them to choose. And

• 2:26:45Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, those are also like those early rejections are valuable because if your commitment starts to waver, you're still in the honeymoon phase. You are gonna have hard challenges. You are going to have hiccups later. And if it's not going to work, like if you are going to waver or you might fold, it's better to do it in a sense

• 2:27:05Noah Kagan?

  Super quick.

• 2:27:05Tim Ferriss?

  Early than later.

• 2:27:07Noah Kagan?

  And you're really, for me, getting rejected is an opportunity to learn. And this is what I do in sales. I do this all the time. To this day, I'll just say, I just want to learn. And I frame it, that's the first phrase. Second phrase is, you didn't want this? Just tell me why not? I want to learn. People will reply and they'll tell you.

• 2:27:22Tim Ferriss?

  Really?

• 2:27:22Noah Kagan?

  Yeah, they just do it. I don't think people are like, no, I won't want to tell this person why not. And a lot of times after they say why they didn't do something, you can answer that question and sell them again.

• 2:27:32Noah Kagan?

  So Jake called John, he makes fun of this guy, so forth. And then, hey, man, I have an idea. This golf trip, I love your feedback. What do you think about it? Dude, that sounds awesome. Yeah, it's in April. Do you want to do a deposit? And then the deposit. And then he ended up getting, I believe, five deposits within 48 hours for 500 bucks. And then he also had a partnership with another guy that he went on a trip with. And now, three weeks later, he's like securing the location, he's getting the $5,000 or whatever the end up price is going to be along the way. Now, there's some interesting things around this. So one, and this is a mistake that people make. You have to deliver what you just promised. So focus on that. You just promised like, hey, give me a deposit and let me take you on an amazing golf experience. So over deliver on what you just promised. Common mistake that Jake was making, he came back to me, I checked in on him.

• 2:28:14Noah Kagan?

  He's like, dude, these people are buying it. It's exciting. I'm going to get eight people. Here's a model. It looks great. One guy talked to me about an app. So I'm going to start an app.

• 2:28:24Noah Kagan?

  And I was like, squirrel. Yeah.

• 2:28:28Noah Kagan?

  I love squirrels. Until the Titans, I put squirrels my favorite animal. And so the very easy to get distracted, very easy to get distracted. And this is the best businesses are the ones that work. And so I'm like, Jake, you just sold five people. Another mistake that very, very common. You know, I don't know about these trips because I don't think I want to go on them in a few years.

• 2:28:47Noah Kagan?

  I was like, dude, you haven't even gone on one. Yeah. Guess what? You know how much work I do at AppSumo day to day? Zero. I don't do any work. And that's not as like a flex, like, oh, I don't do any work. No, I hire the people that do the work and they're excited. And frankly, they're better than me at the work. You don't ever have to go on a trip. Maybe for a podcast, if you're the signature host and it's called the Tim Fair Show, you probably need to be doing it. And let's say AI your voice. But for these golf trips, don't be so worried about making a million when you haven't made one. Just deliver the product. And guess what? Then do it again, and then again, and then again. And so that was another common observation. I was surprised. And I've seen it by others. How's it going to scale? You haven't even gotten a dollar. Don't worry about scale. Don't worry about it. Yeah. And let's deliver the experience, which now he's getting it going in April. He's getting these people to pay. And then it's like, hey, just after they pay in April, you know what you do?

• 2:29:30Noah Kagan?

  You just do it again and then again, and then again. And then the rest of the book is now, how does he get it beyond that? So it can be beyond his, his network and his zone of influence.

• 2:29:38Tim Ferriss?

  Also, just to emphasize a few things that you've said, and also maybe just add a couple of comments, right? The whole scaling thing, look, I invest in businesses at scale, but I think that what a lot of entrepreneurs tend to do, especially if they're fantasizing about doing something big, like if it's not huge, it's a failure. If it's not 10x, it's a failure. If it's not, it's like paradigm shifting. Most businesses that help their owners to craft unique lives that are incredibly rewarding are completely invisible to you.

• 2:30:11Noah Kagan?

  Hmm.

• 2:30:12Tim Ferriss?

  The businesses that you see on magazine covers or in these tweet threads and so on, X threads.

• 2:30:22Noah Kagan?

  I saw Twitter.

• 2:30:23Tim Ferriss?

  Whatever the cool kids are calling it these days are outliers. And trying to just model those crazy outliers is like deciding for New Year's, you want to get into shape. So you watch the Super Bowl and you're like, okay, so I'm watching how Tom Brady moves.

• 2:30:42Tim Ferriss?

  And if I can't be Tom Brady, then it's not exercise. And you're like, well, hold on a fucking second.

• 2:30:50Tim Ferriss?

  It's not the right way to look at it. Chances are also you're not Tom Brady, right? So maybe before you're like, it's not worth me learning to swim unless I can be Michael Phelps. You're like, well, look at his ankles. You're, can your ankles do that? No, like, I don't think so. Are you shaped like that? No, you're not. So just reminding folks, like you do not need to mimic the top 1% of 1% of 1% of outliers, who probably are mutants on a bunch of levels in order to have a business that fulfills the dreams you have associated with being an entrepreneur. I just wanted to say that because it's so common.

• 2:31:24Noah Kagan?

  It's really common.

• 2:31:25Tim Ferriss?

  And what you've been saying also echoes something that Seth Godin has said on the podcast, which is, and I'm paraphrasing here, but effectively like do the smallest thing possible. He's like, people hide behind the big. Because when they have this like, I want to do an AI app that does this and this and this, which isn't to say those things can't exist. But when they've got this huge idea, I want to help five billion people, whatever the thing might be. You can hide behind that and never get started. It's easy to hide behind the big thing. But if it's call five of your friends, you can't hide behind that.

• 2:32:01Noah Kagan?

  I mean, business really is three Ws is what I look at it. It's what's a problem you're solving that people care about? Who are those people and where are they?

• 2:32:07Tim Ferriss?

  That's it.

• 2:32:08Noah Kagan?

  What's the problem that people care about? So for Jake, it's golf trips. For AppSumo.com, it's software deals at good prices. For Tim Ferriss, it was learning like very, Tim Ferriss shows very tactical, practical things in different areas of your life. Where do people listen to that? And then where are they? And it has been awesome to see someone like Jake, who's had that dream, be able to make that change. There are other validation methods I'll just share because I think people want to see other ones. So one is presell. So whether it's a pinball machine, which we talked about, whether it's even AppSumo.com. I was able to get this going within a weekend as well. The same exact method. It wasn't even pre-sell, I was able to close it all in 48 hours. So just to share another story of that. I noticed through all of my work that I was like, I like deals, I like marketing, and I think the software thing is going to be big.

• 2:32:51Noah Kagan?

  How do I do this very quickly to find out if this is something people actually want? And that's the reason you have a weekend because you have 52 chances to change it. If it doesn't work one, guess what? You have another one and another one. And to at least understand a process, you're so good at this, you're so good at thinking about that. So how do you experiment? And so with AppSumo, I was like, I think there's something with these three things. Let me try to do it in a weekend. I cold emailed Imjor, this college kid, said, hey, I want to do software deals. I'll pay $7 for everyone I sell. For him, he's like, I'll get free money. That's cool. So a cold email, it was just, and it was funny.

• 2:33:18Tim Ferriss?

  How did you find the college kid to cold email?

• 2:33:20Noah Kagan?

  Because I went to imjor.com.

• 2:33:22Tim Ferriss?

  Oh, sorry.

• 2:33:24Noah Kagan?

  Yeah, no, no, not a random college.

• 2:33:25Tim Ferriss?

  That was some like name from Azerbaijan. Okay.

• 2:33:27Noah Kagan?

  No, no, no, no.

• 2:33:28Tim Ferriss?

  The website.

• 2:33:29Noah Kagan?

  Imjor.com. So I knew that the problem with software deals at good prices. I knew that I'm a Redditor and I was like, well, that's where the customers are. And then that's who the customers are and where they are. And I was like, they want Imjor. That was the most popular product at the time. I was all over it. So basically cold emailed Alan, just [email protected]. I was like, hey, I want to promote you, $7 per deal. You get free money. It's no cost to you. And then I was like, well, I can get this posted on Reddit. And I even cold emailed the founders of Reddit and was able to get them to give me free ads. Yeah. How did you do that? So curious. I know. Why would they give you free ads? I don't really know, actually. That's bullshit. No, no. Now, what was the pitch, though? The pitch was twofold. One, I said I knew someone they knew. So I worked with Chris Smoke when I started previous companies. He knew Chris Slow.

• 2:34:14Noah Kagan?

  Swear to Chris Smoke's slow. So when you're sending an email, it's really strong subject line or any messages like referred by blah. At least you're gonna get an open or reply. Said, hey, I'm working on- And by the way, don't bullshit that because you'll get fact checked. I just got someone fact checked with me, like Jordan Har- you know Jordan Haringer? Yeah. He's a good buddy of mine. He fact checked someone who messaged him like, hey, Noah Kagan's working with you, me. And Jordan messages me. Of course, immediately. Yeah, I was like, no, I'm not. Yeah. It was a little bit more than that. Basically, I said, hey, I'd love to just treat you to lunch and share more what I'm working on. And so I took him to Pork Store Cafe in Haiti. And I just shared what I was working on and said, I'm doing this idea for software deals. I want to focus on Reddit. I'm a huge redditor, been redditor since 2006. It's Inger. I'd love to see if you can give me free ads. There wasn't a bigger ask than that. Again, we come back full circle. It's because, you know, I like asking, I practice asking, everyone can ask.

• 2:34:59Noah Kagan?

  He's like, sure. Crazy part of that story, fast forward about six months, I asked him again and he's like $10,000. Yeah.

• 2:35:08Noah Kagan?

  But I highly appreciate Chris and Reddit for giving me that free. It was, they were just getting their ad platform out. Hmm. Yeah. So it was a good chance. Okay. That was a good chance for them. To showcase something or have a case study. That it worked well. So I launched it. I was like, if I can do 200 sales, this is obviously a little bit bigger than what I'm encouraging others. If I can get 200 sales within a very short time, this is it. And let me just break down the website. I paid $48 to a guy named Mohammed, who I can still recommend to people, to help me put a PayPal button on appsumo.com. And I spent $12 on appsumo.com. Which, I know, I should have maybe done even not the website. But that PayPal button, people, and I posted on Reddit, hey, I've got a deal on Inger Pro. Instead of $24, it's 12. And I gave Alan $7 immediately. That first $12 sale was the best, dude. Yeah. That was so sweet.

• 2:35:52Noah Kagan?

  And I remember, and this is the thing, people were like, well, how do I scale? I emailed the codes for every 200 person. You know what my backend was? Gmail. I got the PayPal notification and then I sent him an email saying, thank you so much. Here's your code for Inger Pro. What other deals do you want me to get? And that is what's led now to like 100 person team. And we have all these crazy products. We've launched on so many different things from AppSumo. We have, I think, a 20, 25 person engineering team. It started with literally manual Gmail codes. And so the concept there is just how so fucking basic. I didn't let all these other things get in the way. Yeah. And also-

• 2:36:26Tim Ferriss?

  That super primitive back end that you're talking about, highly manual, but high touch with the customer.

• 2:36:33Noah Kagan?

  Yes, yes.

• 2:36:34Tim Ferriss?

  Gives you a lot of really valuable input. And even though we've been talking about the word scale is kind of a four-letter word. In one of the very first episodes of Masters of Scale that Reid Hoffman did, he interviewed Brian Chesky of Airbnb. And it's a great episode. And one of the key tenets in the beginning for Airbnb was do things that don't scale. And those things tended to be highly manual, helping people take photographs of their places. And what they learned then led to a lot of what we've seen.

• 2:37:07Noah Kagan?

  I mean, even think about yourself. I hope I recall correctly. I thought you super responded to everyone super early on. I recall you in the comments on your blog.

• 2:37:16Tim Ferriss?

  Oh, in the comments when I was building that community, for sure. And this is highly responsive in the blog comments.

• 2:37:21Noah Kagan?

  You were. I remember that. It stuck out to me. And that's exactly if people are like, well, how do I like have high touch? And how do you think that's good? That is literally it. So for me on YouTube, I still reply to my comments. Not every single one now, because there's a lot. But I reply to them. And guess what? When you get that message, that someone actually connected with you, and this is great, especially if you're at one, two, three, four, five customers.

• 2:37:39Tim Ferriss?

  So early on, I don't know if I've talked about this at all. When I had decided that bloggers were the path, at least that was the hypothesis worth testing for launching the four hour work week. I went to a bunch of their blogs and I left comments and my comments were like blog posts unto themselves. I mean, they were, they took forever, right? But I put a ton of energy in and I would do that in some cases, like two or three times on a given blog, where the authors were active in the comments. And they noticed that and people bloggers in this case, in many cases, directly reached out to me to thank me for the comments. And that laid the foundation. It was like super targeted, very much sniper shot. It was not me trying 100,000 different things. But you also in

• 2:38:23Tim Ferriss?

  the beginning, need to throw a lot against the wall. You don't know what you're good at. You don't know it works. So you try a lot and. Going back, it's fun taking the trip down memory lane for BrainQuicken way back in the day, the sports nutrition company. And I say sports nutrition because turns out Americans did not want to be smarter at all. So selling something for improving cognition at that point didn't work at all. But I got reports back, this is when very high touch from athletes, especially NCAA athletes who bought it for studying. They're like, yeah, I don't really care about studying though, but it improved my time off the blocks for my track event. It helped me with this, helped me with that. And being the idiot that I was, I ignored that for ages. I was like, no, this is BrainQuicken, right in my own head. So I kept pounding my head against a brick wall. Didn't work. And eventually I was like,

• 2:39:06Tim Ferriss?

  well, wait a second. They're using this for sports. The only reason I spent so much money on my supplementation as a percentage of my incomes because I cared about sports performance, really. And then pivoted and that's when the whole thing took off. But that's not the takeaway that I was going to share. What I was going to share is at the very earliest stages, I had a website up, which a coworker at work at Trusan had put together for next to nothing, right? Because we were always scheming and we were always just like going out to lunch and bullshitting. We were friends. So I paid him, but I couldn't pay him much. And he was like, it's fine. And he put together a website for me. I had not manufactured anything. I had done quite a bit of basic math to figure out if the economics would work. Nothing fancy though. It's like, how much do I think I could manufacture this for?

• 2:39:51Tim Ferriss?

  What are some of the basic costs of sourcing? Da, da, da, da. Landed on a retail price. And at this point, nothing's been made. Nothing's been manufactured. There's no product to ship. And I just went to coworkers who were friends. And it wasn't exactly guilting, but these people at that point didn't really need this necessarily. Like, it could be a benefit, but I was like, hey, I want to try this out. Like, would you be willing to just prepay for one of these so that I can try to do a first manufacturing run? And they're like, yeah, sure. Why not? 50 bucks or something at the time. And that gave me just the bare minimum of capital to start having conversations.

• 2:40:29Noah Kagan?

  I love that.

• 2:40:30Tim Ferriss?

  And then I had to negotiate everything, right? Because I would go to these contract manufacturers and they're like, well, our minimum order size is this. And in my head, I'm like, impossible. That's never going to work. And then they're like, and our minimum term of commitment is this. I was like, yep, also impossible. So I had to sell the vision. And at that time, I was able to, because I'd learned through cold calling off hours, get ahold of the president of this manufacturer, got him on the phone at one point. And I was just like, I know at some point, somebody gave you a break. I'm not asking for anything other than can I drive to you at any time and just tell you about my vision for this business. And if we are able to find a way to work together, which I would like to, I promise you that I will work with you exclusively as a

• 2:41:11Tim Ferriss?

  manufacturer as we grow the business. Went down and I think he was maybe just amused more than anything else. And he's like, okay, sure. Like after all was said and done. And then I used him for years, right? And that's how the deal got done. But it all hinged on in the very beginning, the pre-sales. And also, I was buying, I mean, negotiating at that time, you want to talk about a real pain in the ass, magazine advertisements, feedback loop is really slow. After you have put out the cash for the advertising, you might not know what you're selling for months. It could take a really, really long time. And so what I did, when I started getting more ambitious, because I started with small ads, of course. And then once I got to kind of full page ads,

• 2:41:55Tim Ferriss?

  I would go to, say, distributors, and I would say, I would love to feature you exclusively in this particular ad. But for that to work, I would just need you to preorder X amount of inventory. So they buy X amount of inventory. Let's say that's $10,000. And I would also say like, it's $10,000, but the rate card for this full page is like 40 grand. And they'd be like, okay, well, seems reasonable, especially since we're gonna make a profit on the product. Then I would buy the ad space as a remnant. So I would negotiate last minute. I would get that for like five grand. So what has happened? If I had them preorder, let's say 10K, I paid five, I'm already in the black, no matter what the outcome of the advertisement. And this is the

• 2:42:38Tim Ferriss?

  kind of stuff most entrepreneurs are gonna have to do on some level, something like that.

• 2:42:43Noah Kagan?

  Two things I want to highlight from your story. One, it's beautiful. You seem to have a knack for finding underserved.

• 2:42:50Noah Kagan?

  Opportunities and that's where the opportunity is like if it's a market, there's no opportunity because people know about it like you finding remnant inventory. I think there's something with AppSumo, we've had a lot of times where like when the news feed came out years ago on Facebook, no one was really advertising. We're like, oh, this is huge. No one else is doing it. Let's go hard on that. And there's something interesting in business and finding what others aren't noticing just yet. Specifically for me, I'm interested in the kind of the marketing part. I think the other thing that that was interesting about what you do is you put a little bit more extra effort in.

• 2:43:17Tim Ferriss?

  Just a sprinkle of the hot sauce.

• 2:43:19Noah Kagan?

  That's what you do, right? So one thing, and just to highlight for others out there to copy, copy it like success leaves crumbs. When you wrote a blog post comment on other blogs, you didn't just write, hey, cool story. Thanks, Tebow, right? You wrote like actual in-depth things that made people want to reach out to you.

• 2:43:36Tim Ferriss?

  Like many, many, many hours on a single comment, right? Like 17 revisions kind of thing.

• 2:43:41Noah Kagan?

  And the same thing goes for when you wanted to do the manufacturing. You didn't just say, like, call the guy and be like, I'll show up to your door. Tell me where you're at and I'll be there. That's a little bit more. It's not a lot and it's not exclusive to, that's available worldwide. Just put in a little bit more, take that little bit of chance and what a cool story. If it doesn't work out, at least you have this crazy story that you can talk about.

• 2:44:00Tim Ferriss?

  Exactly. And another little tweak, because it's not like the story, I think that's appealing for a lot of people to hear, which is not what we're saying, is I did 100x more than the next guy. That's not what I did. I did like 10% more with some degree of focus. The details matter. And keep in mind, I'm copying people too, right? I had a three ring binder, which I treated as my swipe file. Whenever I bought something, and at that time, magazines were a big deal. That's changed, of course, but like print advertising and stuff was the game that I was interested in. Anytime I was about to buy something or I bought something, or I flipped through a magazine and my attention stopped for a period of time on an ad, I would take out the ad and I put it

• 2:44:42Tim Ferriss?

  in a three ring binder and I would study the ad to be like, why? Why did this affect me? Now I'll copy it. And to give an example, just to a fine tune, right? How many emails have you received where someone's like, blah, blah, blah, blah. I'd love to pick your brand and meet for a coffee. How about next Tuesday at 2pm? Right? And you're like, that's pretty presumptuous. Maybe that works, right? But it's a little.

• 2:45:06Tim Ferriss?

  Forceful. And in the same way that if someone's like, I'm a hugger and they invade your space and you back up, don't cause that instinctive defensive response and somebody reads your emails. So even in the very beginning, and I still do this because believe it or not, I get rejected. It still happens, right? But in the case of, say, the manufacturer, there was no presumption. It was like, I really appreciate you taking the time. This might not be of any interest. Like, it was very light. I wasn't like, I know what you need. This business is going to be 20X. We're going to scale and you can be our exclusive provider. No, I was like, this may not be of interest, but I think there's a chance it is because I've studied your website. I've looked at this. I've looked at your customers. I've identified this, this and this. And would love to meet everything I just said.

• 2:45:50Tim Ferriss?

  And if that doesn't work for you, I totally understand.

• 2:45:52Noah Kagan?

  No pressure.

• 2:45:53Tim Ferriss?

  Now, what does that say? Because there's, there's sort of a subtext to this. What that says is if this guy meets up with me, I'm not going to browbeat the shit out of him. I'm not going to follow up 20 times after he said no. So he's like, the risk of me meeting with this guy is low because he had a light touch in the beginning. Now, there's a time to be forceful, right? There are times to be more forceful, but I do find that, that the carrot works better than, than the stick. Or a better way to put it is just like a gentle touch works much more often than a heavy touch. This was also true with the bloggers. If a bunch of bloggers or people I thought might be bloggers were having drinks at like an after party at South by, I would wander up and I would just say, oh, hey, guys, I know you don't know me. Is it okay if I just join you guys? I'm by myself.

• 2:46:38Tim Ferriss?

  And they'd be like, oh, okay, sure. And then I'd ask questions and ask questions. Eventually somebody'd be like, what's your story? Like, who are you again? And I would say, oh, I'm here because the only thing I can really control with my first book, I'm really nervous about it, is looking at digital stuff because the publisher's doing everything else. Then I'd stop. I wouldn't give them a full pitch. If it ended up being the right audience, or if they had any interest, they'd be like, well, what's your fucking book about? And then I'd be like, well, it's about.

• 2:47:05Noah Kagan?

  Oh, funny ass.

• 2:47:06Tim Ferriss?

  Well, yeah, yeah. Well, yes. And if it's a group of like six to eight people, chances are at least one person, even if they're just being polite, will be like, oh, it's a story. What's the book? And then I would just pay attention to who was interested. Right. Who is opting in?

• 2:47:17Noah Kagan?

  Yeah.

• 2:47:17Tim Ferriss?

  Right. And then at some point, not in front of the group, by the way, but like, I like buy drinks for folks. Like, let me buy you guys a round of drinks. I feel like I'm crashing your party. And then if somebody really expressed interest, I would say, you know, zero pressure. I know you, I'm sure you got a lot going on. But if you're interested, I could send you an early copy of the book. You're not going to want to read the whole thing. It'll take too long, but I could just highlight 10 pages that you might be able to use immediately because it has templates for this thing that you just mentioned. And they're like, cool. And I'll be like, yeah, I'm like, I'm not expecting to promote it. I'm not expecting anything. I just want to expose people to this stuff. And you have to mean it, right? That you can't then follow up 100 times and be a prick about it.

• 2:47:54Noah Kagan?

  Like you said, and you didn't expect it.

• 2:47:55Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah. Yeah. And that worked. It really worked. And that approach, that light approach has worked over and over and over again. I mean, it took me two or three years to get Jamie Foxx on the podcast. That was a long time. And then it was at the time, you know, podcast of the year. It took time.

• 2:48:11Noah Kagan?

  That's cool. I think the two comments, I'm curious, one comment and a question as well. If you start with the light ask, you can do a big ask. So let me give you an example. When I knock on doors from some of the YouTube videos where I just go to literally the nicest houses I see and just knock on their door. If I go to your door and say, what do you do for a living? Like, you're going to close my door, close it in my face. Instead, now what I do, knock on the door, hello, I love your house.

• 2:48:35Noah Kagan?

  They're like, really? Yeah. I just, you know, we're doing a documentary on the neighborhood and I just love your house. Can you tell me about it? Oh, yeah. Actually, that's so crazy. Yeah. I thought this, I always drive by and I was always fascinated by, what'd you do for a living to be able to get a house? Like, it's so great. It's definitely a different, it's the same ask, just done a little differently. That does take practice and through time and persistence, you do get better at it. One thing coming back, when was the last time you were rejected? You were saying you got rejected from something. I'm curious that last time. And what do you tell yourself?

• 2:49:02Tim Ferriss?

  It depends on the type of rejection. And rejection comes in all sorts of forms, right? It could be silence. It could be light, like polite decline, or it could be something stronger. This relates back to my pausing around a lot of next steps for myself where I'm like, if you're rushing, it's probably because you have a scarcity perspective on something. And if you are, as I always try to, and this comes back to the question you asked that I didn't really answer directly. If you're looking to find something that is rarely seen or recognized, or to meet an unmet need, you have some time. So I think those opportunities are everywhere. So my feeling is if I get rejected, and I'm sure there are examples, I can't think of

• 2:49:44Tim Ferriss?

  them offhand, but there are a lot of fish in the sea. The guest doesn't want to be on the podcast, or they're too busy, or whatever, fine. There are going to be 20 other people who will be as good, if not better, possibly. If there's an opportunity and the door closes because, who knows, there's an investment and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, for XYZ, different reasons, I want to make the deal happen, but they can't make it happen, or I get, rejected is a strong word, right? But for whatever reason, I can't be part of that deal. My assumption is there are plenty of deals. Like, there are plenty of fat pitches out there. And that is based on experience. And I would say, generally, I tilt pretty pessimistic, and that I have like a dim view of human nature, like very

• 2:50:28Tim Ferriss?

  Hobbesian. Like, I, I'm not this bright-eyed, bushy-tailed bunny that just hops around seeing gold everywhere and the best in people at all moments. That's not me. But obviously, just based on my lived experience, there are opportunities fucking everywhere. There's so many million-dollar and multimillion-dollar opportunities out there, like, they're everywhere. And for that reason, when I get turned down, that's within the entrepreneurial context. I'm just like, you know, that's fine. Maybe I got saved from myself on this one. And that's happened, tons of times. Like, I don't get into a deal, and then it's a disaster, unmitigated disaster. I'm like, wow, okay, glad life saved me from that. Bro, that sounds like you're optimistic. That's a little optimism.

• 2:51:11Tim Ferriss?

  Here's what I would say. It's, in this particular case, it is a very specific form of informed optimism. I'm not default optimistic. I look for hedging against worst-case scenarios and so on. I mean, I think you have some of that too, right? With cutting costs and looking at these things. But in this particular case, I've just seen so many examples of successes where you would never predict a success. Starbucks gets turned down by everyone. They're like, another coffee company? Too crowded? No way. There are so many examples. When I started my podcast, I was told it was too crowded. In 2014, very smart people, I'm not going to name, but they said, "You could do it,

• 2:51:52Tim Ferriss?

  but I feel like that ship has already sailed." 2014. And I think I also have learned to have a less extreme response to what we might consider rejection, because number one, if you're going to be a good resource allocator, if you are easily offended or get easily spun out, you're going to be exhausted a lot of the time. And I also frame so much in the form of experiments. They're not pass/fail. This is feedback. And so I do so many things, there's two-week experiments, one-month experiments, three-month experiments. That applies to my podcast, that applies to everything in the business world that I do, that applies to my style of investing, like, "All right, I'm going to experiment with blah, blah,

• 2:52:37Tim Ferriss?

  blah." And then I get my face ripped off, and I'm like, "Hmm, okay, good feedback. Maybe I'm not so good at X, Y, and Z. Maybe I should stick to my bread and butter. Okay, well, that was worth an experiment, and I capped my downside. So, I learned. Great. Good feedback." And for all of those reasons, I would say that I'm less reactive than I used to be. But the truth is, like you told the story of Jake, there are so many opportunities out there. And I'll just say, from meeting, let's just call it unmet needs, or finding niche opportunities that other people don't see, there are a couple of resources I'll mention, and I return to these things all the time. These are things that I reread, and I'm probably going to reread all of these again. These are just almost like mantras.

• 2:53:22Tim Ferriss?

  I'm trying to train myself to recognize and think of these things. One would be Blue Ocean Strategy, I mentioned it before. Excellent book. Excellent, excellent book. How can you be a category of one? Another one, I've mentioned a million times, and I mention a million times because I'll read it a million times, 1,000 True Fans by Kevin Kelly. And then, within the 22 Immutable Laws of Marketing, there's one chapter called "The Law of Category." And it gives old examples that so don't get the for the internet because it was written in like 97 or something. Get the old version. And I think I may have even excerpted it for either Tools of Titans or Tribe of Mentors. But it's called the law of category. And they talk about, for instance, the invention of light beer or being the first light beer of X, right?

• 2:54:06Tim Ferriss?

  And the first low cost airline. I mean, these are things that came out of nowhere. And how can you create a category of one where you're not trying to be the best? You have decided and positioned yourself to be the only, whatever that is. And I think of there are so many examples. And part of how I assess playing fields also is I'm like, how hard is it right now to create a category of one? And I look at, for instance, some of the early innings in podcasting and you had people who broke all the rules and became mega successes. Hardcore History, for instance, with Dan Carlin, my favorite podcast still to this day. His episodes, I think they come out or they historically like once every six to nine months, maybe six to 12 months, one episode. And they're four to five hours long.

• 2:54:50Tim Ferriss?

  They're effectively audiobooks on history. No one would have predicted or prescribed that as a successful format. Nobody, zero. And yet it developed this enormous call audience and has allowed him to do a million things. Now that would be a lot harder. Why? Because it's less human driven and more algorithm driven. So I'm like, huh, okay. Maybe it's time for me to choose an easier game. I don't like hard games. I mean, sometimes I like to push it if I'm doing some board game or maybe trying to ski like right within the bounds of my capabilities. But in terms of big life games, I'm not looking to suffer. I'm not looking to crawl on my knees on broken glass for a hundred miles to make some really complicated business model work.

• 2:55:31Tim Ferriss?

  I'm like, no, I want, until I find something that seems simple, until I find something where I'm like, hmm, maybe this doesn't need to be the hardest thing in the world. I keep looking. All of my best investments have been kind of obvious and low risk. All of my best investments. And when I've deviated from that, so the same criteria that I use for entrepreneurship, for content, the same criteria I should use in investing, at least early stage stuff.

• 2:56:01Tim Ferriss?

  All the same stuff. Are there other people who come to mind who either worked off of the blog post or that you've interacted with personally who read early versions of the book outside of Jake where you're like, you know, this is a good example of another person who's put it into practice?

• 2:56:16Noah Kagan?

  One thing I wanted to comment on, I got rejected yesterday. It was like a mutual friend of ours. He's like, yeah, come on the show. I mean, yesterday he's like, no, don't come on the show. I don't like you. He didn't like that I made a comment about him.

• 2:56:27Tim Ferriss?

  To his face.

• 2:56:28Noah Kagan?

  Yeah, well.

• 2:56:29Tim Ferriss?

  I did to his face.

• 2:56:30Noah Kagan?

  And then he, but he's been promising for two years. And so I think younger Noah, 20 year old Noah would have guilted him. Be like, well, the fuck dude, you like said you would do this thing. But what you said is actually something I work in therapy a lot, which is instead of emotion and react, pause and respond. And I tell myself that, no pause, which I love that you're saying. I'm like, we're going to the same therapist. Off, off mic, we'll talk about it.

• 2:56:51Tim Ferriss?

  Oh, my God, what a small world.

• 2:56:54Noah Kagan?

  But the pause and respond was like, okay. And you're not going to guilt anyone really into doing something that they're excited to do. And I said, hey, thank you for being honest with me. I appreciated that. And I'm sure that's not what he was expecting me to say to him. But I appreciated it. And I was like, yeah, that that must have been hard for him to send. Said, it sounds like there's a little miscommunication. We're probably going to have an experience in the future and we might work together in the future. Let's go for a walk. And he's like, sounds great. Let's do it after the holidays. And that's definitely a matured experience for me. And so the rejections keep happening. But how we, we can choose to respond to them and approach them can change.

• 2:57:28Tim Ferriss?

  There are with most things, there are always more opportunities. It's easier for me on the business side to see this, right? So for instance, you know, I got out of a very long, for me, relationship, you know, five plus year relationship about a year ago. So in just say the dating world, which is, has changed a lot in six years, and is very bizarre on a whole lot of levels, for the same reason that content creators and creation have become very different. I mean, a lot of the same factors are at play, gamification, volume, paradox of choice, I mean, all sorts of things. Sort of gamification of FOMO, right? I mean, there's a lot that goes into the similarities, but on the business side, just because I've spent so much time looking at that. And I've had so much feedback from people who have read the first book and I've seen so many hundreds of businesses. I'm like,

• 2:58:11Tim Ferriss?

  guys, there are opportunities everywhere.

• 2:58:15Noah Kagan?

  Yeah.

• 2:58:15Tim Ferriss?

  Everywhere.

• 2:58:16Noah Kagan?

  You also have to believe, you're, you're commenting on dating. I was struggling with dating in Austin. And then I struggled in LA, then I struggled in New York. I was trying all these places. You also have to understand that you have to believe it exists. Yeah. You really do have to believe. And I found that it was easier to believe it exists in Barcelona by, you know, one, optimistically, and then working on it and be like, holy shit, is, could there really be someone out there? And it's like, yes, there is. That is optimism. And it's something learned. One of my favorite books this year is Learned Optimism. Okay, this is Seligman? It might be. I don't know exactly. But the idea is that you can actually learn it and practice it. Did you even write Learned Optimism? Oh.

• 2:58:50Noah Kagan?

  I do a lot of homework. I do a lot of research. Oh, yeah, I love that book. And so it was believing that my friend said to me once, his name, one of my best buddies, JR, was like, there's going to be a woman you'll meet who's all of us combined in one. And I was like, that's bullshit. And it took me a few years in therapy and relationship coach and being alone to be like, maybe there could be. And being patient that that existed and then finding it, being, and then be like, wow, it really does exist. And it does still take work, but it's like, that was out there. Yeah. Same with business and all these things, like believing you can have these things. So who's another example? Yeah, there's a guy, Pat. Pat is someone I, you know, he is in customer support in Poland, in Poland. All right. Yeah, he does a customer support job. Well, he makes like 25,000 a year, give or take. I know it's maybe that high, especially in Poland. And he's dreamed of being an entrepreneur. And he loves YouTube.

• 2:59:35Noah Kagan?

  Hmm. Loves YouTube, loves it. And so it was like, I'm studying YouTube obsessively. Maybe I can help local people with their YouTube channels. And so he, and it's not necessarily the pre-sale method, but close to it, he was just started contacting people that he knew within YouTube and said, let me run your channel for you. And now I think he's close to about $10,000 a month in Poland, which is obviously he's a billionaire. But the idea there, just taking a step back, what are the elements people can learn from? Where are you spending your free time? And he's obsessed with YouTube. He's just like, I love the channels. I love the thumbnails. I love the title. I love the content. How do I make that my career, not being in a customer support role? And then if I understand it, maybe even go work for free. It sounds like you've have experiences around that where like, let me do a great comment. That's a free work, frankly. A great comment's free work that gets attention.

• 3:00:18Noah Kagan?

  So as he reached out to people and started helping people, now he's actually got retainers on clients where he's running their YouTube channels. And so I don't know if he's quit his job doing that. I'm not sure exactly. But that was another example of him feeling good about starting, feeling good about asking, asking people. And now he's got a $10,000 a month business helping people with their YouTube channels. I want to triple underscore the free work piece.

• 3:00:40Tim Ferriss?

  Because there's a lot of righteous indignation online about this. Crops up a lot with like spec work on behalf of artists and things like that. Where it's like, ah, like, I'll never work for free. Like, people are being exploited, blah, blah, blah. And there are cases where that's true. Everything I have done has been built on free work. If I look at all of my biggest wins, I can't think of a single exception in the sense that first job out of college, why did I get that? Because a guest speaker who was the CEO, a young guy, came in, talked to our class. I wrote my entire term paper on that business because I wanted to do a free competitive analysis and show how valuable I could be to the business, right? I wrote my entire term paper on that. Free work, right?

• 3:01:22Tim Ferriss?

  If I look at Four Hour Work Week, how'd that come about? Guest lectures twice a year, tons of prep, took it super seriously, got feedback, everything to iterate, iterate, iterate, never got paid a dollar, right? I spent my own money on travel, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, all free. If I look at my investments in the startup world, I, in the beginning, would do anything I could to like co-invest with someone to get a tiny amount of money into the company. And, I mean, just a few thousand dollars. And then I would proceed to do like a hundred thousand dollars of work in terms of being like the most valuable, low-cost person on their entire cap table. I wanted them to be like, wow, okay, this guy owns nothing of the company and he's materially

• 3:02:07Tim Ferriss?

  impacted the value of this company, including the value of my own shares as a founder. And then what happens is I get those people who are like, Tim's fucking awesome. Yeah. And they are willing to do what? They're willing to say that to other founders. And then it builds and it builds and it builds. And people have gotten, I mean, this is not going to work right now, folks. So be aware, I'm in the process of streamlining everything. But as one example, like Charlie Hohn, who worked with me for years, he did that by sending me basically the equivalent of like the term paper that I did for my first job, right? He would hear me, or rather not hear me, because the podcast didn't exist, but he read my blog posts and he got a pretty good idea of the things that would be helpful

• 3:02:52Tim Ferriss?

  to me and he just did them. He just went out and put in like tens of hours, maybe more into these various projects. And he'd be like, just wanted to send this to you. I thought it'd be helpful. And that's it. And eventually after two or three of those, I'm like, okay, this is actually very helpful. This guy's very proactive, very detail oriented. Let's have a conversation. So there's just to say, sometimes the best bargain that you have is doing something for free.

• 3:03:17Noah Kagan?

  Especially if they have time. Everyone has the time. I mean, I can give a few other examples to kind of just keep encouraging that. I got my job at Mint because I spent a week for free putting together a marketing plan.

• 3:03:28Tim Ferriss?

  There you go.

• 3:03:28Noah Kagan?

  Cause he said no to me and I said, let me just at least present you a plan. So I spent more or less at least 40 hours, if not more, working on a plan, brought it to him and said, if you like this plan, I'll execute it. You can pay me this amount for three months. And if I do well and you like what the output is, then you can give me equity in a hundred thousand dollars, which I got three months later.

• 3:03:43Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 3:03:44Noah Kagan?

  But that was because I spent a whole week for free working on it. I mean, same thing with a lot of the best people I've hired within the company today, Jay Yang, he's 17 years old. He still has to get a permission slip to work with us. He lives at home with his parents. Shout out Jay. I love this guy. But he put together, I think a 30 point Google slide presentation showing me everything that sucks with my social media and my email. Now he's making good money working, living at his parents' house.

• 3:04:07Tim Ferriss?

  So this guy's going to be a beast.

• 3:04:09Noah Kagan?

  He's phenomenal. Right? Same thing with Jeremy, who's a producer of our channel. He worked on my Instagram thing for free two weeks. Dylan, who's our new producer, put together a website. It's like, I want to work with Noah Kagan.com. I almost always ask that question. How much hours did you put into this free work? And they're like, a lot. It's almost always a lot. And that's a little risk, right? But at the same time, one, you have something cool you can show. Two, you learn and three, the opportunity for the ask is pretty high. And the downside is you spend a little bit of time learning. So I think that's a great call out.

• 3:04:34Tim Ferriss?

  Oh, it goes on and on too. Now that you're talking about it, I mean, certainly the podcast had no business model for ages. I mean, I don't think I had any sponsors until, I'd have to go back and look, but episode 30, 40, 50, I can't remember. And rewinding the clock though, you mentioned something in passing that most folks are not going to recognize. And that was opening a kimono, OTK. So this event that I put together. And.

• 3:05:02Tim Ferriss?

  When I did this event, I was curious. I always try to go, and I'm not saying this is the right move. I just like the mathematics and the lack of crowding in high end. I always like to go high end if I can. It provides a margin of safety that I think is, there are many reasons for it, but it provides a margin of safety that's very appealing from an economic perspective, right? The better your profit margins, the more room you have for making mistakes. And then I worked backwards. So in this case, what I did was I was like, okay, can't remember exactly what I started, but I was like, well, like, could I make whatever the number of five million bucks or whatever it was from one event? I can't remember. I'm making that number up. The math isn't gonna actually compute. But I worked backwards. I was like, okay, if I'm gonna do that, I'd gone to some high end events that I'd paid for. And I was like, well, looks like I'm

• 3:05:47Tim Ferriss?

  gonna have to charge a lot. So it's gonna have to be, let's just say, minimum 10 grand. And then the sooner people purchase, the less expensive it is. It's going to escalate. So it's gonna go from 10, and then like the next week, it's 12.5, and then the next week, it's 15,000. And it was effectively, as one would expect with the name, sharing everything that I'd done with my first few books. At this point, I guess, was my first two books. And it was, it seems very quaint at the time because of how constrained it was. Now, it would be like a million and one different tools, or at least that would be expected. But content marketing at the time, which was, it's more like a biathlon instead of like a quadruple decathlon, which it is now. There's so many

• 3:06:30Tim Ferriss?

  different options. And I put together a blog post, which is the equivalent of like a sales page, or an email, a million different forms this could take. And then there was an application process, which was legitimate. That wasn't bullshit. I wanted to make sure the composition was impeccable. I wanted the room to be not just diverse from an experiential perspective. I wanted a lot of people from different industries, different strengths, different weaknesses, different networks. I also wanted People who were fucking cool and low maintenance. I just did not want assholes. And one of the ways I vetted for that, I didn't want anyone going into debt to go to this event. I didn't want anyone jeopardizing their finances. I didn't want anyone taking out a second mortgage.

• 3:07:10Tim Ferriss?

  I didn't want anyone, I didn't want to be responsible for anyone else's bad financial decisions if they were betting the farm on this. So I asked people to provide in their Google form application, I was like, would you be willing to provide proof that you have, say, at least a hundred thousand dollars in savings? If you're gonna spend 15 grand on an event. And one guy replied and he was like, I don't think you need to be my financial nanny, but if you want to come onto the tarmac and look at my private jet too, you're welcome to do that. And I was like, thank you for disqualifying yourself.

• 3:07:39Tim Ferriss?

  Don't need that guy at the event. No, thank you. And this is going somewhere. So I pre-sold the event with a blog post and a Google form. That was it. Might have been woof at the time. And then, then I was able to decide, by the way, at that point, do I really want to do this? I can still back out. I haven't taken any money. People have committed, like they're in. So I thought about it and then I was like, all right, now how do I work backwards from this cost? And ensure, this was gonna be, I think, a three day event, if I remember correctly. Like, how can I ensure that I have the peace of mind of knowing I've delivered that value in the first few hours of the first day? And I was like, okay, how would I do that, right? This is a question. I didn't have an answer at the time. It's like, well, I'll do something I've never done.

• 3:08:23Tim Ferriss?

  I'm gonna share my actual book proposals and marketing proposals and I'll redact a few things. But like, otherwise, like, as soon as we get there, that's one of the first things I'll do. I'll be like, here you go, keys to the castle, boom. Like, you just made your money back. This is worth what you paid. The second thing I did, this is not relevant to the, well, it's gonna get to the point. So I was talking about buying, sometimes you have to buy your first customers or your first like proof of concept. Like, if you want marquee clients, sometimes you have to like take a loss on that in time or money to make it happen. I really firmly believe that for a lot of things. Just like Reddit wanted to prove its ad system worked, they want a case study. So what do they do? They give you free advertising. Brilliant. That's a good trade. So in a way, they bought their first case study. I'll share one more thing, just because people who run events might find this helpful, or even just like small groups, masterminds.

• 3:09:08Tim Ferriss?

  There were bios for every person at the event and people had a bound book, basically, with everyone's short bios. And we took, I wanna say, probably two hours, or roughly a hundred people. And Everybody in the room stood up and they got to do a brag, a give, and then an ask. Cool, I like that. So they get up, because people, especially at higher end events are like, "Well, you know, I run a tech thing." Like, "Oh, I have an app." And it's like, "Oh, that guy's like the founder of Instagram." Come on, like, give us a little bit more color. And that's not a real example. None of the founders of Instagram were there. But sometimes you, you end up in these scenarios where people, for a lot of good reasons, or not for bad reasons, are being excessively humble.

• 3:09:51Tim Ferriss?

  And then you really just don't have an idea of what the hell people are doing. And so I was like, get up and like, give a real brag. Hell, yeah. Like, detailed brag. Don't make it 20 minutes, right? This is give like, one to two minutes, like, real brag. Then a give, something you're really good at, or something you have access to, where you feel you're world-class, like, where can you help people? Give a give. There's one give. And then an ask, like, something you really need help with, or want help with. Could be anything. And everyone who's listening, for every person, if they have a give you need, take a note. If they have an ask that you can help with, write it down. And that alone, I think, made the event hugely successful.

• 3:10:33Tim Ferriss?

  To this day, I'd have to go back and check, but, I mean, literally, this was, who knows? I don't know, 2012 or something? For at least five years, maybe still to this day, there was a Facebook group for those attendees that was active every week. And people still talk about it. Now, coming back to the original point, I'm talking so much in this, but it's more like a conversation than a podcast at this point. Isn't that a podcast? I guess, it's a podcast. I spent so much fucking money on that event to over-deliver, right? Like, rented a castle, had like flamenco dancers, fucking classical musicians. And plus, by the way, if you do an event in Napa, you're dealing with basically the cartel. Not like mafia cartel, but coincidentally, everybody's gonna charge $8 for a cup of coffee, right? You're not gonna be able to negotiate anything, is my point.

• 3:11:18Tim Ferriss?

  So this event ended up being so incredibly expensive, basically made nothing. But, was a huge home run for people. I felt really good about it. I learned a ton. Was an incredible investment of time, right? So one could argue that was, that was a waste of time. But I developed relationships with a hundred people who I handpicked. I had speakers at the event and a lot of questions that informed the whole thing. And if I ever wanted to do another event, I would guess I would have at least 90% of those people who would immediately book a second, like OTK two, done, no problem. So if I ever fell in hard times, quit the podcast business, I'm like, you know what? I'm just going to do like one event a year. I know that that will work because I can pull different levers.

• 3:12:02Noah Kagan?

  I've talked to people who went to that event and they're like, that was the best event I ever went to. And I was a little jealous of them and go, I don't know if I saw the blog post, but a few comments, it's like, it's really interesting. You're like, you didn't build a website, you sent out an email, which everyone could do that right now, if you want to start a business, you can pre-sell. You can have a forum. I like that idea of like, how do you survey people? And then you could filter, who do you want to sell to? And see if they're raising their hand to be customers and you could sell them something. I love that. Something you said literally years ago, it was in Denver, remember the, what was the conference we were both at somewhere in Denver's 303 conference?

• 3:12:33Tim Ferriss?

  I can't remember.

• 3:12:33Noah Kagan?

  It was the, those two brothers, born team bros.

• 3:12:37Tim Ferriss?

  Okay. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 3:12:38Noah Kagan?

  You said on conference, I never forgot about this because you said, I either do the most expensive or free.

• 3:12:44Tim Ferriss?

  Yep.

• 3:12:44Noah Kagan?

  And I love that because I'm always about the best price. I'm the low end. That's my thing. I love it. I'm like, give me the best deal. And so AppSumo is about great deals. And then you as well, like you want to do podcast sponsorship, it's going to be 50, 60, whatever, 40, it's going to be the most expensive and you're going to get very high quality delivered.

• 3:13:01Tim Ferriss?

  And then had you worked backwards from that, you don't have to figure it out in advance, right? I decided like, okay, part of the marketing positioning is how premium this podcast is. It is incredibly expensive. I mean, we're going to get into the weeds here, but talking about like the 10%, what's the extra 10% that you can do? Like in the case of me pitching the manufacturer, whatever. So one thing that I've done with a lot of my sponsors, not everybody, because not everybody needs this, but what are the levers in a podcast? Well, let's just say the basic economic model for most podcasts, not all, is sponsorship. People are buying ads. Why are they buying ads? Because they want to sell products. What are some of the metrics that matter to someone trying to sell products? Let's assume for simplicity's sake that we're talking about direct response. Let's say we're talking about AppSumo.

• 3:13:46Tim Ferriss?

  You're going to be tracking the numbers that you just mentioned. Traffic, conversion, average order size. Now, let's say AppSumo came to Tim Ferriss Show and decided, we want to sponsor. Hypothetically, let's say, number one, I have to try the product. So I test every single product within reason. There's some like enterprise stuff in which case I'll do a bunch of polling and determine how my audience feels, like 1 to 10, no 7 allowed, how strongly would you recommend this to a friend? Do it off hours so the people who work at the company don't see it and can't spam it. Anyway, there are ways to do it if you don't test, but I generally test stuff. Let's say I test AppSumo, I'm like, great fucking product. What is the additional 10%? The additional 10% is I will look at the website and I'll say, how well does this convert?

• 3:14:29Tim Ferriss?

  Because what is a nightmare scenario for me? Because one could say efficient, one could say lazy, they're similar. If someone has a great product and I put time into a great read and I put it in front of my audience and then their website doesn't convert and they blame it on me, that's way too much brain damage, way too much wasted effort. Now I have churn, right? They're like, well, your podcast didn't work and they leave and then I have to find another podcast sponsor. So I might send my team to that sponsor, record a loom and say, would love to have you as a sponsor, but we'd like you to make these following changes to the website, at least to a unique landing page to improve conversion. We'd like you to improve in the following seven ways, in the same way that that 17

• 3:15:14Tim Ferriss?

  year old sent you a video which was like, here's how these things suck. I wouldn't word it that way, but I'd say, we want you to convert as strongly as possible. We know our audience really well. This is how they're going to read your website. Here's what the flow looks like. These are two places where they're probably going to abandon the cart. Fix, fix, fix. Doesn't take that long because we've done it a million times. And then guess what? Then I have a sponsor who lasts like a year, two years, three years, and they spend millions of dollars instead of spending a lot on the upfront and then churning. It sounds like a lot, but it's actually not that much effort if you have the right team. So let's hop back into the weeds of entrepreneurship. That sounds bad. Onto the front lines. Validation. What are some other means of validating your idea?

• 3:15:57Tim Ferriss?

  To try to ensure that you're not diluting yourself anymore than is helpful.

• 3:16:01Noah Kagan?

  I've done it the other way where I've spent six months, I built a site, bet arcade.com, spent six months, $100,000 on engineers.

• 3:16:07Tim Ferriss?

  Oof.

• 3:16:08Noah Kagan?

  And then I spent $10,000 flying to Vegas, talking to a lawyer, it was a sports betting site. First off, I don't, I don't gamble. Not a great business for me to even start. Launched it, no one came. I could have easily found that on a weekend instead of spending six. And then this is the thing, I'm like trying to tell people I've done it the other way. Maybe you need to go through the other way to find that truth for yourself, but there's, there's another door. So two other ways that you can validate business ideas that I really like. I would say the one that you really made famous, ads, landing page.

• 3:16:31Tim Ferriss?

  Yep.

• 3:16:32Noah Kagan?

  The only thing that, one, I don't like spending money if I don't have to. Ads cost money and then you have to figure out the ad and landing page. But it is a way like kettle and fire, you know, Justin's company.

• 3:16:40Tim Ferriss?

  Sure.

• 3:16:40Noah Kagan?

  That's how it got started.

• 3:16:42Tim Ferriss?

  Ah, no kidding.

• 3:16:42Noah Kagan?

  He did bone broth ads. He found that those super cheap term had a landing page people could buy. And he's like, this is working and now it's a hundred million dollar business.

• 3:16:48Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 3:16:48Noah Kagan?

  So he followed your method.

• 3:16:50Tim Ferriss?

  Yep.

• 3:16:50Noah Kagan?

  The other method I would say is marketplaces. So where are people already spending money that they're raising their hand? So Etsy, Craigslist, Facebook, Amazon, and how can you put even a fake or real product ideally? And see if anyone's going to buy it. So let's say you want to do like a digital equipment, like microphones, cameras, whatever, lighting business, it's a rental. You can go put that online right now on Craigslist in your local area or whatever site is local and see, does anyone actually message you about it? And if they do, cool. Go get the product or figure out now you have a business, or if they don't, okay, try something else out. So those are the other two ways outside of, I would say, the pre-selling validation method to seeing if you have actual customers who want what you're doing.

• 3:17:29Tim Ferriss?

  And the constraint of spending as little as possible will generally, this is very broad strokes, but in my experience and certainly in the experience of a lot of people who are building businesses, not mimicking the 1% of the 1% of the 1%, right? Like the, I can't get fit until I'm Tom Brady, which is generally not a great approach. But the people who are building real businesses, businesses that produce a lot of cash, very often test incredibly inexpensively. If you look at the origins of CrossFit, that's the case, right? I remember the very early, super early days of CrossFit. So it's not a, let's put $30 million in and see what happens. It was prototype, iterate, prototype, iterate, small group, second location,

• 3:18:13Tim Ferriss?

  considering business models, et cetera. I mean, this is true in so many, so many, so many different places. Any other means of validation that you want to mention or an example of someone who used any one of those that comes to mind? You already mentioned Kettle and Fire, but-

• 3:18:26Noah Kagan?

  Yeah. I mean, another one you could think of that's kind of silly is Facebook. I mean, Zuck copied, he didn't even invent it, this website. And that wasn't his first business. He actually created a face thing that got banned by Harvard, said to start again, then he created Wirehog. No one knows these ones, but-

• 3:18:40Tim Ferriss?

  I don't know anything about that.

• 3:18:41Noah Kagan?

  Yeah. Wirehog was a Napster competitor.

• 3:18:43Tim Ferriss?

  Okay.

• 3:18:43Noah Kagan?

  That didn't really do much. But again, one thing in the beginning of the book is how do you get going? And he at least got going. And his third idea, which was Facebook or thefacebook.com, I believe he built it in a weekend, if not three days, it might give or take. And just by him, he sent an email, built it really quick, sent the email, and then it went viral instantly. It wasn't even his idea. He copied the Winklevosses.

• 3:19:00Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 3:19:01Noah Kagan?

  And there's just a lot of these ideas, you're like, you start realizing it. Most of the biggest businesses didn't start big. Like, okay, Google, two dudes at Stanford for a research project? Huh, that's interesting. Zuck in a college dorm, Bill Gates in Albuquerque, shout out Albuquerque, you know, working for someone else, creating software. And it was by doing these things where you had validation very quickly and had success that people wanted it, led them then to continue it for extended periods of time. And that's possible. I think, here's what happens though, Tim.

• 3:19:27Tim Ferriss?

  Tim.

• 3:19:27Noah Kagan?

  If I may. People, this is the fucking problem, man. Everyone's like, my business is different. It's the unique one. I'm like, you're the unique one? Really? It's you? Okay. Do it. Just go try it your way. And then let's try maybe an alternative way after six months with no results.

• 3:19:42Tim Ferriss?

  So corollary, do the easy thing first. If you want to, okay, you really want it, you really want to do the hard way. Okay, fine. Like- What you really want to do is like build the flashy website and like do the thing and hire a bunch of influencers and have girls in bikinis prancing around with your energy drink, whatever. Okay, fine. Maybe you could start though with a blog post. Maybe you could start with an email. Maybe you could start with something that's very cheap, very fast, fast, fast, fast constraints. Are you hiding behind something big? Are you talking about the sexy photo shoot and the Super Bowl ad that you're never fucking going to do? Not because you couldn't do it, but because you're hiding behind the big thing and you're not

• 3:20:23Tim Ferriss?

  trying the small thing. And what is the easy thing that you can do first? Do that. And this comes up all the time in my business when I'm talking with employees, for instance, who have already embraced this by this point, but I'm like, we can do the hard thing. We can do the expensive thing. I'm not averse to it. But what is something fast or something cheap that we can do first? Because if it works, then that is a game changer. And then we have these backup plans. I'll give you another example. How can you keep your life incredibly simple? Well, in the case of podcasting, in the beginning, I realized if I end up with tons of accounts payable, accounts receivable, invoices, net payment terms, et cetera, that

• 3:21:08Tim Ferriss?

  will insert a lot of complexity into my life. So from the very beginning, I did something that a lot of folks said would never work, which was you prepay for all your ads. There's no, you book and then you run it and then you pay us 30 days later and then that drags out because it's the holidays or maybe you don't reply to email and then we're chasing you. There's none of that. You pay upfront. That's it. And that is an example of let's try the easy thing first or the simple thing, the beneficial thing. If people say no, we can always go to that 30 because everyone does that. But let's try the unorthodox thing first in the sake of simplicity. And every once in a while it works, right? And that

• 3:21:52Tim Ferriss?

  ended up being a key determinant, I think, of my ability to build and scale and most importantly, sustain this for 10 years.

• 3:22:02Noah Kagan?

  My dad would always joke, it's better to be chased for the money than you chase them.

• 3:22:09Tim Ferriss?

  Better to be on that end of things.

• 3:22:10Noah Kagan?

  That's definitely how the AppSumo model has worked out. The idea with AppSumo, just maybe a few more examples to get people like, oh shit, I can really get going. You know, we say now, not how, and that's definitely from the book. And so examples of this is the teams like, we definitely need the engineers to build this first. Definitely. I'm like, really? All right, let me give you two examples. So one of them was we wanted, as part of our VIP memberships, we wanted to give out credits. So kind of like your event, how do we make spending a hundred dollars for a membership a no brainer? Well, we give you a hundred dollars. So they're like, well, we need to build it. Right? We did the model, fine, but let's go build it. I'm like, no, no, no. What's the fastest way you can find out today? Let's email people who are not customers or people who canceled. Give them free credit, tell them to buy your membership. And if they buy their membership, they get free credit. They did it, it was a 17% conversion rate.

• 3:22:54Noah Kagan?

  Now we're building that kind of stuff into the business. Great, you did it. And if it didn't work, you can ask those people, why not? Or you can try something else. Instead of us spending a week, two weeks, four weeks, a month, two months now, product management and designing it, all these other things. There's another example recently where we want to offer a new feature for this VIP membership, the same thing. They're like, well, we need the engineers to build SSO, single sign on, so that you can make it easy to log in. Again, have you asked a customer? Just go ask customers to pay us for it. If they want this feature, see if they'll prepay for it. And if they do, great, we'll build it. If not, we're not going to build it. And that is something that you can keep doing, whether you're an 80 million or 100 million or a $1 business.

• 3:23:29Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, totally. Yeah, a lot of the time, just now, in terms of now, not how, right? We think oftentimes, and there's a place for this, but you know, ready, aim, fire. Sometimes it's ready, fire, aim.

• 3:23:40Noah Kagan?

  Just fire. Fire, fire, fire, fire, fire, fire, fire.

• 3:23:45Tim Ferriss?

  All right, so we're going to take a hard left turn here because you, you mentioned before we started, you mentioned Hanukkah gifts. And a question I often ask is best purchases for under $50, under $100. What has made some impact? Because the goal is to give people listening some things that might be helpful or interesting that are going to break the bank, right? What you got?

• 3:24:08Noah Kagan?

  All right, so Hanukkah, or you know, the Jewish Santa, AKA Noah Kagan's here. I brought you Hanukkah, holiday, Yalta, Kwanzaa, all the gifts, depending on whatever people want. And so these are my favorite things. I think almost every single thing here is under 40 bucks.

• 3:24:22Tim Ferriss?

  Great.

• 3:24:22Noah Kagan?

  That I brought for you. And I don't, and by the way, you totally give it back. You know, people gift you and you're like, fuck, I really don't want this. Feel free to be like yay or nay on it, too.

• 3:24:29Tim Ferriss?

  Okay. Didn't expect a bag of goodies, okay?

• 3:24:32Noah Kagan?

  This is my, I wasn't able to get the Amazon Basics one because it's sold out. But this is a, I think, $14, $15 tiny travel backpack. And so I always leave one in my main suitcase. And every time you travel, you're like, oh shit, I want to do a day trip, but I don't want to carry my computer backpack and I don't have anything else. So I always leave a similar one to this in my bag.

• 3:24:53Tim Ferriss?

  Literally, I was going to be buying one of these in the next few weeks. So thank you.

• 3:24:57Noah Kagan?

  That's a yay.

• 3:24:58Tim Ferriss?

  This is a yay. This is 100% a yay. Because as you said, you think you already have a backpack, but that thing is full of your laptop and all your shit and it's heavy. And you sometimes just want a day pack. And that's what this is. So this is a yay. Thank you.

• 3:25:11Noah Kagan?

  Awesome. You like board games? This has been the go-to board game, Schotten Totten.

• 3:25:16Tim Ferriss?

  Schotten Totten.

• 3:25:17Noah Kagan?

  It's $11.99.

• 3:25:19Tim Ferriss?

  It must be, oh, look at this. Okay.

• 3:25:21Noah Kagan?

  So.

• 3:25:21Tim Ferriss?

  I've never, I've never played it.

• 3:25:22Noah Kagan?

  It's a more basic card. It's kind of like poker, but with cards. So you get all these different players and you just have.

• 3:25:27Tim Ferriss?

  License to kilt. Exclamation mark. That's the tagline. I like it.

• 3:25:31Noah Kagan?

  Cause I know you had, you had the Taco Cat game. I bought that because you're a Five Bullet Friday. Love that.

• 3:25:34Tim Ferriss?

  It's a fun game.

• 3:25:35Noah Kagan?

  Similar game, basically you lay out cards. It's a two-player game. And then you just play against for different, each of the cards. There's about 10. And you play three cards. I play three cards. And whoever has the better three set gets that card and whoever gets the most cards wins the game. That was a little fast.

• 3:25:48Tim Ferriss?

  Amazing.

• 3:25:48Noah Kagan?

  Super awesome game. Shout out Eric Southwell. He's the one who brought that board game to me.

• 3:25:51Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, thank you. And also I want to highlight something here just because I recognize something. So Schotten Totten, I was like, this must be German. So of course it is. And the Germans are very good at, at designing board games. And more precisely, Reiner Knizia, I believe that's how you'd say his name, who designed this.

• 3:26:06Noah Kagan?

  Yeah.

• 3:26:06Tim Ferriss?

  Is one of the most prolific game designers in history. He's designed hundreds of games and he's won all of the awards. And he has this incredible set of processes and sort of creative methods by which he's.

• 3:26:22Tim Ferriss?

  One of the most successful game designers of all time. So that's also cool to see his.

• 3:26:27Noah Kagan?

  I didn't realize that. Sean Tont, one of my favorites.

• 3:26:29Tim Ferriss?

  Thank you.

• 3:26:29Noah Kagan?

  You have Element. You've tried Element, right?

• 3:26:31Tim Ferriss?

  Oh, yeah. Sponsor of the podcast, too.

• 3:26:33Noah Kagan?

  I was gonna bring, you already have a bunch of it, don't you?

• 3:26:35Tim Ferriss?

  Uh, well, let me, let me see what you got.

• 3:26:36Noah Kagan?

  Just like I got, I brought you the citrus salt.

• 3:26:38Tim Ferriss?

  Oh, I got a ton. Yeah, thank you. That is one of my favorite flavors, but yes.

• 3:26:41Noah Kagan?

  Element, I took it, I take it every day. They sponsor me, too. Do you invest in them?

• 3:26:44Tim Ferriss?

  No, no, no, I didn't. I didn't.

• 3:26:46Noah Kagan?

  All right. I couldn't get it in time, so I just printed it out. Dude, this is shout out Tynan.com, one of my best friends in the world.

• 3:26:52Tim Ferriss?

  What is it?

• 3:26:53Noah Kagan?

  This is, he, he was the one that taught me about this. It's basically travel clippers. I'm a huge nail clipper. And I, I'm very particular about my nail clipping. Like, all these fucking Walgreens, CVS, they're just shit. And I finally, I got this because on his recommendation, and it's a game changer. There, I wasn't gonna give you mine, but that's kind of, that's too weird.

• 3:27:11Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, it'd be a little gritty.

• 3:27:12Noah Kagan?

  A little weird. So this is going to your address.

• 3:27:14Tim Ferriss?

  Okay.

• 3:27:15Noah Kagan?

  These are $39.99. It's literally this big.

• 3:27:18Tim Ferriss?

  Okay, so it's like, it's, so it's like the size of your pinky finger.

• 3:27:20Noah Kagan?

  Size of your pinky finger.

• 3:27:21Tim Ferriss?

  Very, it's very low profile.

• 3:27:23Noah Kagan?

  Super low profile.

• 3:27:25Tim Ferriss?

  And for people who want to find this, how would they search?

• 3:27:27Noah Kagan?

  This is a, this is a Zwilling.

• 3:27:29Tim Ferriss?

  Zwilling, oh, like the Kitchen Knife Company.

• 3:27:32Noah Kagan?

  Exactly. And this is fire. Super tiny, but it opens up and the sharpness of it, which I'm very particular about, you can ask my girlfriend. She's like, you always cut your nails. I'm like, yeah, I hate long nails. I love this guy. So, big shout out for this, because I've always been looking for like the perfect one.

• 3:27:43Tim Ferriss?

  Wow.

• 3:27:44Noah Kagan?

  $39.99.

• 3:27:44Tim Ferriss?

  Zwilling. All right, we'll put this in the show notes for everybody, along with the other Hanukkah gifts.

• 3:27:49Noah Kagan?

  Hanukkah holiday. I think you may have read it, but I brought you my favorite memoir book of all time, Million Miles in a Thousand Years.

• 3:27:57Tim Ferriss?

  I am actually going to admit, I have never even heard of this book. So tell me more.

• 3:28:04Noah Kagan?

  This guy, Donald.

• 3:28:05Tim Ferriss?

  Okay, a quote from Anne Lamott, who owns, the author of one of my favorite books also.

• 3:28:09Noah Kagan?

  Oh, what book is that?

• 3:28:10Tim Ferriss?

  Bird by Bird, on creative process.

• 3:28:12Noah Kagan?

  Oh, by the way, you're Julia Cameron, Artist's Way.

• 3:28:15Tim Ferriss?

  Oh, thanks.

• 3:28:16Noah Kagan?

  That book is so.

• 3:28:17Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, it's a good one. It's a good one. Yeah. So Ann Lamott has an amazing quote on the cover of this. So Donald Miller.

• 3:28:23Noah Kagan?

  Donald Miller, and this is-

• 3:28:23Tim Ferriss?

  How I Learned to Live a Better Story is the subtitle. That's cool already. A Million Miles in a Thousand Years.

• 3:28:30Noah Kagan?

  This is the book I gift the most.

• 3:28:32Tim Ferriss?

  Okay.

• 3:28:32Noah Kagan?

  And it inspired me to bike across America. But the bigger concept for everyone out there is that we all want to live a life without regret. We all want to live, not even with regret, I don't even worry about that. We all want to live an interesting life. And so how do you do it? And so Donald doesn't, and he's a Christian author. He talks about, I'm Jewish, like, and I love it still. It's still my most favorite book and he's definitely, I love him. What he teaches you though, is it's not necessarily like, here's necessarily the tactic, but how do you approach life to be more interesting? So how are you around more interesting people?

• 3:29:00Tim Ferriss?

  Hmm.

• 3:29:01Noah Kagan?

  How do you do more interesting things? Like, he didn't like his life.

• 3:29:03Tim Ferriss?

  Hmm.

• 3:29:04Noah Kagan?

  And he was like, I'm just gonna bike across America. And so he joined a group and then biked across America and he, by doing interesting things, he led an interesting life. And I, I think it's similar to the Four Hour Work Week and Million Dollar Weekend where you read it and you're like, I'm gonna go do something. And I think this really is that about how to have a fulfilling and interesting life.

• 3:29:19Tim Ferriss?

  Amazing. I'll give a little teaser then also. So here's the top of the back of the book. After writing a successful memoir, Donald Miller's life stalled. During what should have been the height of his success, he found himself unwilling to get out of bed, avoiding responsibility, even questioning the meaning of life. But when two movie producers proposed turning his memoir into a movie, he found himself launched into a new story filled with risk, possibility, beauty, and meaning. And then I'll just give the first portion of the first sentence that then leads after that, which is, "A Million Miles in a Thousand Years Chronicles Miller's rare opportunity to edit his life into a great story. Goes from sleeping all day to riding his bike across America." Amazing. All right.

• 3:29:56Noah Kagan?

  Yeah, man. And we all can live an interesting life. It's not-

• 3:29:58Tim Ferriss?

  Hit, hit, hit. So far, so good, man.

• 3:30:00Noah Kagan?

  Oh, yeah, man. And this is- I brought you back an old school one. This is an old school and our team was, was looking up things. This is what you put on your blog in 2011.

• 3:30:09Tim Ferriss?

  Oh, my God.

• 3:30:10Noah Kagan?

  One of your favorite toys.

• 3:30:11Tim Ferriss?

  I know what this is. This is hilarious. Okay. This is like a monkey slingshot and it screams.

• 3:30:19Tim Ferriss?

  When you shoot it across the room. Wow. I haven't seen one of these in a long time.

• 3:30:23Noah Kagan?

  This is a early recommendation that you put on your site.

• 3:30:27Tim Ferriss?

  This must have been from the Pleiocene era on my blog way back in the day.

• 3:30:31Noah Kagan?

  I did a little research and so I know you like that. I got one for my house. It is fucking annoying.

• 3:30:36Tim Ferriss?

  Oh, it'll drive you nuts.

• 3:30:37Noah Kagan?

  My girlfriend's like.

• 3:30:38Tim Ferriss?

  It'll drive you completely insane.

• 3:30:40Noah Kagan?

  But it's a, it's a fun toy. I got it for other people for the holidays. And I think it's like, I'm like giving it to them and getting the hell out of their house because the screaming's loud.

• 3:30:47Tim Ferriss?

  Flying monkey. Yeah, no, it is. It is not, it is not low volume. Thank you.

• 3:30:51Noah Kagan?

  Yeah, man. Happy holidays.

• 3:30:53Tim Ferriss?

  I appreciate it. And I can put all of that into the backpack that you gave me also.

• 3:30:56Noah Kagan?

  Exactly. The last one. I love my Pilot G2.38. I need to get sponsored by these guys. I know you, you have pens and I've seen you have pens all around, but this is just like everywhere I travel, I always have, have with me here. I bring them to Spain, have it all around the house, boxes of them.

• 3:31:10Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, this is one of my favorite pens and I needed one and I use blue. I almost always use blue instead of black because I copy it a lot. And if you're printing stuff out in black, blue just makes it easier. So nailed it. Thank you.

• 3:31:25Noah Kagan?

  Oh yeah, man. Pilot G2.38.

• 3:31:27Tim Ferriss?

  All right. Where to go from here? I mean, what have we missed? We've talked, we've gone from the philosophical to hire my mom.com to nail clippers, to bicycling across the United States. Anything else that you'd like to mention? Well, actually, let me ask you a question that relates to the things I'm considering, just to ask you for help. So YouTube, how do you think about YouTube? And do you think I should do more video? Because I have conflicting feelings about it, as you know. And then there's always that voice, not always, but there's that voice, maybe 10% of the time, which is just like, are you just being weak? Are you just afraid to compete? Right?

• 3:32:08Tim Ferriss?

  Which comes up with various things. Like maybe you're intimidated by the production quality, the ability that you see here. So you're just not willing to play the game because you don't like losing. That's less of the time. That's like 10, 20% of the time. Thoughts on YouTube? And specifically thoughts on if you think I could do YouTube in a way that would be fun and energizing in and of itself. So in other words, something that I would find intrinsically rewarding, even if it doesn't pop, right?

• 3:32:35Noah Kagan?

  I'm curious the voice in your head.

• 3:32:37Tim Ferriss?

  Oh, that's, that's

• 3:32:38Noah Kagan?

  With this YouTube?

• 3:32:39Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, with the 10 or 20%. Well, it's not all the time. I was just talking to a friend of mine about this yesterday. I like competing. I've always been a good competitor, right? It drives me and I enjoy the stakes of competition in sports. I enjoy the stakes of competition in a million different ways. Like, it drives me to be better and it genuinely is something that I derive pleasure from. Like, I get a lot out of competition. So there are things that, for instance, you know, at some point I would love to compete in archery. And I think there are some interesting opportunities there. I'm a happier person when I compete in some capacities. So being very competitive, seeing the market get really saturated with podcasts and seeing some very good people come in

• 3:33:24Tim Ferriss?

  and how it's skewed pretty heavily into entertainment. So it has gone from, I think, what I find plays to my strengths, which is mostly kind of education, practical, tactical, et cetera, skewed pretty heavily towards entertain or bust. You can have some of the how to and prescription, but you must be entertaining to cut through the noise. And I can be funny occasionally, but it's not my, it's not something I do professionally. There are people who are far better.

• 3:33:54Noah Kagan?

  Yeah, pros.

• 3:33:55Tim Ferriss?

  Right? Pros, yeah, like Rogan. I mean, he's a pro, right? Like, this is, this is a superpower that he's honed. And there are many others, a lot of entertainers, comedians, actors, actresses, who are really good behind the mic and in front of the camera. So I think there is certainly part of me, because I like to compete, generally hate losing. And you have to be careful how you define losing because you could find yourself caught in sort of a Venus flytrap of FOMO and all sorts of issues, which I don't contend with that much, to be honest. That voice is one of, are you sure that you are opting out of this for good reasons? Or is it because you just don't want to compete?

• 3:34:35Noah Kagan?

  Great coaches don't, don't give answers, by the way. They just ask questions.

• 3:34:39Tim Ferriss?

  All right. Oh, you reminded me, you're not getting out of here.

• 3:34:41Noah Kagan?

  We'll talk a little about coaches. We'll do the 48 hour challenge. Maybe we can put front load a little bit of that. But there's the question around this YouTube thing. What would make the choice obvious?

• 3:34:49Tim Ferriss?

  If I'm being honest, I think the choice is obvious, which is I don't do it. I mean, I think that like

• 3:34:53Noah Kagan?

  I love that.

• 3:34:53Tim Ferriss?

  I mean, I think, I think it's pretty straightforward. Partially because I see no way to make YouTube pop without compromising my privacy more than I already have from a facial recognition perspective. And that is already a challenging aspect of my life from a privacy, security perspective. Like a lot of weird stuff happens. If anybody's curious, just read a blog post I wrote, which is titled, I think it's 11 Reasons Not To Become Famous. And that'll outline a lot of the issues, by the way, that people who are just starting out, maybe a year prior to that coming out, have by and large, I'm in a number of private WhatsApp groups with various folks and a lot of very, very successful creators. And they're like, oh yeah, check, check, check, like right down the list.

• 3:35:38Tim Ferriss?

  I've had to deal with all of those things. So it's not unique to me. And they're much bigger celebrities, of course, I'm not Taylor Swift or something. But I actually really like my privacy. So I think that if I had to make a snap judgment decision right now, it's like, yeah, I'm not going to use that as a primary tool. It's appealing though, because I recognize how effective it can be. If you do a great job, but there's also part of me that looks at it, I'm like, well, much like choosing a business, much like choosing anything, a sport to play. If you don't have an advantage, and that advantage often is that you really enjoy doing it on some level, you're not going to have, at the very least, the staying power to persist over time. You're not going to have the endurance.

• 3:36:22Tim Ferriss?

  So it's like, if, if you love golf, maybe you should consider doing something with golf. Instead of being like, well, I think Midwestern moms, even though I'm from New York City and I'm a male, I think Midwestern moms really need this when their kid is four years old. Like, maybe that shouldn't be your business, because if there's a Midwestern mom who has a four-year-old, who's got nothing but passion in her veins for that, she's going to beat you. Like, she's going to own you, especially over time. So that's another way that I think about it. But I also assume that there may be things hiding in plain sight that I'm missing.

• 3:36:55Noah Kagan?

  I got suggestions for you that I think will be low effort, high results. But before we get into that, what's your goal?

• 3:37:02Tim Ferriss?

  What's my goal?

• 3:37:03Noah Kagan?

  Yeah. What would you say your goal is around?

• 3:37:04Tim Ferriss?

  Well, I mean, I think the goals around it would be to experiment with one of the few means that I see of expanding the podcast. Like, I do a lot with this podcast in terms of pulling interesting levers in the world, right? Like, as a means of attempting, to the best of my ability, to really impact individual lives, but also on a macro level to really change conversations around, say psychedelics and psychedelic assisted therapies. Also discussing risks, but there are many different things I would like to introduce people to, and the larger my audience is, I should say qualified audience, right?

• 3:37:45Tim Ferriss?

  I'm not convinced that YouTube necessarily will contribute to the profile of my, say, audience as it stands today, TBD. I think it probably could if I could expand the reach of the podcast. And if I'm talking to most podcasters who have been around for a while, given a lot of the platform changes and given the black box nature of a lot of the analytics, once you hit a critical mass, it becomes very challenging to grow your podcast. There is nobody after two drinks, if they're being honest with me, who says anything otherwise. And there is a grace period in the beginning when you have that kind of meteoric up and to the right, but it's like, this is going to be an exaggeration. It's like, once you become, like, when you're becoming Google, sure, you can have that,

• 3:38:29Tim Ferriss?

  like, double, triple 10x every year growth, but when you get to a certain point, it becomes more challenging on a percentage basis to influence the size of the, you know, the mothership. So the goal, and I'm not convinced that YouTube is the only way, but is to extend the reach of the podcast. At this point, there are other metrics I could pull in, but let's use that for simplicity's sake.

• 3:38:49Noah Kagan?

  I think that's a great question is how do you stay hungry when you're full?

• 3:38:52Tim Ferriss?

  Or do you need to stay hungry?

• 3:38:54Noah Kagan?

  I think that's another way. That's a great point. It's like, what happens when you finally have the money or when you have the audience? And so how do we rethink what that vision and that purpose is? Right? I noticed that was a shift for myself where like, oh, if I finally get money, so I got, it's like, dude, you got it. There's no, you don't need to be angry about Mark and Facebook anymore. No, no, from myself, right? It was therapy and a lot of work to be able to get to the point where it's like, how do I want to spend that day? And it's like, my day can talk about money and startups and business with people like yourself and learn how you think about things, run apps soon or promote tools, like. Wow, I can do this every day for, until I never die.

• 3:39:28Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 3:39:29Noah Kagan?

  And so I think being clear on the goal of where it goes, like for me with, with my content, I just want to keep doing it for 10 years. So I'm on a 10 year, 10 year plan. And so that, that's a balance of, I like doing just business stuff. I don't do bouncy balls. I don't blow Ferraris. I'm not in prison. There's no squid games unless it's a business related one.

• 3:39:45Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 3:39:46Noah Kagan?

  And it's like, how do I do that with what I want and what the audience is going to be benefited by for a long period of time? And that's, I'd say for specifically with content, my, my interest.

• 3:39:55Tim Ferriss?

  Okay. So what might be sort of low effort, high reward experiments?

• 3:39:59Noah Kagan?

  So a few things. Number one, who says you have to be on the camera now when you're doing?

• 3:40:04Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah. Yeah. I was thinking that. I just don't know what the alternative looks like.

• 3:40:07Noah Kagan?

  Well, it's just, you're asking the question, but then your guest is the one getting featured. So there's actually a reduction of the amount of exposure as well as on your YouTube thumbnails. It doesn't even show you. It just was the guest.

• 3:40:15Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah. Yeah.

• 3:40:16Noah Kagan?

  And so there could be, there could be wide shots, but it really could be a show where it's more featuring the person you're talking to.

• 3:40:20Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, totally.

• 3:40:21Noah Kagan?

  So that is, that is one massive thing that in your channel, right? You can actually have great content, but it's not maybe you on camera. Same thing. How much, like I can tell, but how much are you putting into like producing your YouTube videos?

• 3:40:32Tim Ferriss?

  Uh, I honestly don't even know at this point. I want to be, the tools we use shape us, right? So I, depends on what we mean by production. I'm okay with high production value. What I have seen on YouTube in the last year and a half, two years especially, is a lot of fishing for clippable moments with like the most salacious clickbaity

• 3:40:56Tim Ferriss?

  stuff used as headlines and text overlays. And I do not want to shape myself into looking at my tent through the lens of like, when can I clip something into the Jerry Springer fight scene?

• 3:41:10Noah Kagan?

  Yeah.

• 3:41:10Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah. My baby mama, you know, like, I don't want to suddenly go fishing for that because that will start to affect the macro level, right? Like I know people who plan their podcasts now around.

• 3:41:19Noah Kagan?

  Like the clips.

• 3:41:20Tim Ferriss?

  The clips. And so the drive becomes the clips. Now I'm also, I think longer form YouTube, this is something where I'm unqualified to say, but I have had clips on different platforms that have had like a hundred million views. I mean, I've had a couple go nuts, which is a credit to my team. However, with those clips, which have clear attribution to this podcast, I have seen effectively. Zero percent conversion to increased downloads. So the value capture from the platforms is a very subtle thing, but the amount of value that platforms are capturing.

• 3:41:57Noah Kagan?

  They capture is all they get off the value.

• 3:41:59Tim Ferriss?

  All the upside versus creator value capture is something I have paid attention to and continue to pay attention to. But why do you ask about the like, how much I'm putting into?

• 3:42:11Noah Kagan?

  Well, I'm coming back on like small effort, high results. So what you keep saying or the underlying subtext is that you want to grow the podcast. Yeah. It seems like growing the podcast is it. And it's not clear that YouTube actually makes a difference. So I would wonder, what have you done in the past that grew the podcast?

• 3:42:26Tim Ferriss?

  I mean, I would also say if I had to pick and choose at this point, frankly, just in terms of like, okay, winter is coming, not to be all dramatic about it, but if I'm looking at, keeping in mind too, it's not like I have any insider information, but I do know a lot of people in tech who work on a lot of things. And if I'm thinking about defensibility, long-term viability, reaching my 1,000 true fans and hopefully 1,000 or 1 million true fans, 2 million true fans. You know, I mean, we're already in the millions with the newsletter and so on, but I would choose the newsletter over the podcast at this point.

• 3:43:01Noah Kagan?

  How can you, coming back to, I think how we like to approach is how can you experiment? So let me give you specifics. How can you experiment with YouTube to drive a newsletter? So one, you know, you're, no, no, I think that's where I would look at it because you're thinking YouTube to podcast, but maybe YouTube to newsletter. So specifically thumbnails, not really that tight. Your title is not really that tight because you probably don't have pros. Like we have a professional person that just does title and thumbnails and we have a thumbnail specific just designer for the team. And it is interesting. Do you want to compete in it? Maybe not, but I think you're already doing it. You have cameras here.

• 3:43:32Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, I do.

• 3:43:33Noah Kagan?

  And so passing that to a team that chops it up. So for me, I show up to the video, they have the pre-production done. I've already chosen the topics. We've agreed on that. Pre-production's done, I show up, do my part, and then it just, it happens. But they're testing thumbnails, they're testing titles. There's a shorts team that does all the short work. And what my recommendation is, is that I think you can invest a little more in that and then just put that into your newsletter. All of YouTube is, is a lead gen, lead gen always sounds so creepy, but like as a generation of audience that you can then have as a frequent audience in your newsletter.

• 3:44:03Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, I wonder, I wonder. I mean, it's worth testing. I know we've tested. Different subscription options. I don't want to take us too far.

• 3:44:09Noah Kagan?

  So again, I think you have shorts team, probably actually a dedicated agency. I wouldn't even bring it in house. I can recommend someone. I would also consider just having someone that does your titles and thumbnails on a consistent basis. So that as you're doing great content, does someone want to watch this six hour interview? Yeah, a lot do, but give them some shorts because they see great shorts. They're like, oh shit, where's more of that? And then go to the video. They see the video, then in the videos, it's like, let me go to the newsletter. And everything is around the newsletter. Now, on the podcast, I always, again, in business, everything's about what's the goal? And what's the thing that actually makes impact on the goal? So on podcasts, I do think you get potentially going on other shows. Could be.

• 3:44:44Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, it always helps.

• 3:44:45Noah Kagan?

  Yeah, if you want to do it, I think that's an important part that you said, I don't want it, I want to do it or I don't like. Have to be mindful of what we want to actually commit to because that's how people burn out. It's doing the thing they don't want to do to the goal they may or may not actually want.

• 3:44:57Tim Ferriss?

  I'm aware that the drive to compete can lead me to do things that are not actually in my best interest. Just because you can win at a game or think you could win, doesn't mean you should participate in that game.

• 3:45:08Noah Kagan?

  That is how you create a life you don't want to live.

• 3:45:09Tim Ferriss?

  Yep. And so, yeah, I don't feel, I don't feel rushed TBD to be continued. So I may, we may pick up offline chatting about that, but let's make sure we talk about a few things. So two things. So the first is, and we don't have to spend a ton of time on this, but spend a little bit of time. Lessons from spending more than a million dollars on coaching. So I've got all sorts of bullets here. CEO coach, biz coach, boxing coach, therapist, health coach, marketing coach, dating coach, three different ones. Hebrew and now Spanish coach. And the question I want to ask is related to all these inputs because we also talked about the top three, bottom three, the weekly, the monthly, the Q1, the this, the that.

• 3:45:53Tim Ferriss?

  And what we're talking about is, you know, I've seen many examples of people, including myself, get inundated with inputs. This happens also when people read too many books or they have too many advisors for this startup. And now they have 20 people they respect or 10 people they respect, even four people they respect, giving them conflicting recommendations. Or it's just too many recommendations. If you have a hundred New Year's resolutions, you have no New Year's resolutions. So the first thing I'm curious about is like, how for yourself do you choose what to act on outside of the business KPIs and stuff, let's just say?

• 3:46:29Noah Kagan?

  Let's break these down. Let's take my marketing coach. So I work with Moody Glasgow and cold messaged him on LinkedIn. Now, when you think about coaching, I think instead of having mentors, let's have very specific coaches in very specific areas that I'm weak in. Or the people around me, we have a lot of coaches for the team. Every, almost every single leader in the executive team of AppSum has a coach. And with Moody, it was going to him and saying, I'm not as strong on some of the data stuff. I'm not as strong as some of the marketing research stuff and branding stuff. Those are my specific areas of need. And when we meet, let's really focus on that. Now, this is really the interesting caveat with coaches. You're getting a coach because it's the things you don't want to do. Or the things you're not aware of. And so you have to be mindful of resistance.

• 3:47:12Noah Kagan?

  The resistance is almost always the direction I've noticed that ends up happening. And I just maybe don't always do it right away. So Moody, for instance, is really want to do a lot of surveys. I like Moody, I don't do surveys, man. Just let me go like put up some ads, let me go do, let's do more affiliate marketing. Let's do more video ambassador sponsorship. He's like, who are you doing that for? I don't know, dude, I don't want to do research. Let's go do stuff. I'm a doer. And so his balance of these things is saying, let's go do some research so we know who we're doing it for and be very specific who the customer is. Now, you asked the question of inputs. I think the inputs need to tie to your main priorities. And that's it. So what are the priorities? I'm saying, so within our marketing team right now, it's getting a VP of Marketing. It's content and it's brand awareness. Also, video ambassadors, getting more of those.

• 3:47:56Noah Kagan?

  And so within inputs, I'm just like, I'm specifically going over those specific problems and saying, walk me through how you're normally thinking about solving this. And then he normally is coaching me and we're having a discussion around it. What I have found with most of the inputs is that I end up doing them almost always six months later. Because I resist them and I'm going to do what I want to do anyways. Just like most people here, maybe want to start businesses their way. And six months later, they're, they think about the coach. The other thing with him specifically on taking inputs, I record all my coaching calls, every single one. Every single one. And then I go and listen to him again, not all the time, but selectively, depending on if I'm trying to learn something. Noticing how I'm resisting, noticing where I'm paying attention. And that helps me be able to be a better student with my coach. So coming back full circle with coaching in general, how to choose the input?

• 3:48:40Noah Kagan?

  I think it comes back to my priorities and the specific problems I'm coining them with. And a lot of times it's then sitting with the answer that they bring back to me.

• 3:48:48Noah Kagan?

  You know.

• 3:48:48Tim Ferriss?

  So how has, as one example from the bullet list, so CEO coach, would that be Dan from Reboot?

• 3:48:54Noah Kagan?

  That's Dan Putt, as well as Aiman Al Abdullah. So Dan is more feelings and then Aiman's more strategic.

• 3:49:01Tim Ferriss?

  Okay, so how would you describe some of the benefits from working with those guys? Just in terms of looking in the rearview mirror, because I can think of a number of coaches I've worked with. It's like, oh, I picked up the whole body yes from that person. That ended up being really important. And then you give another person, oh, okay, I took this thing away from them and it was very valuable. What are some of the things you would point to?

• 3:49:25Noah Kagan?

  Let's take Aiman Al Abdullah, for instance. I am going over 2024 strategy. And so I talked to customers, I talked to partners, I talked to the team. We look at historically what we've done and we put together a one pager plan. And one of the ideas is we have original products. We basically create affordable, low entry versions of popular products. So Mailchimp, we have an alternative. Calendly, we have an alternative. And I went to him and I said, hey, we're gonna, let me walk over the one thing I'm uncertain of is 2024 and around what we should do with new products. And brought it to him, walked over it. And I, you know, I'm so convinced that we need to build a bunch of new things. I'm like, dude, this new stuff is gonna be so sick. We're gonna build a Loom alternative. We're gonna build this other product alternative, maybe a DocuSign alternative. And he's like, and because I have a mirror, I have him. And I like coaches who've done the things I want to do. He's ran the business. He's former CEO.

• 3:50:10Noah Kagan?

  So you know what's working in your products that you guys have built? I'm like, oh, we have this one product that's crushing it. Okay, so you have a product crushing it and you want to do a new one. How come? I'm like, oh, that's good.

• 3:50:23Noah Kagan?

  We're not doing a new product yet. We're doubling the team so that we can have a core team keep investing in what's working instead of moving off to the new thing. And so that was a really powerful example of him just asking questions based on strategy and understanding our business. Based on something I was like, oh, here's my thing, here's what I'm thinking. Here's my problem. What should we do next year? And then he's redirected me and I think in a very effective way. So that was one example of them. And we talked about Dan Putt, just having an outlet, frankly. You've gone to therapy. I still go to therapy. So with Dan, we were talking on Monday about, he was just asking me, how are you feeling about the future? I was like, I feel really unclear. This is what we're talking about. I don't feel like the whole team and myself really are crystal clear and thought what we want to do in Q1. Huh, what do you want to do about that?

• 3:51:05Noah Kagan?

  I'm gonna set up a meeting right now for tomorrow so that we can all be on the same page for Q1 and their scorecards for each of the, for the company and then each of the separate teams. And that was from a five minute question with Ben. So it's really just thinking about all these different areas like Moody, two weeks ago was like, no, we're trying to hire a VP marketing. That's one of your number one priorities in the marketing team and you're not doing shit. And I was like, I know, because I'm really busy on the book and my girlfriend. He's like, well, what do you want to do about it? Because that's not moving forward where you said your priority. So I think a lot of the inputs come back to what I'm bringing to them as what I believe is the top problems. And he said, what are solutions around it? It's like, can you help me do it? He's like, yeah, actually, I'm really good at it. I've hired a lot of VPs. He's been a CMO at big companies. And so now he's spearheading it and I'm not the bottleneck.

• 3:51:46Tim Ferriss?

  Have you bootstrapped this or have you taken financing for or investment for? Okay. Now you mentioned a board. Do you have a board of directors or an advisory board? Maybe I'm mishearing you.

• 3:51:59Noah Kagan?

  No, no, you're hearing me correctly. So maybe taking a step back, how everyone can do this for themselves and copy this is think about what's the weakest part of your business? And think about who would have the five companies, even three companies that might have the person that you could get to help you with that. And then just go look up those people on LinkedIn and then offer them a thousand dollars to talk to you for one hour. And that's how we've done it.

• 3:52:18Tim Ferriss?

  Okay. All right. So this is a group of people being paid for their time to help give you various types of strategic advice.

• 3:52:24Noah Kagan?

  Yeah. And so you can set up different retainer agreements. You don't always have to do a thousand. It could be more, it could be less. So we have a CFO advisor, as I said, from MailChimp. We have a chief people officer from Duolingo. Shout out Christine.

• 3:52:34Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 3:52:35Noah Kagan?

  We have a CR advisor from Outdoorsy. And then on the board, we compensate them as well. Rajatish Mukherjee from Indeed, because I'm very good at starting businesses and I've struggled now that there's more people. Rajatish runs a 2000 person organization.

• 3:52:48Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah. Quick question, just to zoom out though. So because you have CEO coach, but the CEO of coaches is really two coaches.

• 3:52:54Noah Kagan?

  I have a CEO coach and a business coach.

• 3:52:56Tim Ferriss?

  There we go. And then you have.

• 3:52:58Noah Kagan?

  Marketing coach.

• 3:52:59Tim Ferriss?

  Marketing coach. And then you have the board. So I'm wondering what you get from the board that you don't get from those other things.

• 3:53:04Noah Kagan?

  What I have found most help from a board is, is one accountability. So it's just like, here's what I said I'd do this quarter. Here's how I did. And then secondly, it's providing an outside opinion of people that are thinking differently than me. So normally every time I go to the board meetings, it's like, why aren't you growing faster? You're not growing fast enough. And then so it's trying to figure out what things we should be doing differently based on the pace that that personally I would like to run the company. But a lot of times, almost all the coaches are challenging in some capacity. They're finding things that you're not necessarily thinking about or doing. And they bring that to you, even though you may not want to hear it.

• 3:53:36Tim Ferriss?

  So let's jump to the grand finale, speaking of accountability.

• 3:53:39Noah Kagan?

  So 48 hour challenge.

• 3:53:40Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, let's do it.

• 3:53:41Noah Kagan?

  Me and Tim love people taking action for themselves. And I think I said it earlier. Is that the reason Tim's audience likes Tim is because you give them things they can get results for themselves with. And that's why people listen to you. And among other things, I think that's probably one of the top. So I want people to take action from this episode. If they've made it this far. I want people to see what they can do and how they can change your life for 48 hours. So this episode comes out within 48 hours of launch. I want to see how people can change your life in either starting a business. And if you already have a business, what can you do in your business in 48 hours? And I want you to leave a comment on Tim's blog. And hashtag 48 hour challenge in the comment. So that makes sure you're paying attention.

• 3:54:20Tim Ferriss?

  So tim.blog/podcast, find this episode. You're gonna have to do a little work. No Kagan, it's not that hard. Put in the guest name, it'll pop right up. Go to the newest one, leave a comment with hashtag.

• 3:54:30Noah Kagan?

  Hashtag 48 hour challenge. And what result have you done in the past 48 hours? What can you do? Maybe you have a certain amount of customers, maybe you have one customer, maybe you posted videos. Ideally, here's what I'm really looking for. I'm looking for the people who are willing to put a little more extra effort. Like if they've taken and you can follow a million dollar weekend, you can do whatever it is you want. See how far you can go in 48 hours. And I think there's gonna be some people who are like, I made $10,000 from zero.

• 3:54:53Tim Ferriss?

  What's the prize?

• 3:54:54Noah Kagan?

  The prize is an all inclusive paid trip. One day with me, helping you with your business, whether you're starting, whether you're going in Barcelona, Spain this year. So it will be delivered within six months. So I'll fly you out no matter what country or in the world. I'll put you up in a hotel and we'll have 24 hours together. And be able to change your life if they want to scale their business, if they want to just go to the beach, we can do that. If they're going to do cycling. But the idea is that if you limit your time, even if you have a growing business, I want people to apply. How far can you go in 48 hours?

• 3:55:19Tim Ferriss?

  What can you do in the equivalent of a weekend, right?

• 3:55:23Noah Kagan?

  Which we all have.

• 3:55:24Tim Ferriss?

  48 hours. Any other recommendations for people to hear this? They're like, I'm excited. I want to give it a go. Any other specifics, catalytic ideas, anything at all that you'd like to add to that? So again, folks, you're going to go to Tim'dUpBlog/podcast, look up Noah Kagan, go to this episode, there'll be a blog post for it, and then you're leaving a blog comment with hashtag?

• 3:55:48Noah Kagan?

  Forty-eight hour challenge.

• 3:55:49Tim Ferriss?

  Forty-eight hour challenge. If you forget that, there are going to be probably a lot of comments, so you'll be disqualified if you don't do that. Follow the rules. Any length limits or anything?

• 3:55:59Noah Kagan?

  No. No. Well, speaking of it, I actually just saw this on Facebook, I printed it out for you. Do you remember the Tim Ferris, you obviously remember the Tim Ferris experiment? This was Cindy. So Cindy was someone who followed our material from when Tim showed us this process.

• 3:56:14Tim Ferriss?

  That's right.

• 3:56:15Noah Kagan?

  And she changed her life in a very short amount of time. Hers was documented, not everyone's was documented. She sent me a video, too.

• 3:56:22Tim Ferriss?

  Amazing.

• 3:56:23Noah Kagan?

  I got a video for you.

• 3:56:24Tim Ferriss?

  Blast from the past.

• 3:56:25Noah Kagan?

  So she sent a video where...

• 3:56:27Tim Ferriss?

  Sold-out events.

• 3:56:29Noah Kagan?

  So she has a video.

• 3:56:34Speaker 02

  So 10 years ago, I mentored under Tim Ferris's wing, which was the catalyst to me stepping into the entrepreneurship journey. And I have to say, I'm so grateful I did that. I'm so grateful for Tim and Noah, because ever since that day, 10 years ago, I've been able to be the leader that I truly want to be. I have my own company now. I have tons of people coming to me for, for support, they want to grow and scale their businesses, their companies, learning how to build inclusive communities for their brand. And so it's been very fun to how, to where like my network has grown. It's like they say, your network is your net worth, right?

• 3:57:18Speaker 02

  And so I look back at those moments where I worked with Tim, and I'm like, wow, like I have grown so much, like literally. And what Tim teaches has, has lifelong, lifelong benefits, because the way that Tim thinks, the way, the concepts around, you know, the deal concept, D-E-A-L, has definitely...

• 3:57:47Speaker 02

  Been instilled into my life. And so sometimes I think about when I move into the world, I'm like, hey, what, how would Tim think about this? Cause I know that like being an entrepreneur can be really overwhelming, but the thing that I have learned is that to keep things very simplified and results driven. Um, so anyways, I'll say thank you again to Tim Ferriss. It's definitely been a journey for me. Sometimes not easy, but it's definitely been a very fulfilling journey for myself. And um, actually, yeah, me and my family just got back from Thailand two months ago. Um, been, yeah, like I said, I've just been living the life. So yeah, thank you.

• 3:58:27Tim Ferriss?

  That's amazing.

• 3:58:27Noah Kagan?

  But that was someone that you were able, I mean, you were able to get started on her entrepreneurship journey.

• 3:58:31Tim Ferriss?

  And we probably had roughly, you know, one or two days. I mean, it was not a lot of time and we had a little bit of time, but it was constantly for a TV show, right? So you're stopping, you're starting, you're stopping, starting. If you add up the total number of hours, that's wild.

• 3:58:41Noah Kagan?

  That's been super cool. Same with Daniel Bliss, who was on your blog when we helped him. He was a postal worker. He was actually able to leave to move to Thailand. He was sick, so I wasn't able to get a video of him talking about some of his results. But I think the reality for when out there, he asked for some tactics and tips is y'all have your phones. Y'all have the ability to text, call, go to people in person, see who you have in your network. Like Cindy really liked yoga. And just by getting going, maybe yoga is not the million dollar business. And maybe she doesn't need a million dollar business, but she got that going. That's led her now 10 years later to be able to have her own business.

• 3:59:11Tim Ferriss?

  That's wild. I'm just looking at this, which I haven't seen. And she sold out her event. And that was

• 3:59:18Noah Kagan?

  The original.

• 3:59:19Tim Ferriss?

  Getting started, the original. And I'll just read this because I think it's worth reading, of course. Wow. Well, first of all, congratulations, Cindy. That's so fun. So here's just a portion. The trick I learned while mentoring with Tim and Noah is to keep things as simple as possible. Focus on the most leverageable and important thing that would yield the fastest, all caps, and best results. So this is after she mentioned she sold out her event. And then she goes, would I have sold out this event in 36 hours if I'd used paid ads? No, all caps. Would I have sold out this event if I'd gone around to find the nicest, most expensive place to rent? No. And then in parentheses, I got a free office space instead through a colleague and brought my disco lights. Would I have sold it out if I just sat in my chair complaining that there wasn't enough time? No. Would I have sold out if I reached out to people who didn't know me? No. And went

• 4:00:03Tim Ferriss?

  on and on and on. And That's amazing. That's amazing. Yeah, that's wild. 10 years later, still going. Good for her.

• 4:00:11Noah Kagan?

  And so it's interesting to think for the other people who changed their life in 48 hours from listening to this one episode where they'll be in 10 years.

• 4:00:18Tim Ferriss?

  Totally. And it works. People have done it with past appearances. People have done it with writing that you've shared on the blog. And now you've encapsulated it all after a lot more experimentation, many more businesses, and many more years in the book. So the book is Million Dollar Weekend, subtitled The Surprisingly Simple Way to Launch a Seven-Figure Business in Forty-Eight Hours. People can find that on the website, milliondollaregend.com. If people want to interact with you online, do you have any preferred socia ls or anything else you'd like to point people to?

• 4:00:51Noah Kagan?

  The website's great, milliondollaregend.com. You also look me up, Noah Kagan. That's everywhere.

• 4:00:56Tim Ferriss?

  Noah Kagan everywhere. So milliondollaregend.com. And again, if you want to throw your hat in the ring and give the 48-hour challenge a shot, listen to this episode. Certainly check out the book, but I suppose you don't have to check out the book, right? You just have to do something. And hashtag 48-hour challenge in the blog comments on the blog post associated with this episode. Noah, good endurance.

• 4:01:27Tim Ferriss?

  Amazing what ketones will do for your brain. I cheated. But thank you for the time. Always great to see you.

• 4:01:32Noah Kagan?

  Great to see you.

• 4:01:33Tim Ferriss?

  Congratulations on all the crazy success. I had no idea that it had grown in the way that it's grown. And what fun. Amazing. Barcelona.

• 4:01:41Noah Kagan?

  Life is great.

• 4:01:42Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah. But is there anything else you would like to add, Noah, before we land the plane?

• 4:01:47Noah Kagan?

  I was thinking about how awesome my girlfriend is. And one of the messages I was thinking for everyone out there is just a little bit more kindness for ourselves. If everyone can just even today, like, give themselves a little bit of kindness. Like, you know, I came a few minutes late and I was like, oh, you're late. What are you doing? It's like, and I think for all of us, just a little bit more kindness and make the world a better place for ourselves and for everyone else.

• 4:02:06Tim Ferriss?

  Here, here. That is definitely true. And also, it will just preserve the gas in the tank, too. You know, life is short, but life is also long in a lot of ways. So spare your calories when you can, be kind to recharge yourself and others. And you're gonna have off days, too. There are days when you're gonna wake up and, you know,

• 4:02:30Tim Ferriss?

  as I've heard said before, it's like, if you wake up and you meet an asshole on a given day, that person's an asshole. If you wake up and everyone's an asshole, you might be the asshole. And there are gonna be those days. So just make a little bit of extra effort. Noah, thank you so much. This is fantastic. Check it out, folks. Million Dollar Weekend. We will put links to everything in the show notes, tim.blog/podcast. And until next time, thanks for tuning in, everybody. See you.

• 4:02:57Tim Ferriss?

  Hey, guys. This is Tim again. Just one more thing before you take off, and that is Five Bullet Friday. Would you enjoy getting a short email from me every Friday that provides a little fun before the weekend? Between one and a half and two million people subscribe to my free newsletter, my super short newsletter called Five Bullet Friday. Easy to sign up, easy to cancel. It is basically a half page that I send out every Friday to share the coolest things I've found or discovered or have started exploring over that week. It's kind of like my diary of cool things. It often includes articles I'm reading, books I'm reading, albums perhaps, gadgets, gizmos, all sorts of tech tricks and so on that get sent to me by my friends, including a lot of podcast guests.

• 4:03:39Tim Ferriss?

  And these strange esoteric things end up in my field and then I test them and then I share them with you. So if that sounds fun, again, it's very short, a little tiny bite of goodness before you head off for the weekend, something to think about. If you'd like to try it out, just go to tim.blog/friday. Type that into your browser, tim.blog/friday. Drop in your email and you'll get the very next one. Thanks for listening. This episode is brought to you by Eight Sleep. Temperature is one of the main causes of poor sleep and heat is my personal nemesis. I've suffered for decades tossing and turning, throwing blankets off, pulling the back on, putting one leg on top and repeating all of that ad nauseam. But now I am falling asleep in record time. Why? Because I'm using a device.

• 4:04:25Tim Ferriss?

  Was recommended to me by friends called the Pod Cover by Eight Sleep. The Pod Cover fits on any mattress and allows you to adjust the temperature of your sleeping environment, providing the optimal temperature that gets you the best night's sleep. With the Pod Cover's dual-zone temperature control, you and your partner can set your sides of the bed to as cool as 55 degrees or as hot as 110 degrees. I think generally in my experience, my partners prefer the high side and I like to sleep very, very cool. So, stop fighting, this helps. Based on your biometrics, environment, and sleep stages, the Pod Cover makes temperature adjustments throughout the night that limit wake-ups and increase your percentage of deep sleep. In addition to its best-in-class temperature regulation, the Pod Cover sensors also track

• 4:05:08Tim Ferriss?

  your health and sleep metrics without the need to use a wearable. Conquer this winter season with the best in sleep tech and sleep at your perfect temperature. Many of my listeners in colder areas, sometimes that's me, enjoy warming up their bed after a freezing day. And if you have a partner, great, you can split the zones and you can sleep at your own ideal temperatures. It's easy. So, go to eightsleep.com/tim, spelled out, eightsleep.com/tim, and save $250 on the Pod Cover by Eight Sleep this winter. Eight Sleep currently ships within the US, Canada, the UK, select countries in the EU, and Australia. This episode is brought to you by Shopify, one of my absolute favorite companies, and they make some of my favorite products.

• 4:05:52Tim Ferriss?

  Shopify is the commerce platform revolutionizing millions of businesses worldwide, and I've known the team since 2008 or 2009. But prior to that, I wish I had personally had Shopify in the early 2000s when I was running my own e-commerce business. I tell that story in the Four Hour Work Week, but the tools then were absolutely atrocious, and I could only dream of a platform like Shopify. In fact, it was you guys, my dear readers, who introduced me to Shopify when I polled all of you about best e-commerce platforms around 2009, and they've only become better and better since. Whether you're a garage entrepreneur or getting ready for your IPO, Shopify is the only tool you need to start, run, and grow your business without the struggle. Shopify puts you in control of every sales channel.

• 4:06:37Tim Ferriss?

  Doesn't matter if you're selling satin sheets from Shopify's in-person POS system or offering organic olive oil on Shopify's all-in-one e-commerce platform. However you interact with your customers, you're covered. And once you've reached your audience, Shopify has the internet's best converting checkout to help you turn browsers into buyers. Shopify powers 10% of all e-commerce in the United States. And Shopify is truly a global force as the e-commerce solution behind Allbirds, Rothy's, Brooklinen, and millions of other entrepreneurs of every size across more than 170 countries. Plus, Shopify's award-winning help is there to support your success every step of the way if you have questions. This is possibility powered by Shopify. So check it out. Sign up for a $1 per month trial period at Shopify.

• 4:07:22Tim Ferriss?

  That's S-H-O-P-I-F-Y. Shopify.com/Tim. Go to Shopify.com/Tim to take your business to the next level today. One more time, all lowercase, Shopify.com/Tim.