#75: Tools and Tricks from the #30 Employee at Facebook

Noah Kagan http://okdork.com/ was #30 at Facebook, #4 at Mint.com http://mint.com/, and is the Chief Sumo (founder) at SumoMe http://sumome.com/, which offers free tools to help grow website traffic. To keep things extra spicy, he's become a taco connoisseur and created 4 separate products that have generated more than 7 figures. This podcast conversation is about all of the tools and tricks he uses to do it all. Noah was my co-teacher in the "Starting a Business" episode http://itunes.com/timferriss of The Tim Ferriss Experiment http://itunes.com/timferriss, which is now the #1 TV season across all of iTunes. In the episode, we help a novice entrepreneur named Cindy to develop and launch her business in a single week. See all the details here http://itunes.com/timferriss, and be sure to watch the bonus hour of behind-the-scenes footage https://itunes.apple.com/us/tv-season/behind-scenes-starting-business/id984734983?i=985772057. But back to the current podcast... Noah and I cover a ton, including his favorite tools, apps, books, routines, and more. It ranges from apps for preventing distractions, to how he blocks out time every Tuesday for learning, to how he gained 40 pounds of (mostly) muscle in the last six months or so. Full show notes and links from this episode can be found at fourhourworkweek.com/podcast http://fourhourworkweek.com/podcast If you loved the resource-rich business interviews with Ramit Sethi http://fourhourworkweek.com/2014/10/09/ramit-sethi-on-persuasion-and-turning-a-blog-into-a-multi-million-dollar-business/ and Tracy DiNunzio http://fourhourworkweek.com/2014/09/30/the-tim-ferriss-show-tracy-dinunzio-on-rapid-growth-and-rapid-learning/, you'll love this one. This podcast is brought to you by Athletic Greens (AG) http://athleticgreens.com/tim, my all-in-one nutritional insurance policy. It's a whole food-derived greens powder that I've used since 2008 or so to cover my bases in a busy world. If I need to skip meals or eat sub-optimal food, AG http://athleticgreens.com/tim allows me to worry less. For travel, I take pouches with me to prevent fatigue. For a limited time, you can try AG at 50% off http://athleticgreens.com/tim! Click here http://athleticgreens.com/tim. It ain't cheap, but I find it totally worth it. This podcast is also brought to you by 99Designs http://www.99designs.com/tim, the world's largest marketplace of graphic designers. Did you know I used 99Designs to rapid prototype the cover http://www.99designs.com/tim for The 4-Hour Body? Here are some of the impressive results http://www.99designs.com/tim. Enjoy!

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

• 0:00Tim Ferriss?

  Sound check. Uh, could you mouth the blue ball for a second and tell me what you had for breakfast?

• 0:05Noah Kagan?

  Today for breakfast, I had egg whites, onions, chicken, and one slice of bacon.

• 0:10Tim Ferriss?

  How much weight have you gained in the last 12 months?

• 0:12Noah Kagan?

  Forty pounds.

• 0:13Speaker 02

  Optimal window. At this altitude, I can run flat out for a half mile before my hands start shaking. Can I ask you a personal question?

• 0:22Speaker 03

  Now, what is the appropriate timing?

• 0:26Speaker 02

  I'm a cybernetic organism, living tissue over metal endoskeleton.

• 0:38Tim Ferriss?

  This episode is brought to you by 99designs, your one-stop shop for all things graphic design-related. I've used 99designs for everything from banner ads to book covers, including sketches and mock-ups that led to The Four Hour Body, which later became number one New York Times, number one Wall Street Journal. And the brainstorming, a lot of it took place with designers from around the world. And here's how it works. Whether you need a t-shirt, a business card, a website, an app thumbnail, whatever it might be, you submit that project and designers from around the world will send you sketches and mock-ups and designs. You choose your favorite and you have an original that you love, or you get your money back. It's that straightforward. And many of you who are listening have already used it and created some amazing things

• 1:23Tim Ferriss?

  that I'll be sharing in the future. But in the meantime, if you want to see some of my competitions, some of the book covers, as well as get a free $99 upgrade, go to 99designs.com/tim. That's 99designs.com/tim. This episode is brought to you by Athletic Greens. I get asked all the time, if you could only use one supplement, what would it be? And my answer is inevitably Athletic Greens. It is your all-in-one nutritional insurance. I recommended it in The Four Hour Body, did not get paid for that. And I travel with it to avoid getting sick. I take it in the mornings to ensure optimal performance. It just covers all my bases, if I can't get what I need through whole-food meals throughout the rest of the day.

• 2:04Tim Ferriss?

  And you can get 50, oh my God, 50% off, yes, 50% off if you go to athleticgreens.com/tim that's athleticgreens.com/tim check it out it's tasty but more important it will help you not screw up when you're doing your nutritional planning so for me it just covers the bases takes a load off my mind puts a lot in my body and check it out athleticgreens.com/tim why hello squirrels chipmunks and muskrats why muskrats don't be racist we welcome everybody here because this is the tim ferriss show where my job is to attempt to deconstruct world-class performers and teachers whether they are investors chess prodigies actors

• 2:48Tim Ferriss?

  musicians or entrepreneurs in this particular case this episode features noah kagan noah kagan is a friend of mine i've known for many years he was number 30 at facebook number four at mint.com which was sold for god knows how much money i think 100 plus billion dollars and is the chief sumo i e co-founder of sumome.com which offers free tools to help grow web traffic among other things also a top rated taco connoisseur i'm not sure we're going to get into that but he has most important created four products that have made more than seven figures and that is what we're going to delve into in this particular episode lots of tactics tools routines and so on that noah has used himself and has helped other people to use and noah was also my co-teacher

• 3:32Tim Ferriss?

  in the tim ferriss experiment episode build a business where we led cindy a novice entrepreneur into scaling and launching her business in one week and there are a lot of the behind the scenes goodies where if you go to itunes.com/tim ferriss that is two hours and two s's itunes.com/tim ferriss i think there's an hour of bonus footage with some really nitty gritty call script sales and marketing stuff that i think you will enjoy but this episode by itself super strong standalone lots of takeaways lots of resources and if you don't want to write it all down you can get the show notes at fourhourworkweek.com/podcast

• 4:16Tim Ferriss?

  that's four hour f o u r h o u r fourhourworkweek.com/podcast without further ado here is monsieur noah kagan enjoy

• 4:28Tim Ferriss?

  Noah, my man, welcome to the show.

• 4:30Noah Kagan?

  Thank you for having me, Tim.

• 4:31Tim Ferriss?

  I have been looking forward to this for quite a while because every time we talk and we've known each other for years, I come away with notes upon notes of things that I want to test or try. So I'm hoping and expecting sternly, like an angry father.

• 4:46Noah Kagan?

  Yeah, that's a lot of pressure.

• 4:48Tim Ferriss?

  This episode will have the same. But for people who don't have too much context, you were number 30 at Facebook, you were number four employee at Mint, which sold to Intuit for a hundred plus million dollars, and you've created multiple products now that have earned seven figures. What else should people know perhaps as background, or what would you like to tell them about as context?

• 5:11Noah Kagan?

  I thought that was pretty good, man. I was like, wow, whoever that guy is, he sounds pretty good.

• 5:16Tim Ferriss?

  Hire that man, speechwriter.

• 5:18Noah Kagan?

  I mean, you know, the only other thing is like, I came out, like a lot of people who are listening, you know, I came out of Berkeley or whatever college you came out to, and I worked at a corporate job at Intel, sitting in a cubicle. And then, you know, I didn't really use networking or any of that kind of stuff to kind of eventually go to these kind of cool companies, be able to create my own businesses that, you know, give me the freedom to do a lot of things I want to do.

• 5:38Tim Ferriss?

  And you are in Austin, Texas, is that right?

• 5:40Noah Kagan?

  Yes, sir.

• 5:41Tim Ferriss?

  Where did you grow up?

• 5:43Noah Kagan?

  I grew up in Bay Area, about a mile and a half from the Apple headquarters.

• 5:47Tim Ferriss?

  So near Cupertino somewhere?

• 5:48Noah Kagan?

  Yeah, I grew up in, you know.

• 5:50Tim Ferriss?

  The question of why there has been a mass exodus, it would seem, from cities like New York City and San Francisco to Austin is one I've never really heard you answer. So maybe I can just ask you, why is Austin becoming such a hotbed, and why did you choose to move to Austin?

• 6:07Noah Kagan?

  Yeah, I mean, I actually interned like in 2000, about 10 years ago, and I came out here and I never heard of the place. I didn't even know, I mean, in Texas, now it's, you know, because the internet, people know that there's, there's places inside of Texas, they have like photos. But I never knew what Austin was about, and I came here and I had like sex with this person, and then I got drunk, and it was like, like, what's that book, Lord of the Flies, where it's like the young kids take over an island?

• 6:31Tim Ferriss?

  Yes.

• 6:32Noah Kagan?

  It's basically like that, but we have a city.

• 6:37Noah Kagan?

  So I came here and I was like, how come no one else is here? You know, you're paying half as much as the Bay Area for housing. We actually see grass, a lot of grass around us. You got a lot of tacos, which is what I'm known for. And it's like one of the capitals of tacos in the nation. And it's kind of like, um, you know, it's like what the Bay Area was probably like 10 years before now. It's just like you're packed and you're paying insane prices. Uh, and I think also fundamentally, there's a few key things for me, but fundamentally I just, I didn't want to also just be around startups talking about their funding all day long. And so Austin provided a lifestyle for me where it was more affordable, really attractive women, uh, really good outside life. Like if I, when I leave the office, I have a good lifestyle. Uh, it just really fit that, fit that balance. And that's why I think it's, you know, it's one of the fastest growing cities in the nation right now.

• 7:21Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, it's, it's one of my favorite cities. I almost moved there after college, actually. It was between, uh, Austin and SF. And I didn't make it to the final round of interviews for Trilogy Software. So that made a decision for me. So I was came very close. I could have forked another way and ended up in Austin.

• 7:37Noah Kagan?

  Did you, uh, did you get like flown out in like first class in the limo experience with Trilogy?

• 7:42Tim Ferriss?

  I don't think I made it that far. I think, I think they recognized a terrible potential employee very quickly and decided that, uh, I would be more trouble than I was worth, which is probably accurate.

• 7:54Noah Kagan?

  You know, I hear, you know, what's funny about that? Like I got a job offer, well, I've, I've applied for Google twice and I've been rejected twice. And I'm like, is Google really good or am I that bad? Or is it just like, I meant to kind of run my own thing? And, you know, I remember when I did my interview with Google, I couldn't remember how to do division and, uh,

• 8:13Tim Ferriss?

  That makes it hard to get a job at Google, I'd imagine.

• 8:16Noah Kagan?

  I was like, dude, I gotta use my calc, I gotta use my phone. Do you mind? He's like, uh, yeah. Okay, you're not gonna get the job, dude.

• 8:22Tim Ferriss?

  He's like, if you don't, if you can't do 12 times 12, Noah, I'm sorry, I have some bad news. Unless you want to interview for our cafeteria jobs.

• 8:28Noah Kagan?

  No, I know multiplication, I'm good. It was the division, man. Anyway, so Austin, I mean, coming back to it, it was just more of, uh, after being the bear around engineers and all that stuff in my life. I wanted something a little more affordable, women and outside and just kind of like a slower lifestyle. I would say for younger people, I would actually recommend going to these busier cities. Cause you're surrounding yourself with like hungry, hungry people.

• 8:47Tim Ferriss?

  By younger, what age would you say that is?

• 8:49Noah Kagan?

  I'm saying up until 30, I would say in like a really populated city personally. And that's what I did because you're around people that are hustling and it's really inspiring and it's motivating. And there's a meetup every day and we, you know, we have that in Austin, but it's nowhere near the level of the Bay Area or New York. And so I'd say if you're younger, I would want to be around that and get connections to that and experience that. Because you're, I mean, if you look at Austin, like, how many big companies have come out of Austin, Tim? Like, name two.

• 9:12Tim Ferriss?

  Dell and blank. I'm sure there are others.

• 9:16Noah Kagan?

  You could, okay, so Willie Nelson's actually really good.

• 9:19Tim Ferriss?

  Willie Nelson Biofuels.

• 9:20Noah Kagan?

  What'd you say?

• 9:21Tim Ferriss?

  Said Willie Nelson Biofuels.

• 9:23Noah Kagan?

  Willie Nelson, dude. I mean, I was gonna say like a weed joke, but like, name, name two that came out of the Bay Area. I mean, you could go on for days.

• 9:29Tim Ferriss?

  Right, yeah.

• 9:30Noah Kagan?

  So, and that's a different special.

• 9:32Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, and you have a density in SF that you don't have in Austin, namely, I guess what I mean by that is, you have the peninsula in the Bay Area, but just within San Francisco, you have, let's just call it 700,000 people, very densely packed in. So getting to events, meeting new people, bumping into the icons or billionaires you want to meet is as easy as going to a handful of different coffee shops. Whereas in Austin, in my experience, having gone to South by Southwest so many times, it's more spread out, much like Los Angeles. So those types of serendipitous moments are a little harder to engineer.

• 10:05Noah Kagan?

  I mean, the funniest one for me, I was walking in San Francisco a few years ago, and I'm talking about PayPal with my friend Boris. And, and then I'm like, oh my God, literally, the guy walking in front of us was Peter Thiel. And I was like, Peter, we had a question about PayPal. Could you mind if I ask you?

• 10:19Tim Ferriss?

  That's the, that's the, that's the co-founder of PayPal, for people wondering, who's also the first money into Facebook. And another, actually, another guest on the podcast as well. The, the place I'd like to go next, and I think maybe working backwards makes sense here, I'd love to experiment with just front-loading this episode with a lot of tools and tactics that people can, can play with as soon as they listen to this episode. What are some of the tools, whether they're apps or otherwise, that you are really into at the moment, or that you find extremely useful?

• 10:54Noah Kagan?

  Yeah, so the I'll give you my like top things that that I use and I think everyone should literally use right now and go do these things. Number one, and this is it's not even an app or anything. It's speeding up your mouse pad. It's the number one productivity hack because you're on your computer almost all the day. Go to your settings, speed up your mouse pad, double what you're at. It takes a few minutes to get used to, but you realize like, holy crap. Everything starts at the top, so speed up your mouse pad and everything will get faster. I really love that one. I because anytime I'm on someone slower, I'm like, wow, you're so slow. What's wrong? Is your computer broken?

• 11:25Tim Ferriss?

  So you just go to system preferences and then keyboard and then or mouse trackpad. Actually, it's one of those three, I'm sure.

• 11:32Noah Kagan?

  Yeah, trackpad. Yeah, you click on trackpad and then you go to your tracking speed and move it to the basically almost the fastest. And then your keyboard is or your the way that you get around computers significantly faster.

• 11:42Tim Ferriss?

  Got it.

• 11:43Noah Kagan?

  Uh, let me just go through a list of things that I love. Um, other things on the computer Alfred app. If you're not using Alfred app, it's free. And basically, instead of having to even move your mouse, you can just hit a launch bar and then type in whatever app you want and it'll automatically load it. So if I wanted to open Firefox, I can just hit command spacebar type FI, hit enter and it's loaded instead of me having to move my mouse anywhere on the screen.

• 12:05Tim Ferriss?

  Now, is that, uh, I've I've heard of Alfred before. I use, I guess it's Spotlight, uh, just built into the OS.

• 12:13Noah Kagan?

  Oh, Spotlight's way slower, man.

• 12:15Tim Ferriss?

  It's just a lot slower.

• 12:16Noah Kagan?

  It's way slower and with Alfred app, you can do contacts. I can do math with it sometimes when I need help. A lot of the times, okay?

• 12:22Tim Ferriss?

  Got it.

• 12:22Noah Kagan?

  When I have to do those divisions. So Alfred app is an awesome one, especially for getting around your Mac. Don't know if they have a PC version yet, but who uses PC?

• 12:30Noah Kagan?

  I don't know. Do you ever feel bad when they have like when people are using Hotmail or PC? I'm like, bro, is everything okay? Okay, let me go. I'm gonna go more because I know I want to give meaty stuff.

• 12:39Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 12:39Noah Kagan?

  We, um, I use, so let's get into apps like web and other things for this is one is a killer one. It's a Chrome extension called Facebook News Feed Eradicator. And this one is amazing. And I used to work at Facebook and I know all of us, you you have this like weird thing where you're so used to going to Facebook, you just type in FA in your your hand. You can't even control it. And so you install the Facebook News Feed Eradicator, you go to Facebook and it blocks your news feed. And then you get there and I do it, I probably do 10 times a day, I go to Facebook. And I get there and there's nothing there and I'm like, well, I guess there's nothing for me to do today. Everyone's asleep and I go back to my work. Because I think people are looking for so many different productivity hacks. I just try to focus on the big ones that are really helpful and that one is huge. Cause I go Facebook, nothing's happening, go back to my day and get the things done I want to get done.

• 13:24Noah Kagan?

  I use Schedule1.

• 13:25Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, great program. Me too.

• 13:27Noah Kagan?

  Love. Do you use that too?

• 13:28Tim Ferriss?

  I do, yeah. It was introduced to me by Andrew Warner of MixerG, who's done thousands of interviews. And I, as soon as he booked me using that, so I was the one who was picking a time.

• 13:39Noah Kagan?

  He made you do that? He made Tim Ferriss on that?

• 13:42Tim Ferriss?

  I don't blame him though.

• 13:43Noah Kagan?

  Yeah, no, it's so nice.

• 13:44Tim Ferriss?

  And it's, it prevents so much confusion. Do you want to just explain with the, how they're so good?

• 13:51Noah Kagan?

  The reason I like it, they have a $99 a year plan. Make sure you find that one. Cause they have all these different options, but you can get in there and get the $99 a year one, I believe. And the nicest thing about it is it's such an annoying thing. So like if me and Tim wanted to meet, I'd be like, Tim, are you free next Tuesday at four? You'd have to come back and say, no, how about Wednesday and then blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. With Schedule1, it connects automatically to your calendar. When you send it to someone, you can set your preferences. So like I have very specific preferences. Like I don't do meetings on Thursday. I don't do meetings before 10 a.m. I don't do meetings during lunchtime. I don't do meetings after five. And I only do meetings for 15 minutes because I really, if it's longer than that, like we need to figure out why it's going so long. And then basically I send that to you and I say, hey, Tim, let's talk for that kind of period. And then it makes it really easy for you to just compare that to your schedule, choose the time, it auto goes into my calendar and we're done.

• 14:35Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah. And, and one of the other benefits that I noticed, number one, the first thing someone will see when they click the link to grab a time is it'll say, set your time zone.

• 14:46Noah Kagan?

  Totally.

• 14:46Tim Ferriss?

  And that avoids all of the confusion like, oh, sorry. I thought it was 4pm CST and not PST. And then you have to book it again. It avoids all of that. It sends reminders to people. I've been using it, for instance, if I'm doing, let's just say, recording, and I don't typically do this. But if I'm, if I were recording five podcasts in a day, or I had some type of batching like that, I would block out an entire day in, say, one hour increments or two hour increments. And then have everybody just pick the time that is remaining and available because it also happens if you're emailing separate people competing for a certain day, let's just say, you'll you'll book one person, then the other person will want the same time. And it's just

• 15:26Tim Ferriss?

  a huge headache. So this thing saves just dozens of hours of headache, totally, totally worth it.

• 15:33Noah Kagan?

  Other ones, oh, excuse me.

• 15:35Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, no, go for it.

• 15:36Noah Kagan?

  Uh, other ones, followup.cc. Uh, this is my, one of my secret weapons. Uh, I basically can never forget anything. It's like, I call it my Jewish mother in my inbox because my mom never forgets anything. She writes everything down. Um, and so what follow up CC does is like if I'm emailing Tim, which, you know, we do from time to time, I'll email Tim and in my BCC, I'll put when I want to remember it. So what it does is that I'll put like one day at follow up CC dot CC and in a day it'll email me back and say, hey, here's the email that you sent and the reminder about it. So you can do this for people be like, hey, I'll check in with you in two months or I'll follow up with, you know, even for things you want to do as a to do, like, let me do this in two months or let me check this email in a week. You can either forward it or BCC it and it'll automatically remind you. And I've just found that it basically helps me never forget anything.

• 16:20Noah Kagan?

  Uh, cause sometimes you just keep it in your inbox and I personally don't want anything in my inbox if I can. And this helps me move out anything or remember anything that I want. So I highly recommend that.

• 16:29Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, automating follow ups.

• 16:30Noah Kagan?

  Yeah, it's just so nice. I mean, and there's email tracking tools for opens and stuff like that. I just want to follow up kind of the lightest way, easiest for me to use. Um, other tools that I've been using a lot, I've been using perch.co is totally free. Uh, for everyone who's doing, I know a lot of people are starting, either starting or running their businesses. Perch provides free, um, people to people like webcam. So we have four people that work remote. And it's kind of weird because they're like, what the hell are these guys doing in the office? And we're wondering what they're doing sometimes. And so perch gives you the chance if you have two iPads or two phones, uh, to see each other. And so it helps for communication and also just like being a part of a team versus like a random remote person.

• 17:06Tim Ferriss?

  Very cool. Yeah, I hadn't heard of that one.

• 17:08Noah Kagan?

  I really like that one. Um, I like my fitness. So I'll go to a few on the phone and web. They're kind of mixed. I use my fitness pal.com almost. I use it every day. Um, and I use it because if you really want to lose weight or gain weight, which we're, you know, we can talk about a bit. I've gained 40 pounds in the past four months, and now I'm losing 40 pounds in the next five months or six months.

• 17:29Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, just, just so people understand what's going on here. How much, how much of the 40 would you say is muscle versus fat?

• 17:36Noah Kagan?

  Well, I don't know the exact, I didn't, I probably should have been more.

• 17:39Tim Ferriss?

  If you had to estimate, how much of that is muscle?

• 17:41Noah Kagan?

  Probably like half and half, maybe. I don't know the exact number.

• 17:44Tim Ferriss?

  I think it's a bit more, honestly. So just, we'll come back to this, guys, but Noah sent me a picture of himself. I hadn't seen him in about six months and could not recognize the guy. Uh, now granted, you're hitting a bicep pose in the gym. No, you weren't. I'm kidding. But it was a shot from the gym and I was just like, what the hell?

• 18:03Noah Kagan?

  It was a naked selfie, dude. Come on. It's Tuesday.

• 18:05Tim Ferriss?

  Naked selfie Tuesdays. That's kind of our routine. Uh, so we'll come back to that. But what do you, what do you use, uh, my fitness pal?

• 18:12Noah Kagan?

  So I use my fitness pal and I track every single thing I eat. And it, and it's not so much that I want to be OCD and obsessive about like, oh, I have to track everything and I want to count everything. But it gives me, if you really want to accomplish something, and this is a tool that if you want to lose five pounds, it'll say like, eat this amount of calories and this much macros. And in four weeks, you'll hit five pounds. And so it's like, well, why wouldn't I do that? And it just makes me more accountable to help me hit the objectives of what I want to hit. And so it's like, am I under my macros and the amounts I want to be hitting today or not? And it just makes my life so much simpler to, to be able to figure that out. And over time, you kind of even know, you start knowing what you're, you know, much more about the food that you're actually putting in your mouth about like, how much protein a chicken has versus steak versus like, um, you know, like a quest bar, which is one of my favorite protein bars.

• 18:52Tim Ferriss?

  No, definitely. And, uh, for those people wondering what macros are, uh, that's just referring to macronutrients. So the, the, what percentage of the food you're eating, calories you're eating are coming from fat, protein or carbohydrates generally. And then when people refer to micronutrients, those would be, say, the trace minerals and so on and so forth, vitamins. There we go. And I'm actually experimenting with some, some somewhat unusual macros right now, which are about 80% fat calories, 15% protein and 5% or less carbohydrates, typically less than 30 grams a day, just to optimize for brain function as opposed to body function, which is working pretty well.

• 19:32Noah Kagan?

  What have you noticed about that?

• 19:33Tim Ferriss?

  Uh, I've noticed that. When I hit, and I'm using a device called the Precision Extra with XTRA for tracking ketones at a very precise level that you would hope, since it's called the Precision Extra, it gives you a readout in millimolars. So instead of peeing on a keto sticks, these things you can buy at Walgreens or wherever to indicate if you're in ketosis or not, you can get a concentration. So I'll prick my finger and check it and it'll say, oh, you're at 0.7 millimolars or 1.5 millimolars. And for my optimal mental performance, I've just noticed that I perform best at between, say, 1.1 and let's just call it 1.7

• 20:16Tim Ferriss?

  millimolars. And my belief up to this point, because I hadn't had a good tool, that was a nice quest bar burp, up to this point has been the deeper the ketosis, the better my brain will perform because the brain likes ketones. But for me, that doesn't appear to be the case. So I've been able to get super specific and sort of use my, the food I put in my mouth like a sniper shot for mental performance, which is awesome. So that's been the, the primary benefit. And along with that, I've noticed, for instance, all of my morning fatigue for say, the first half hour of the day is completely gone. I mean, a hundred percent gone. I wake up and I'm ready to go, which is, has never been the case when I'm carb dependent. So. That's interesting. I mean, it's funny. I was thinking, I think a lot about, I mean,

• 20:59Tim Ferriss?

  I think we don't think about how much we, how much sleep affects us. And we all know sleep more and it's better. I actually used to work in bed sheets at Macy's.

• 21:09Tim Ferriss?

  So. Wait, now you worked in bed sheets, like you were selling bed sheets or you'd wrap yourself up like Casper, Casper the ghost and go to work? No, I sold bed sheets to old women on commission. Huh. How old were, how old were you when you did that? That was in high school. All right. And so I learned a lot about like bedding and I also worked in towels. But one of the things I was going to suggest is like, we're talking about apps and tools. I think a lot of people don't think about their physical tools. So I've tried to optimize my bed.

• 21:37Tim Ferriss?

  I think I've done a pretty good job. So the, the company that I use that comes on Amazon, the one that I just tried actually a week ago that I'm going to be upgrading to is called Tuft and Needle. It's a little like these like kind of hipster guys out in Arizona, really nice. And they have like the super comfortable mattress. And then I found there's a guy, literally he's like in the middle Midwest, he looks like your, your uncle. And he created a thing called MyPillow. Have you heard of this? No, I haven't. I've heard of Tuft and Needle though. That one, that name has come up a couple of times among friends. So I have to take a look at those guys.

• 22:04Noah Kagan?

  Yeah, I can put you in touch with them. I went and slept on it and laid on it like a few days ago. It was great. And then, and I'm gonna upgrade to that. They have a, and then I use a pillow called MyPillow, which is like tri-foamed. I don't even know what he does, but it's really good. Uh, because what I realized is like, the more that I'm comfortable in bed, I just feel better.

• 22:21Tim Ferriss?

  Absolutely.

• 22:22Noah Kagan?

  And I wake up, you know, feeling, you know, pretty damn good every morning. And I use a company called Parachute for the bedding. Uh, and so those are the kind of the combination that I've been using. And I'm like, damn, I'm feeling really good when I wake up in the morning from all that stuff.

• 22:33Tim Ferriss?

  And what, uh, what does the, just to come back to two things, uh, or a few things. The nightly rituals, what is, what are, what are the last, say, two hours of your days typically look like? And when do you go to bed? When do you wake up, et cetera?

• 22:48Noah Kagan?

  My night varies a bit more, um, but what I do at night is I try to put myself to sleep by reading. Uh, I notice I'd, I'd try to watch shows or anything like that, and then I just get stimulated. So I'll go to bed and I, you know, I won't always have to read a business book, which my brother always kind of gave me crap about, like, there's other things besides nonfiction. Uh, so I've been reading like Jack Reacher books, like, I don't know if anyone has, you know, suggestions for books that are fiction that are good, like The Martian was probably one of the best books of the year.

• 23:12Tim Ferriss?

  Jack Reacher? Is that, that's a, those are graphic novels or what are the?

• 23:16Noah Kagan?

  Uh, it's, it's the movie Tom Cruise is in, which was surprisingly good last year.

• 23:20Tim Ferriss?

  Got it.

• 23:20Noah Kagan?

  Uh, but I'll read, I'll basically just try to read and that helps me go to sleep versus stimulating me. Uh, like I would watch shows like Big Love, which wasn't that good. Um, or now I'm watching Daredevil, but basically I realized like if I watch that stuff in bed, I don't go to sleep. So now I just do books instead, and I've been doing that for a little while. Um, so like The Martian was an amazing fiction book. It's probably one of the best in the past year or two.

• 23:39Tim Ferriss?

  That's, that, the, the whole story of The Martian, I think, what's his name? Andrew Wire or Weir, something like that. The whole story of how that was, uh, I guess self-published or very, very small to start with. And just developed a massive cult following. Then the audio book was a huge, huge blockbuster hit and it's taken off. And I think it's now being developed into a movie or maybe the movie's out. And I love that type of story. It's just like Fifty Shades of Grey. Everyone turned it down. Um, and it just became a viral sensation on its own. Which then led to it becoming a blockbuster like the book, um, go the fuck to sleep, the, the children's book that was leaked as a PDF among people in the publishing world.

• 24:23Tim Ferriss?

  Became this huge buzz item and then became a best seller.

• 24:29Noah Kagan?

  That's awesome.

• 24:30Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, yeah, no, absolutely. What time do you typically go to bed and when have you found you perform best? Or how, how do you perform best in terms of going to bed and waking up? What, what are the times?

• 24:40Noah Kagan?

  So one thing I do is I don't keep a phone in my room. I think that's a common thing. We wake up and we have the phone right in our room and we just get all stimulated by that. So I keep my phone in a separate room always. Um, I'm going to see varies. I think when I'm excited, like the, remember that guy Steve Pavlina from like five to 10 years ago, he had really great content.

• 24:55Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 24:55Noah Kagan?

  He was very like strict about wake up at this time and don't wake up at this time. So I've changed my routines in the past year and it's helped me where one, I sleep in darkness now. So I don't sleep with natural light and I don't really use an alarm and I notice I wake up a little later now, but when I wake up, I don't need coffee and I feel more refreshed and that's just what's worked for me.

• 25:15Tim Ferriss?

  So I wake, I think now I used to wake up at seven 30 and I'd have to go to like do my old man pee. I don't know if you know, do you do that at home? Oh, I, well, I am a bit of a water hog, so I usually wake up also in the middle of the night to go to the bathroom, which I, yeah, I've had my prostate checked.

• 25:33Tim Ferriss?

  Love the experience. Just kidding. Uh, but no, I, I, I, you know, I've checked out all that stuff. I just drink too much water. So yeah, I get up and I do the old man pee once or twice, probably.

• 25:42Noah Kagan?

  Yeah. So I just found I slept better. So I moved my bed to dark. I know Tucker Max or a mutual friend does that as well. And then when I wake up, I try not to just go get overly stimulated with like my phone and everything already happening. And so my morning routine and then I actually find that the days I'm not having coffee in the morning, I'm like, oh, I slept better. And when I've been sleeping in darkness, that's been happening. And then I try to stay away from my phone for the first hour of my morning. So I spend the first hour making ideally the same breakfast every morning and I generally will rotate that every three months. And so like now my breakfast is, is one cup, egg whites, two eggs, uh, with two percent cheese. And so I'll have that in the morning for breakfast and then I'll read for the next 30 minutes.

• 26:19Tim Ferriss?

  And you just scramble all that up together?

• 26:21Noah Kagan?

  Yeah. I, you actually did what you recommended in one of your early YouTube videos where microwave it.

• 26:26Tim Ferriss?

  Oh, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. The, the three minute slow carb breakfast.

• 26:29Noah Kagan?

  Yeah. Yeah. I was like, damn, you can microwave eggs now, like microwave everything. Um, no, but I've actually found like, you know, it's relaxing and I like that I'm eating the same thing. So I don't have to think about it. Cause sometimes actually we have to think about dinner or lunch or breakfast. It's kind of tiring. It's like, oh, what the hell am I going to do? And then you have to process all this extra energy that I don't really want to. And so then I try to create a routine where it's like breakfast first thing, and then it's reading a book, whatever I'm interested in at that time.

• 26:54Tim Ferriss?

  So the I'd love to dig a bit on the books, because I know you've read a lot, and you've mentioned books to me before, like, well, there are many, but I think one of them I found very helpful and have recommended to my startups, which is Who. And maybe you could explain or introduce that book and some of the others that you found very helpful for for business and just for designing your own style of business.

• 27:22Noah Kagan?

  Sure. The one thing, before I forget, Tim, one thing I've noticed, there's two kind of, there's many attributes, but I always think it's interesting to try to understand, like, what are the fundamentals of successful people like you and other people that it's like, oh, what are they doing that regular people aren't? And the two things I've noticed is, one, I haven't really met any super successful people that don't read. I don't know if you've noticed that.

• 27:42Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, it's very, it's very unusual. Yeah.

• 27:44Noah Kagan?

  I've never met like, oh, yeah, I don't really read anything. You don't really do anything. And the second thing is, this is one that everyone can do today, and I do it every day. I even do it in hotels, which it's not something perverted. It's, I know that's what you guys all think.

• 27:57Tim Ferriss?

  It's not exclusively something perverted.

• 27:59Noah Kagan?

  Yeah.

• 27:59Tim Ferriss?

  Let's be clear.

• 28:00Noah Kagan?

  They, I make my bed every day. I don't know if everyone else does that, but I've always noticed it's just like a great way to get my win in the morning. And some other people, I think, have mentioned that. But that's like, I do those things, like, you know, I make sure I'm reading every day, and I make sure I make my bed. And those are kind of like two wins in the morning that always I'm like, no, it's a pretty good day.

• 28:15Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 28:16Noah Kagan?

  So to the book Who?

• 28:16Tim Ferriss?

  Not to interrupt, but I want to actually reinforce that for people, because I never made my bed. And then two things happened. I saw a commencement speech by a war hero who, you know, just a highly, highly decorated veteran who'd also come back to civilian life and just done incredibly well in the private sector. And he said, you can't always change everything in the world you want to change, but start with making your bed in the morning. And I was like, what? Huh. But it stuck with me. And then I met a monk, I think his name is Dandipani. I might be messing up the pronunciation. In any case, He said, if you want to have a feeling of sort of calm control over things,

• 29:01Tim Ferriss?

  and I'm paraphrasing here, start with making your bed in the morning so that when you come back to it, it's not complete chaos and you feel like things are in disarray. And I was like, well, that sounds kind of silly, but whatever, I'll try it for a week. And it's been a, just a, it's had a huge psychic impact. That's an incredible psychological ROI, so I do that every morning as well.

• 29:21Noah Kagan?

  Yeah, I mean, it's funny, I was talking with my team about similar kind of like, what are things that you could do today and you don't need anybody else? And you could, you know, make yourself feel better and get better, you know, I would say success. And, and two things that I've noticed is one, this is kind of a tangential one, but it's organize your dollar bills. I don't know if you do that.

• 29:38Tim Ferriss?

  I, I'm not sure. You mean like by denomination?

• 29:41Noah Kagan?

  By, I do it by denomination. I do it in the same order, so they're all front facing in my wallet.

• 29:47Tim Ferriss?

  Okay.

• 29:47Noah Kagan?

  And so I, I think it's a Suzy Orman thing she said 10 years ago or so, but I've done it. And I just think it's like a respectful thing for your money and it kind of makes you like, okay, money is good. And the other thing is that with the bed thing and things in my life in general, I don't know who told me this, but it's hard for me to let it go, which is like, just do it now. And so if you see something that's broken or if it's on the floor, if you have a dish, so like just get it over with. And I try to, like, for some reason, I can't let that go. Whenever there's things like that, it just helps me get that kind of stuff done and it's relieving.

• 30:13Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 30:14Noah Kagan?

  So I do that. That's, do you have mantras like that or anything mentally that you?

• 30:17Tim Ferriss?

  I, well, I do, or reminders that are just soundbites that I've picked up over time. One of them that I thought was really profound in a lot of ways, was advice I got from this, this mother. I mean, I, I stayed with a, an older couple and their family in Panama at one point. And the, they were a real power couple. I mean, the, the, the wife had done a ton when she was focused on career. Husband was a huge player and had like bought and sold some of the biggest companies in Central and South America. And they were both really, really content and accomplished. And those two don't always go together. They're actually pretty rare.

• 30:58Tim Ferriss?

  And what she said to me was, you should make sure you always have an incredible bed and, and at least one incredible pair of shoes. Because if you're not in one, you're going to be in the other. And I was like. Huh. And so I started, I had always bought kind of the cheapest shoes to get around. And I was like, ah, it doesn't matter. I kind of, I viewed my shoes like a car almost, which is how I view cars. I'm like, I don't need a Ferrari or some fancy car. It's just getting me from point A to point B. Like, give me the crappiest thing, the cheapest thing that'll, that'll do the job. And I viewed my shoes in the same way. And I didn't realize how many physical problems I'd created until I actually invested in, started investing in better shoes. You don't need a lot. I mean, you could have one pair, but it's like one pair of very good walking shoes.

• 31:44Tim Ferriss?

  And, and you know, I, I tend to prefer these days, not necessarily the five fingers or anything like that, because I don't think those are great walking shoes, because the human foot is not designed to walk on concrete or asphalt. But rather what you would call zero drop shoes, so shoes that don't have an elevated heel, but do have some protection for the bottom of the foot. And you can spend, say, twenty to forty bucks on a good pair of like Chuck Taylors or vans that, and I have a black pair of vans, for instance, that can double as dress shoes. Nobody notices. I've had people compliment me on the shoes when I'm at like a business dinner. Like, oh, those are great shoes. What are they? And I say vans and they just, they're astonished.

• 32:28Tim Ferriss?

  So that tip, you know, having a high quality bed and, and high quality bedding, and then at least one pair of high quality shoes is, is something that's, that's stuck with me.

• 32:41Noah Kagan?

  I, I think that's so, one, you know, one thing you were saying that that was cool. It's like, when you tell stories, it's so much easier to remember. So in like two weeks, I can be like, yeah, Tim was like in the jungle in Panama with like some guru and they told him about choosing a bed. And it's so much easier for me to remember that versus you just like, yeah, have a bed and better shoes.

• 32:57Tim Ferriss?

  Oh, yeah. It won't, it won't stick, right? And the only reason, the only reason I've remembered that is because the context was unique, right?

• 33:05Noah Kagan?

  It's interesting about what we remember. It's, it's funny. There's this music artist, and I'll talk about the book Who, but there's this music artist named Stitches. I don't know if you've ever heard of him. He's kind of like off the grid. He's Florida based, but the guy is insane. Like, he talks about doing drugs. He does, doesn't talk about it. He does drugs on stage.

• 33:22Noah Kagan?

  Like he's got stitches tattooed all over his face and it's very extreme and you know, maybe it's a fad, maybe it's for now, but it makes me think about marketing and business and being remembered and it kind of made me realize like you don't get remembered in the middle.

• 33:34Tim Ferriss?

  No, you don't. You don't get remembered in the middle and you need to, that's why I recommend, and look, it's not a perfect book, but it is a very helpful book, at least for me, The Twenty-Two Immutable Laws of Marketing.

• 33:45Noah Kagan?

  Yeah.

• 33:45Tim Ferriss?

  The old version with not, don't get the like for internet one that's like AOL era. Get the old one, which is like airlines and imported beer and all of these case studies. But it really points out that if you want positioning, whether that's for a product, for a, a, a point you're trying to persuade people to accept or negotiation, you have to, uh, it's not enough just to be better. You have to be different because no one will have a chance to realize you're better if you don't have their attention first. Uh, and so just thinking of positioning in that way is basically better as necessary, but

• 34:29Tim Ferriss?

  not sufficient, I think is, is super critical.

• 34:32Noah Kagan?

  It's funny though, because we're, we're like trained as, as like, I think humans to follow orders and raise our hands and stand in line. And I always try to encourage people and myself included to break a rule. And so I'm like, not every day, but I'm like, okay, can I run this light? Which not obviously I'm trying to run lights and kill people, but it's like, all right, well, it says do not enter this way, but maybe I should just enter it. Or tell, you know, one thing I've recommended to people is like the coffee challenge.

• 34:54Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, I was gonna say.

• 34:56Noah Kagan?

  Have you heard of the coffee challenge?

• 34:57Tim Ferriss?

  Well, I have because when we, uh, when we were filming the Tim Ferriss Experiment together, you actually forced our student to go do this, which I thought was fantastic. Uh, and so maybe you could explain that to people because certainly, uh, the, the Jason Bourne style going the wrong way down a one-way is probably not what I would suggest people to do, but, uh, the coffee challenge is something I would suggest everyone do. So maybe you can explain that.

• 35:22Noah Kagan?

  Yeah. Um, well, it's funny. So I'll tell the story of my brother. Uh, so I told my brother to do the coffee challenge and he's like, I'm a doctor. I'm the man. I could do anything. And, uh, so we went to like some random place in Arizona where he lives. And so the coffee challenge is you have to go up to the counter and you order coffee. And if you don't drink coffee, order tea. If you don't drink tea, order water. I don't care. And then you just ask for 10% off. And everyone listening, I know you're listening right now in your ears, you're like, oh, that's stupid. Noah's stupid, Tim, I'm gonna pause this podcast, whatever, because it's so easy. I've been doing sales 20 years. And I told my brother to do it and he's like, are you kidding me? I could do it, I'll do it in a minute. So it was on his birthday last year and he goes up to the guy and he pauses because he's scared.

• 36:06Noah Kagan?

  And I filmed the whole thing and I was like, he's like, could I have 10% off? And they're like, why? He's like, cuz? And I do believe they ended up giving it to him. And the coffee challenge sounds kind of silly, but the whole point is, you know, to a business and in life, and to even, you know, being on, not necessarily the extremes, but you have to ask for things and you have to put yourself out there. And that's the hard part. And for anyone who hasn't done the coffee challenge, once you go do it, you learn just a ton about yourself. Nothing that you could read in a book or that you can even do just hearing. So next time, today, you're at a place where you're buying something, ask for 10% off, tell them Tim sent ya.

• 36:42Tim Ferriss?

  Don't do that, do not do that.

• 36:44Noah Kagan?

  Okay, tell them Noah sent ya, I'll take it, it's fine, tell them to come to me. And see what you learn about yourself, because you realize it's harder than it is, but once you get over it. And we did this for our monthly 1K product where it's like, hey, go figure out that asking for money and asking for things isn't as hard as it seems. And now you can start asking for things that you're like, well, now I want you to buy something of mine or a service or a product that, you know, I really believe in. Versus just, you know, asking for a discount, which is more of a practice.

• 37:07Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, and I think there are a couple of things that are important to underscore there. The first is, a lot of the limitations we feel we have are completely self-imposed. And if you look at, say, the coffee challenge or a comfort exercise, like one from the four hour work week, which was going into a coffee shop. And I would suggest probably doing these two, two different coffee shops. Just go in and lay down on the floor for like five seconds and don't say anything and then just get back up like nothing happened.

• 37:38Tim Ferriss?

  And the worst case scenario is so trivial. You know what I mean? It's so trivial. It's just a little bit of discomfort. But it goes to show you how many rules we follow that may not be serving our best interest. Right? And those, the coffee shop rules are just easy to break. So it's a safe experimental lab. But, you know, people are like, well, I can do this or I can do that. And I remember asking, you know, Matt Mullenweg, the lead developer WordPress, who's now the CEO of Automattic, which is a billion dollar plus company. I asked him a question at one point and I was like, well, is it this or is it this? And his answer was, that's a false dichotomy. Meaning you're asking me to choose between, between two things that are not mutually exclusive or there are other options, right?

• 38:23Tim Ferriss?

  Like what is C, what is the C option? What is the D option? And it's, it's, there's an expression, and I'm paraphrasing here. It's a quote actually from Thomas Edison, who said, you know, when you've examined all the options, just remember, colon, you haven't. And it's like, huh, interesting. And I mean, for, for example, I mean, with, with the Tim Ferriss experiment with the TV show, when the division at Turner went out of business and everything got shut down, everything got shelved, almost everybody basically said like, that's game over. All right, let's all move on with our lives. We had a good time. That's it. You can't get the TV show out. You can't get the TV show back or anything like that. And it took a year of looking at, you know, what if I did this absurd thing? What if I took this absurd approach?

• 39:08Tim Ferriss?

  Like, how do I craft a deal when it's, even if I were to get the show back for Turner, it's, it's a rounding error on pocket change for them. They're, they're just, there's not really incentives. Like, how do you figure out the deal structuring and so on? And eventually found a way to do it. But it took a lot of poking and prodding and kind of rolling out hypotheticals, like taking a piece of paper and being like, okay, so I'm just going to freehand write and flow for like 10 minutes and just like, what are the most absurd things I could do to possibly get these things back? And not judge, right? You're going to throw out really stupid things, probably some illegal things, probably some dangerous things, probably some completely self-destructive things. And then you look through it and you're like, okay, now this is interesting.

• 39:51Tim Ferriss?

  And I heard a, a, a quote from, or a story from a comedian once, stand-up guy. And he said, uh, how did he put it? He said, Writing well or generating good ideas is like orchestrating a room full of people in a fire emergency. He's like, when if there's a fire, you can't have everyone rush for the exit at once. And because they'll get blocked in the doorway, you have to let each one out at a time, and then you can organize it afterwards. You can like group them into whatever stupid, mediocre and good ideas after the fact. And so just doing that type of freehand idea generation for solutions, I find to be to be super helpful. But I know I know we've passed around a little bit, but

• 40:34Noah Kagan?

  We're supposed to talk about the who book, but you know what's funny Tim? Because like, I mean, obviously me and you are a little more known on the internet. And, you know, we've done some things that people will be like, well, you're Tim Ferriss, right? And that's actually what I hear a lot. And so it's like, well, you're Tim, so it's easier for you. And I don't think they have, I don't know, I think a lot of people don't have the realization that like, everyone has that opportunity.

• 40:54Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, I know, definitely. And I had, I mean, for instance, I had something I was doing online recently. And this guy responded on Twitter and he said, well, it's easy for you. You're Tim Ferriss, and you have a blog with a million plus people. And this other guy, well-known blogger Darren Darren Rose, or it might be Rouse, R O W S E, pro blogger, who's a very, very savvy content guy with a huge audience. He said, we all start at the same place, zero readers. Yeah. And it's just like, rather than rather than dismissing, dismissing other people as having achieved things that are unattainable, recognize like

• 41:35Tim Ferriss?

  they started kind of like naked and alone in the world without any skills. Those are they had to develop that. And, you know, you and I have a lot of the same challenges, even still today, I assume. I know we've had some pretty deep conversations about challenges we've had, that everybody else has. And it's like, you don't get rid of those problems, you just kind of trade up.

• 41:54Noah Kagan?

  That's dude preach. I'm like, oh, the sermon was good right there. I'm like nodding, I'm like, yeah, Tim. I mean, one thing, you know, especially because I've, you know, started a few businesses and what I what I think most people don't realize is that every major company, Facebook, Dell, Microsoft, Google, all of it started with like one dude or two dudes or two women with no customers. They all started the same size as everyone else, so that it, you know, it start there, get that one customer and build up. And that's how you get to become the size of those companies or, you know, have a large site or whatever it is that, you know, each person wants to accomplish.

• 42:28Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, absolutely. I mean, Amazon in the early days, I mean, their, their desks were, I think they were just doors from like cheap wooden doors from Home Depot across two file cabinets. Like those were their desks.

• 42:42Noah Kagan?

  You know what I think about Tim, especially like with you. So I met you before your even first book came out. I always think it's the funniest thing. I email you, I got email intro to you and I got an auto responder that's like, hey, I'm surfing in Costa Rica. And I'm like, who the fuck is Tim Ferriss? You know, an auto responder surfing in Costa Rica? Hey, I'll be back in two weeks. I'm like, all right, I don't really want to meet this guy. But I think what separates out a lot of the winners versus losers is that it's not only that you got the book out there, but you've been doing it consistently for 10 years. Same with Zuckerberg at Facebook is that it's easy to be, to get a hit for a week or a month or two months, but do it for, you know, Zuck has made decisions for 10 years. You've done your stuff for 10 years, like AppSumo I've been doing for five years, like, you know, those things like, I mean, you know, AppSumo is now a seven figure business, but I made $12,000 myself the first year.

• 43:25Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 43:25Noah Kagan?

  And that, you know, it's like, well, no, you're making, you know, good money now, but it's like, yeah, it starts small and then you gotta keep going. You gotta persist with it.

• 43:34Tim Ferriss?

  No, definitely. And you have to choose good teachers. And for me, because I was on my own so much and probably for you, books were a lot of those teachers for me.

• 43:43Noah Kagan?

  Dude, I love, I love how you brought it back.

• 43:44Tim Ferriss?

  You see, you see.

• 43:45Noah Kagan?

  Did everyone hear that right there? Look at, that's an interviewer. All right. So we're gonna do the who book. So let me just, look, do you mind if I just rattle them off and then people just go buy them?

• 43:53Tim Ferriss?

  Rattle them off and then I might ask you to dig into some.

• 43:56Noah Kagan?

  All right. So here are the books. So I went through, I have a, I can give you the list for everyone, but every book I've read, I catalog every book and movie I've read.

• 44:04Noah Kagan?

  And I'm just gonna give you like the seven-ish one, the business related and personal that I think are just super, super helpful. My favorite one in the past year has been essentialism.

• 44:14Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 44:14Noah Kagan?

  And it's basically just, the whole book literally is just like, say no to everything. That's not important. So I learned that at Facebook, that book was a great reminder of it. And even like with our main product, sumome.com, like we have one goal, which is to hit a certain revenue target. And every decision we do is either, does it help towards that or not? And we say no to everything else. The WHO book, and feel free to interrupt me. I'm sure you will. I don't have to say that, do I?

• 44:38Tim Ferriss?

  No. We've, yeah, we've known each other long enough. I'll, I'll jump in if need be.

• 44:43Noah Kagan?

  Perfect. The WHO book is, there's a longer book called Top Grading, which I wouldn't read because it's like, it's thick. It's really thick. The WHO book is like a condensed version of it. And I learned it at Mint where the founder was using it. And so WHO basically helps you create a framework for thinking about who you want to hire, the questions you want to ask, and then how do you filter, find them, and then get down to make sure you have the right person. Matt's interview was great because he makes people audition for the jobs. And I like that, but I also use WHO, which, you know, helps you have some really basic questions that you could standardize so that you can compare people.

• 45:14Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah. Who has, who has some really solid chapters that lay out exactly the series of questions that you can ask at different points in the process? It's really solid.

• 45:25Noah Kagan?

  What I'll do, Tim, is I'll email you after this. I'll email you my, I'm so weird. I, I write book reports on every book I read.

• 45:31Tim Ferriss?

  Awesome.

• 45:32Noah Kagan?

  And so I'll email you the book report on WHO. So for the people that, you know, it's funny because I think if you read it, you'll get more out of it because you'll, you have to keep reading the same message. Most books are one page, but you repeat it enough times, you remember it. And so, yeah, I'll send you the book report afterwards so that people can, uh,

• 45:46Tim Ferriss?

  Cool.

• 45:46Noah Kagan?

  Get the condensed version.

• 45:47Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, I'll add, I'll add all sorts of goodies in the, in the show notes.

• 45:50Noah Kagan?

  My two other, my favorite sales business book of all time, which is one of the underground ones, and I think you might know Amanda Holmes, but it's from her father and it's called The Ultimate Sales Machine. And this book is just like, it's like an underground. I had it on my shelf for six months. It was one that you kind of skip over. Like I have a books on my shelf now and I skip over them. I'm like, nah, I'll get to that one later. And I finally got it for an airplane and I get on the airplane and I open the first page and I'm on the introduction and I'm like, all right, rabbit ear that page, next page, rabbit ear, next page, rabbit ear. Like the whole book was folded over. And I finished on that airplane ride. And it's one of these books that not enough people talk about, but everyone who reads it is always like, oh, I'm really glad I read that one.

• 46:28Tim Ferriss?

  You must fold your pages like origami masterpieces. Cause I usually hear, I usually hear dog ear, but rabbit ear I kind of like.

• 46:35Noah Kagan?

  Yeah. I've actually been trying to carry a pen when I read certain business books because I just find it easier to come back to the the specific sections I want to write in my book reports. Other things, an old school book that if you're looking to do service type business, Million Dollar Consulting is great for how to raise your prices and how to actually start your own service or consulting based business. I really like that. Right now, I'm really thinking a lot more about sales, especially with Sumo Me as we're growing that product. So I read two books recently that were really strong on sales. One's the Sales Acceleration Formula. And that is more around SaaS based selling, but it could still be good for, you know, how to find the right.

• 47:09Tim Ferriss?

  Software as a surface, like the Sumo Me's or the Dropbox's of the world.

• 47:14Noah Kagan?

  Wow, you lumped me with Dropbox. Thanks, bro.

• 47:15Tim Ferriss?

  No problem. Amen.

• 47:18Noah Kagan?

  The Sumo Me, the Googles.

• 47:21Noah Kagan?

  So it's basically like how to find, like filter through people on LinkedIn, how to ask, like the specific text to how to ask for a referral. You don't ask for, you don't email someone asking to hire them. You ask, email them, ask to refer someone else. And that's generally a good way to get to know them and possibly get a referral.

• 47:35Tim Ferriss?

  Well, it's like raising money. People say if you want, if you want money, ask for advice. If you want advice, ask for money.

• 47:40Noah Kagan?

  Oh, man. Actually, you know, one thing that I think Shane, do you know Shane Snow?

• 47:44Tim Ferriss?

  I do, yeah.

• 47:45Noah Kagan?

  Oh, yeah, he's been on your site a few times. I love Shane.

• 47:47Tim Ferriss?

  He wrote, he did a bunch of experimentation with Soylent when it first came out and then wrote the first kind of review of two weeks of being on it on my blog, which caused all sorts of firestorms. But yeah, yeah, I do know Shane.

• 47:59Noah Kagan?

  I love Shane and everyone should check out his book, Smart Cuts. It's actually, it's a really good book, too, but that wasn't even the point. Shane told me one of the great ways you can get a mentor or meet anyone you want to meet is just interview them. So that's something actually for me, there's companies I really respect like Taco Deli. It's a local, it's my favorite taco in the world. And they're in Austin. And so I basically, you know, you reach out to people like, hey, I just want to promote you to my audience. And even if you have a small audience and, you know, Tim, me and you can actually, I think we're going to possibly later show people how to get their own audience live, right? In the show.

• 48:28Tim Ferriss?

  Oh, yeah.

• 48:29Noah Kagan?

  Well, it won't be live, it'll be recorded and you can do it instantly when you listen to it on your phone. And so Shane was basically like, yeah, interview people and then it's a chance for you to meet and connect and it's the best way to get ahold of someone versus normally you, you know, ask an email and be like, hey, can I just have something?

• 48:42Noah Kagan?

  A few other books that I'm really, I really enjoyed, Spin Selling really shifted my mindset about how you're going to be approaching customers and really thinking about like the formula, which is like, you know, situation, problem, implication, and then like so natural solution or need solution. And it basically helps you really transition people to be like, hey, what problem do you have? And think about if you're really helping them and say, well, if you're going to need this help, you should probably use our solution.

• 49:05Noah Kagan?

  It's a great way of thinking about it.

• 49:06Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, no, absolutely.

• 49:07Noah Kagan?

  Think of yourself as an advocate, which is like, hey, you have, what's your situation? All right, what problem do you have? All right, well, how would, if we can solve it, how would that make your life better? Oh, well, guess what? We actually have that solution for that problem that we just solved for you that you, sounds like was what really important for you.

• 49:19Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, no, absolutely. And this applies in more places than people might realize. So for instance, I had someone ask me recently, uh, you know, why do you think people take action when they read your stuff? Like, it seems like there's a high conversion rate compared to most books, like people actually take action. And I was like, well, I'm not sure if that's true, but I hope it's true. And if it is true, I think it's because in each of my chapters, let's just say, in the four hour body, I basically take that spin selling approach of establishing the problem first and combine it with the sort of story arc of like the writer's journey or Joseph Campbell stuff and tie it into a narrative that people can remember.

• 49:59Tim Ferriss?

  So it's, uh, the, these types of mental frameworks apply to more context scenarios than I think people might realize.

• 50:07Noah Kagan?

  I mean, it applies to everything. I mean, I don't think people realize that, like, the two most important things, I mean, I don't know if the most important, but two very important things are copywriting and selling. And I think those are that and personal finance are three of the probably most undervalued or under recognized things that people should spend more time learning.

• 50:20Tim Ferriss?

  What have you read that has helped you most with copywriting?

• 50:24Noah Kagan?

  Number one thing, and it's completely free, is the Gary Halbert letters.

• 50:27Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 50:27Noah Kagan?

  So my good, you know Neville? I don't know if you know my good buddy Neville?

• 50:30Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah, of course. Yeah.

• 50:31Noah Kagan?

  Yeah, Neville at Copywriting Course. And Neville got me into him and his, his writing is just so fluid. Um, and I, I, obviously it's practice, which I always hate because when you hear cliche things like that, you're like, I know it's practice, but I want tips. And so the Gary Halbert letters, he wrote these things called the Boron Letters where to his son while he was in jail. And, uh, they're just phenomenal copywriting pieces about how to sell and how to think about things. And, and we can link to that. Those are totally free and great. There's the other stuff like Ogilvy on Advertising is a really good book.

• 51:01Tim Ferriss?

  It's so, uh, it's, it's so often recommended, but so few people actually read it. It's a really good book.

• 51:08Noah Kagan?

  I, you know what I did, and I like literally said, this is not a joke for you or your audience. Like I, I in college, I in college, obviously that's a great sentence. In college, I was, I was in English as a second language.

• 51:21Tim Ferriss?

  What?

• 51:22Noah Kagan?

  Dude, I'm American. I was born in San Jose, California. Like my parents speak English. So I've just tried to give you an idea of how bad of a writer I was. And maybe still am.

• 51:32Tim Ferriss?

  Wait, are you serious?

• 51:33Noah Kagan?

  Yeah, dude, I was in English as a second language. It was me and a bunch of people who couldn't speak English.

• 51:36Tim Ferriss?

  You took ESL courses?

• 51:38Noah Kagan?

  Yeah, well, I didn't want to.

• 51:39Tim Ferriss?

  Did you like crash the course or was it recommended to you?

• 51:42Noah Kagan?

  It was a requirement at Cal because I wasn't, my English was so low.

• 51:48Noah Kagan?

  I wish it was like a joke. I'd be like, oh, well, yeah, I can speak English. It's like, dude, I'm from America.

• 51:53Tim Ferriss?

  You know, that's, it's funny you mention that because I remember looking at TOEFL, the test of English as a foreign language. And people generally don't actually understand the mechanics of their native language very well. But you forget that and you think you're like, oh, I'm a native speaker. Of course I know English. Then you look at the test and they're like, what is the difference between anything and something? And you're like, uh.

• 52:16Tim Ferriss?

  I would totally fail TOEFL. If I had to take TOEFL to get into anything, absolutely would probably flunk out.

• 52:23Noah Kagan?

  Yeah, no. So it's serious. So I'd say Gary Hubbard helped. And actually, no one thing that's not a book, but really probably changed the game for me, writing wise, besides writing a lot, was getting an editor. And that's because I would write something and I'd be like, this sounds great. I can't believe I'll get it. And then I would show it to Neville or Anton at the AppSumo team. And they'd be like, this is garbage. And I'd be like, no, it's good. And then once they would start reading it

• 52:45Noah Kagan?

  and give me the feedback, it changed. And I'm like, okay, now I'm getting why. It's not as entertaining or how I can improve things like photos and bold and how I shift around my sentence grammar and structure.

• 52:54Tim Ferriss?

  How would you suggest people implement that for themselves? If they're asking someone to proofread something, what do you, what are the instructions that you give someone? Or what type of person are you looking for?

• 53:05Noah Kagan?

  Well, working backwards, I'm looking for someone who I like their writing. And also I'll tell you what I did last year, which was really helpful. I created an inner circle. And it basically was people that I really enjoyed their writing. And I said, hey, I'm going to create a small group of people. I think there's about five of us. And anytime we're putting out an article, let's send it to the group. And you could leave comments in the Google Doc. Everyone can just leave a comment. So it doesn't change the writing, but it can give you feedback about that type of writing. And it also, when you finally finish the article, those people would help promote it, which is a whole nother marketing tactic.

• 53:35Tim Ferriss?

  So do those people, then you would upload a new doc to, say, a shared folder? And then just invite those people via email? Or how do you guys?

• 53:41Noah Kagan?

  Exactly. Well, so if you created a Google Docs, so I'd go to Google Docs, create a file, just any file. I would share it with them. So I'd share it with you. And then on that file, you can have it be just comment only. And so they would go in and leave a bunch of comments. I would go fix it and be like, wow, that was actually a lot better. And then subsequently, my writing even gets stronger. And I would do it for them when they had their articles.

• 54:00Tim Ferriss?

  Got it. Got it.

• 54:01Noah Kagan?

  Because like, I don't know, for you, like, I'm, I'm still, you know, okdork.com, my personal blog, you know, it's a hundred thousand subscribers, it gets decent amount of traffic. I'm still scared of my writing because it's just like, because, you know, and that's why I like having an editor, because I'm like, there's probably tons of grammar that's going to get ripped on. And, you know, it represents me and I want to look good. So having the editor and like peers be able to edit my things, especially like with Google Docs. I know a lot of people use like a Hemingway or what is it, Draft?

• 54:26Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, Draft I've used. It's pretty sweet. Draft I like. I haven't used Hemingway, like the name, despite the guy's somewhat unfortunate end.

• 54:34Noah Kagan?

  But those are two ones for like group editing. I mean, so for writing, yeah, those are the stuff. And then the two ones, I would say, coming back to like selling stuff. Spin selling I just mentioned sells acceleration formula. We talked about, and then I'd say lastly, there's a book called Small Giants.

• 54:49Tim Ferriss?

  Small Giants is a great book. It, I'll let you describe it. It had a huge impact on me, though, when I read it.

• 54:56Noah Kagan?

  What was the impact?

• 54:57Tim Ferriss?

  Five, seven, eight years ago. Well, I assume we're talking about the same book. It's Bo Burling, Burling.

• 55:03Noah Kagan?

  Exactly.

• 55:04Tim Ferriss?

  It was just, I think the subtitle, what is the subtitle? Something like companies that choose to be the best, not the biggest, or something like that. But the, the idea that size or growth does not have to be the measure of success if you're an entrepreneur is just a very conceptually uncommon thing to hear. And I just love, that's one of the books that kind of put the... The finishing touches on convincing me that, you know, selling, trying to find price insensitive people to sell to is just a complete game changer, or making something that is so good and so

• 55:45Tim Ferriss?

  overdelivers that you can charge a premium price. Those are a few of the things that I took away from that. What about you?

• 55:52Noah Kagan?

  That's very long. I mean, I think if you, people that are listening that are not in Silicon Valley, I don't think they understand like how, I don't know, I don't know exactly how to share, but it's just like, everything is about if you're a billion dollar company, and if you're going viral, and if you have a lot of funding, and if you're not, you're a nobody, and you're nothing, and everything is pointless. And it was refreshing to hear these, you know, pretty substantial companies like Cliff Bar, or I think there's a beer company in San Francisco, that were doing great things in big companies, but just doing it in their own way. And it's, you know, it's very empowering to realize like, yeah, you can do your own thing, and it can be big, and you don't have to compromise on those things. Like, my favorite taco shop here, it's been, they've been around since 1999, and they have five shops. But our common notion is that you have to go

• 56:35Noah Kagan?

  viral, not viral, but you have to scale. So 10 shops and 20 shops. And they're going at a pace that's comfortable for them. They don't have to be Starbucks, you know, and they're just doing their Taco Deli thing, and that's why I respect them, and you know, I talk about them so much.

• 56:48Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, it's, it's, it can be a really profound, I think, awakening for people when they start to, when they sit down and really try to assess what, what would add value to their lives, and more joy and excitement. And that's, that's very rarely money for the sake of money. Because the money you exchange for an experience, or interacting with certain types of people, or any number of things. And there are other ways to get those things besides scaling a company, making, making a bunch of money that you can trade for those things. I mean, for instance, you mentioned the taco shop. You could look at other examples, like Jiro from Jiro Dreams of Sushi, and his like 12-seater, three-star

• 57:36Tim Ferriss?

  Sushi restaurant in Tokyo, he has no desire to scale that. You know what I mean? In fact, it's kind of antithetical to his entire personality and mission for sort of perfecting his craft. Right? And, you know, one of the examples from Small Giants, there was an Andy DeFranco example, but then there was another example, which I thought was so awesomely niche and so just fantastic, which was, and I'm pretty sure I'm getting the book right. It was leather pants. And specifically, the person who made leather pants for like Sheryl Crow, and they became hugely famous because she has nice legs and ass, but also the pants were really cool. And, you know, for, I think Aerosmith and so on. But it, one of these examples where they're, they're like, this guy I bought a hunting rifle from.

• 58:21Tim Ferriss?

  He makes 20 rifles a year and they're customized. They're just incredible. And he'd done me a bunch of favors and I, I wanted one of his guns, but it was also just to say thank you. And they have no desire to scale. And how that, how dramatically that improves their quality of life and ability to, ability to optimize other facets of their life. When you remove that as the sole objective. Anyway, I just, I'm really glad you brought that book up because I, I actually have it on my bookshelf, literally in my living room, positioned in a way that anytime I sit down on my couch, I can see it face out right next to a handful of other books like Zorba the Greek and The Magic of Thinking Big and a few others.

• 59:05Noah Kagan?

  Have you, who read Richard Feynman's book?

• 59:08Tim Ferriss?

  Oh, surely you must be joking, Mr. Feynman?

• 59:10Noah Kagan?

  Dude, have you talked about it on the show?

• 59:11Tim Ferriss?

  I, I don't think I have, but it's, that is actually another one of the like half dozen books that's up on my shelf.

• 59:19Noah Kagan?

  I mean,

• 59:20Tim Ferriss?

  why don't you, why don't you talk about that book for a second? Because it's one of my favorite books of all time.

• 59:24Noah Kagan?

  It's one of these books, and I have it. So if you ever meet me in person, I'll give you my, I have an extra copy because it's just that amazing. This is a guy who won the Nobel Prize, I believe. He helped create the atomic bomb.

• 59:34Tim Ferriss?

  Yep, yeah, he worked at Los Alamos. Also helped identify the, the O-ring that caused the Challenger disaster.

• 59:41Noah Kagan?

  And just like the amount of stuff that he's done, you're like, okay, this guy's got to be weird. And he's just so greatly weird and he talks like a human. And just like all of his experience, I think the biggest thing that I took away from the book is just his curiosity to life and experiences. Where he would just start like, oh, well, you know, one day I just thought drinking wasn't fun, so I stopped drinking. And he walked out of a bar and never drinking again, or he wanted to pick up, I think, was it bongo drums?

• 1:00:02Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, bongo drums. He also wanted to learn how to pick up women, so he would go into bars.

• 1:00:09Tim Ferriss?

  Just didn't give a shit what other people thought too, which was amazingly refreshing. He decided he wanted to learn how to safe crack, to open safes. And so he would prank people in Los Alamos where they were building the atomic bomb. So he would, he would take out confidential papers and like put them on the desk of somebody he wanted to freak out.

• 1:00:31Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 1:00:32Noah Kagan?

  So the Feynman book and what I love most about it, it just makes you curious about the world. I was mentioning briefly, like my brother's kid is touching grass for the first time and I just like a grass, I'm like, oh, grass, whatever. And this kid is like touching grass and feeling it and experiencing it. And it makes you kind of just appreciate all the things that are going around in life in the world. I'm like, oh, that's really great. And I think that book just inspired me with that. And that's why I highly recommend it.

• 1:00:52Tim Ferriss?

  It's a must read. And also the fact that when he was on his last, you know, on his sort of last legs towards the end of his life, he was still doing things that he, that challenged his belief systems or his skill sets. So he learned how to paint very late in his life. As a scientist who was super diehard engineer, who really felt like the romanticizing of, say, people who would argue that, you know, the scientist takes the magic out of something like a flower because they deconstruct it in scientific terms. And his argument was that's entirely the opposite. We can appreciate so much more that you can't see.

• 1:01:35Tim Ferriss?

  And but felt compelled to sort of trade best practices with a friend of his who is a well-known painter and become a white belt again and suck at painting. And I don't know if this was in his book. I think there's a, there's actually an interview with Richard Feynman. I'll link to this in the show notes at fourhourworkweek.com/podcast. But there's a YouTube video that I'll link to called The Pleasure of Finding Things Out. And I think in that, might be somewhere else, they talk about he would go to strip clubs to paint as like an old dude. And just really was was not affected by public pressure.

• 1:02:17Tim Ferriss?

  And that's something I admire so much, especially as in times when I feel defensive, like I have to protect something that I've created or anything like that. The fact that he was willing to seemingly throw it all away by doing things that would negatively impact his reputation, when in the end, they never did. Nobody cared because they're too busy thinking about themselves.

• 1:02:39Noah Kagan?

  Exactly. And to add to that, Tim, I think you're right on the money. One thing that I started doing is you ever, I'm like, well, I try to notice like when I'm feeling really good or like what happened that made me feel really good. And I was noticing that reading and like studying and learning, like reading Feynman's book made me feel really good. But I noticed as we get older, you just like you schedule a day around all the work stuff you're doing. And so on Tuesdays from 10 to 12, I schedule nothing but learning. So every Tuesday, it's on repeat. And that's one of my tactics. I put things on repeat on my calendar, so 10 to 12 every Tuesday. And my friend Neville again, got me into learning from YouTube videos. And I'm like YouTube videos. And so I go on YouTube videos and I bookmark specific people. So Feynman's videos are amazing and then Elon Musk's videos are just as phenomenal. And I was like, wow, you can learn from YouTube.

• 1:03:23Noah Kagan?

  I never really thought of intentionally going to find things to listen to and watch.

• 1:03:26Tim Ferriss?

  What, how did you choose that time on Tuesday?

• 1:03:30Noah Kagan?

  Monday, I do team meetings. And so I would, you know, I kind of almost be tempted to do it all day, but Monday is kind of like my organization day. I can give you, if you know, I can talk about afterwards. I do a specific thing that really helps me on my Mondays. So Tuesday is like the next day that I'm available to start thinking about things. Cause most of your good stuff doesn't come when you're doing, it comes when you're thinking. And then I'm starting to incorporate on my Thursdays, trying to do like a fun activity like disc golf.

• 1:03:55Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 1:03:55Noah Kagan?

  So on Thursday afternoons, Thursday mornings, 10 to 12, I'll try to go out and just like play disc golf or go for a bike ride or something where I just have time that's my mind is like a little more free.

• 1:04:05Tim Ferriss?

  What do you have your activities clustered by day? Like, what do you do? For instance, you said team meetings on Mondays. Is there a certain focus on Tuesdays, aside from the studying? Wednesday, Thursday, Friday? Like, do you break things out and categorize them that way?

• 1:04:22Noah Kagan?

  I don't batch. The way I look at my week is on Monday mornings, I basically have three categories that matter to me, which is like work, workout, and personal. And then I label three things for each one. And workout, I put four, because I work out four days a week. So I have three things for work, four things on workout, and three things for personal. And then I put those in my calendar during the week about when I want to batch those tasks. Like, I want to do my work things this time during these days. And then I leave the rest of the calendar open. And I think I learned that from Mark Andreessen, where he's like, "Certain things are going to be more important certain days. I'm not going to try to block it out for something else." And so then I just focus on the three I commit to doing at the week. And then every Monday, I review my calendar with my friend Adam from MyBodyTutor.com. And so we share what we said we're going to do, see how we did.

• 1:05:05Tim Ferriss?

  What was it called, MyBodyTutor?

• 1:05:07Noah Kagan?

  Yeah, have you heard of MyBodyTutor.com?

• 1:05:08Tim Ferriss?

  No, B-O-D-Y-T-U-T-O-R.

• 1:05:11Noah Kagan?

  Yeah, I mean, we can talk about, I'm having to stay long and talk health and fitness, but he basically has helped me get ripped abs. And now he's helped me bulk up to 200. And he's helping me get back down to bulky ripped, bulky and ripped at like 175. And I've been working with him for about a little over four years, and he's one of my best friends.

• 1:05:29Tim Ferriss?

  What are some of, I'm sorry, go ahead.

• 1:05:32Noah Kagan?

  Well, I was gonna say, so that's what I, how I organize my week, where on Mondays, I email him a review of the previous week using followup.cc, because it reminds me. And I think if you don't review what you've done, it's hard to know how you're progressing. And then I commit to what I want to do this upcoming week. And so everyone should get an accountability buddy.

• 1:05:47Tim Ferriss?

  Definitely.

• 1:05:48Noah Kagan?

  Because it's, so Adam emails me, I'm like, yo, why didn't you do this last week? Or how come every week you're doing the same crappy thing that's not doing anything? You should think differently about it. So I think for side projects or full-time businesses, I still do it with him. And I've been doing this with him for a few years now.

• 1:06:01Tim Ferriss?

  Very cool. I want to, I want to, to pick a little bit at some of the tips you have for people who might want to gain muscular size. Before I get to that, I want to add a few other resources. So you mentioned my body tutor, which is great. I hadn't heard of it. So that's definitely going to go in the back of my mind on the list. A couple of others that people might like for finding accountability partners would be coach.me, coach.me. It used to be Lyft.

• 1:06:27Noah Kagan?

  Oh, really?

• 1:06:28Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah. And I, I advise those guys. So I've, I've had fun, running experiments with them. The other is, there are two others actually. Stick.com, S T I C K K dot com, where you can put money on the line that you can lose if you don't hit certain milestones, which is very incentivizing for people as a consequence. And then one that is very strictly money related, which is dietbet.com. So if you want to lose weight, you can, you can put together a betting pool, basically, and, and make, and make that work. For gaining muscular size, this is, I, I, as you would imagine, get a lot of questions about this. But what were the biggest, if you had to give someone advice, say a guy who is your size before you started bulking up,

• 1:07:13Tim Ferriss?

  for, for gaining 40 pounds in, 40 pounds in six to 12 months. And let's just say most of that should be muscle. What, what would be the advice? If they're like, I've never been able to gain weight, man. I think I'm doing everything that I could possibly do. What are, what are your tips?

• 1:07:30Noah Kagan?

  Well, I, I would start with the foundation. So I wouldn't actually even recommend this to most people because it's, it is challenging once you hit that goal to come back down because you get comfortable eating like nachos and you get comfortable eating like drinking beer and, you know, obviously some people do clean bulks, but I did a mix of it. So what I would actually recommend is get a foundation of being able to eat healthy consistently and maintaining or losing your weight. Probably maintaining for at least, I would say six months to a year. I've been doing a consistent diet for two years before I even tried to bulk. So I don't think if you, unless you're ready to be able, unless you have the mental capacity to be able to control it, I wouldn't recommend it. Cause it's very easy to let, kind of get lost with it. And that's why my fitness pal and Adam were so helpful because for two years I was eating very consistently and, and losing weight and getting the body I wanted.

• 1:08:14Noah Kagan?

  The one thing that was actually fascinating, Tim, is until I started doing my fitness pal, I was going to the gym like three, four days a week, but I was staying tiny. And I'm like, what the, what the F is going on? And it's because I wasn't eating enough protein.

• 1:08:26Tim Ferriss?

  You can say fuck.

• 1:08:27Noah Kagan?

  Frick.

• 1:08:30Noah Kagan?

  Dude, I don't know. Like, I was on Pat Flynn's podcast and he's just like, he's like, "I had to edit half your interview." And so, you know, the, and I've been watching Big Love, the Mormon TV show, so I'm just like, "Oh, about it." Anyways, so, basically, for a long time, I wasn't eating enough protein. And that's why I wasn't getting bigger. And so, that's what made me a little more curious about it. So, number one, I would say, try doing, just maintaining or losing for a year so that you're comfortable with it. The big things with gaining weight, so I went from 160 to 200 in a few months. So, number one, I would say, plan your calorie intake, how much you actually need to be having each day. Because otherwise, besides that, you're blind. You're just like, "Well, I should have this many," and you really don't know. So, if you want to hit a certain weight, just work backwards from how many calories you need to be eating every day to get that amount.

• 1:09:16Noah Kagan?

  I'd say the big things for me were, one, I had a buddy who was doing it at the same time, and that was a game changer, because he's doing it and he's gaining weight, and I'm like, "Well, fuck, I have to do it too." And it was just much more helpful to have someone supporting me. And my, one of my best friends, John Ross, was locally, and we're both gaining. Secondly, I did use WeightGainer, which, I don't know if there's debate, I haven't looked at the tons of science, but it does help you gain weight and get the mass that you want. It does go away a little bit because of creatinine, blah, blah, which I'm not going to get into, because I don't know it super well. But that really significantly helped me gain weight. And ultimately, you kind of have to look at like, alright, you get tired of eating. You get to a point of like, "I am sick of eating," so what is the cheapest way to get as many calories and as much protein in my body to help me gain this weight?

• 1:09:56Noah Kagan?

  So, in the morning, it was like, "How can I do protein shakes, Quest Bar, egg whites, eggs, whatever I could take," and basically doubling everything I was already currently doing. So, whatever you think you're eating, eat double. But basically, at some point, where you have to figure out, and what I started doing is like, what is the protein ratios of food? And just eating the highest protein, the highest, like, calorie food to really put on as much weight as possible.

• 1:10:19Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, it's the, the, the working out isn't the hard part, it's the eating by far.

• 1:10:24Noah Kagan?

  And you plateau, man. I hit like 170 plateaued, 180 plateaued, 190 plateaued. And you know what's funny is, uh, the last night, I wanted to hit it by March 1st to 200 pounds. And this is, you know, I hit, I was at like 197. And, uh, and my girlfriend was like, and I was, it was like 12, it was not 12, it was like 10:30, and I'm like, "I'm not going to hit it." And she's like, "You need to stop being a bitch and start putting some food in your mouth."

• 1:10:51Noah Kagan?

  And you know, I've ate and drank and ate and then at, you know, before midnight, I was a, you know, like Cinderella, I hit my 200. There's a, one other thing that was really helpful, Tim, that I'll, and I think you, I don't know what tool you use. I use We Things Scale.

• 1:11:05Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, Withings. Yeah, yeah. The, the automatic, sort of, I guess it's Wi-Fi or Bluetooth enabled scale that automatically creates graphs for you.

• 1:11:13Noah Kagan?

  So I use, what I do is I have a We Things Scale and I take my, and you can embed your weight chart online. So I embedded it online and I shared it with Adam and he would check in with me every day to be like, "You're skinny, you're fat, you're fat, you're doing well. Why aren't you getting more weight?" and so forth. And it's very counter, because most people want to lose weight. And so when you're trying to gain weight, and especially me, I'm like the guy you never want to, before I would say, "I'm the guy you never want to eat with," because I'd be like, "Egg whites? Can you separate the cheese particles? Can you put no but..." It's like, I'm like, "God, do you want any of the food that they're, they're serving you?" And so it was a shift in me, but having Adam, and then I have a Facebook, like, workout group where I was posting my weight. And, you know, I

• 1:11:56Noah Kagan?

  think the more people that you have that care about you and that are checking in on you on a regular basis, the more it was easier for me to help accomplish that.

• 1:12:02Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, the more you get people invested in your progress, and that could be a Facebook group that you create, or just promising to put Facebook status updates, once a week, for instance, and making that commitment publicly is extremely helpful. A couple of points I'd like to, to underscore. The first is the fact that leaning out first will help you bulk faster. There are a bunch of biochemical reasons for this and, and, and sort of biochemical, but also neuroscience-related reasons, just in terms of regulation of leptin and ghrelin and all of these things, where if you lean out even for two to four weeks, doesn't have to be that long, but

• 1:12:45Tim Ferriss?

  certainly getting to the point where, let's just say hypothetically, you choose this low-carb diet from, for our body, you're already at, say...

• 1:12:53Tim Ferriss?

  14% body fat, you drop 2 to 4% in 4 to 8 weeks. Then you will have developed probably a very good degree of insulin sensitivity. And insulin is an anabolic hormone. That's why bodybuilders sometimes inject insulin. Competitive bodybuilders, which I would never recommend because you can kill yourself.

• 1:13:18Noah Kagan?

  What does that do for them?

• 1:13:19Tim Ferriss?

  It allows them to store more calories ingested in muscle tissue and elsewhere. But it's a very, very, very dangerous thing to do. And you can mimic that a little bit with, say, low doses of alpha lipoic acid. And there are other things that act as insulinomemetics, as they would call them. But if you lean out, like if I really, really want to get big, for whatever reason, I haven't done it in ages because it's just such a slog. I mean, you feel like a Kobe beef cow just being fattened for slaughter. I mean, it's really, it's so, it's so laborious. Oh, my God.

• 1:13:55Noah Kagan?

  Like, I didn't want to eat. You get to, like, at first, you're like, at first, it's hard to do. You're like, I shouldn't have egg, I shouldn't have egg yolk, even though I know fat is good and all that stuff. But then you have egg yolks and then it's like six egg yolks and then you're like, fuck eggs.

• 1:14:06Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, well, exactly. But you do have your kind of supersize me moment where you're like, mm, this is amazing. Yeah, baby. And then a week later, you're just like, can I stop? Please, I want to tap out, please. On the eating, on the training, I'd be curious to know what your biggest mistakes were that you'd been making from a training perspective?

• 1:14:27Noah Kagan?

  Totally. I mean, the number one thing, the number one, number one thing was I wasn't eating enough in the beginning. So even like last year, when I wanted to start getting like bigger muscles, I just was eating so little food. I'm like, well, I'm supposed to eat light, like egg whites and these things. And, you know, and Adam's like, don't try to get bigger. You should, you need to eat more food and you stop being a bitch.

• 1:14:48Noah Kagan?

  And so I started eating the egg yolks and Tucker Max always gave me shit for it too. He's like, dude, you gotta stop being a bitch. And I guess that's maybe a common theme. And so you do that and you realize like bigger dogs need more food. So if you want to be bigger, you need to put more in.

• 1:15:01Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 1:15:03Noah Kagan?

  So that was number one. And then I started just doing heavier sets and less reps.

• 1:15:06Tim Ferriss?

  What would, so what were you doing and what did you change it to?

• 1:15:10Noah Kagan?

  So I, there's actually a few different programs. There's a guy named The Online Coach. And he does a thing called the Scholl Program. It's like something hypertrophy. I don't know what he's.

• 1:15:20Tim Ferriss?

  Scholl, like S H O L L?

• 1:15:22Noah Kagan?

  S H U L.

• 1:15:24Tim Ferriss?

  S H U L.

• 1:15:25Noah Kagan?

  Program that I was following and I can, I can send that to you afterwards. So I followed his program. And a lot of what his program is like, super heavy weights, five sets, and then I would focus on core movements. So I break my thing out into four days a week. And so the biggest mistake was I was doing super heavy, super high reps with lighter weights for a long time. And now I just wanted to get bigger and bulkier. And it's funny because when you saw me, you're like, holy shit, you're huge. And it's like, well, I ate a ton more and I monitored it and then I lifted a ton heavier versus the lighter weights, which in my opinion, just kind of give me more of the definition.

• 1:15:58Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, or just to make you more injury prone, depending on how you do it. Certainly. I mean, there are a lot of folks who do sort of high rep, high velocity, which is just asking for all sorts of issues. And now is the, the Scholl Program, the online fitness coach, was it sort of five sets of five reps type of situation with?

• 1:16:19Noah Kagan?

  Exactly.

• 1:16:20Tim Ferriss?

  Okay. So it's very similar then. There's a, there's a book that's become very popular among engineers, oddly enough, in Silicon Valley called Starting Strength. By Mark Ripeto. And Ripeto knows his stuff. He's, he's, he has some very pragmatic approaches to this stuff. And he actually has a second book and probably more, but one that I really enjoyed, which is, is a lot denser and probably not the right one to read first, but called Pragmatic Programming, I think it is. And it's all about sort of medium term and long term planning of training and how to cycle it and so on. But I think that's biting off more.

• 1:16:55Noah Kagan?

  Which one should we start with? The Starting Strength?

• 1:16:56Tim Ferriss?

  Starting Strength. Yeah. Starting Strength, or for simplicity's sake, I think a lot of the protocols that.

• 1:17:04Tim Ferriss?

  Pavel Tsatsoulin, some people say his name Tsatsoulin, but it's Pavel Tsatsoulin who really popularized kettlebells in the United States. Some of his programs are just amazing. So there's there's one called, if you search easy strength and Pavel's name, a lot will pop up. Very simple. And my, my podcast interview with him went really deep into a bunch of his approaches for strength and endurance and flexibility. Pavel knows his stuff. Also, a great example of making, finding the minimum effective dose that produces the largest disproportionate output, right, or outcome. Yeah, five cents to five is hard to go wrong with.

• 1:17:46Noah Kagan?

  Yeah, I mean, two of the things that, you know, two of the things I would say would really help me during that whole process, especially for anyone trying to be in fitness. You know, it's fun, as much as we want like less input and more output, which, you know, I think you've done very well because you figure out like what's, how do I get maximum thing for, for less? Part of it is consistency, which I'm not going to spend a ton of time on because you, you have to go. That's the point. Like in my calendar, if you looked at my calendar today, Tim, Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, Saturday, there's gym in there automatically. I don't even get to choose. It's just there at a certain time and I do it every week. So consistency has been big. And then secondly, this is kind of more of a hack one. It's not really a hack, which is something that really motivates me. I follow fitness people on Instagram.

• 1:18:23Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 1:18:23Noah Kagan?

  A lot of people use Instagram for all their friends that they, you know, post stupid photos and I don't really follow any friends. All I follow is rappers and fitness people.

• 1:18:33Tim Ferriss?

  What is your Instagram?

• 1:18:34Noah Kagan?

  Noah Kagan.

• 1:18:35Tim Ferriss?

  Got it.

• 1:18:36Noah Kagan?

  But I follow like this online coach guy. He posts great workout videos. They post things like there's, I'll pull up some of the different people that I recommend, but no, his is great. And what's awesome about it is that they just post all their different workouts, what they eat, motivation. And so during the day when I'm on the toilet or I'm kind of feeling lazy, I go on my Instagram and I see that their bodies are ripped.

• 1:18:56Tim Ferriss?

  And what was your recommendation? We're going to come back to looking at ripped bodies while sitting on the toilet, but.

• 1:19:02Noah Kagan?

  Well, the two things I was going to recommend is number one, if your internet's dropping on, and I'm not sure what's going on today, but I basically went and upgraded our router to like an Asus RT869 net dasher, but basically like focus on the things that are the highest levels of the funnel. And I noticed my router is the first thing that my internet comes in that affects all of my work. And so we went in, I don't know, this is like a 200, $300 router. So if you're at home and you're working and your internet matters, like go in and invest in that because that's at the top of the funnel and optimize the things where you get the biggest results downwards.

• 1:19:30Tim Ferriss?

  Definitely. So you said two things. What would, what's the other one? Oh, no, the router is. The router and Instagram? Okay, well, well, let's, let's come back to Instagram. So looking at people, uh, I wanted to have, I thought I was maybe a weirdo on my own, but so I actually do the exact same thing. I'm trying to get better at gymnastics and more body weight calisthenic type movements. Ooh, cool. So all, almost all of people I follow on Instagram, and I'm just T- Tim Ferriss with two R's and two S's on Instagram, are like gymnastic bodies, or maybe gymnastics bodies, uh, is, is incredible. There are a couple of very impressive parkour athletes and acrobats, including a friend of mine named Travis Brewer,

• 1:20:14Tim Ferriss?

  who, uh, competes on American Ninja Warrior and was actually one of my parkour teachers for the Tim Ferriss Experiment, when I like destroyed my entire body. Uh, but in, a really fantastic, uh, coach and just incredible crazy athlete. Uh, and I'll do the same thing. When I am feeling rushed or inclined to skip training, for whatever reason, I will go on Instagram and check those folks out. Very cool. Yeah, man, there's like, do you follow calisthenic kings or? Uh, there are a number of them. There's like Calisthenos, I think is a Greek, Greek guy. There are a bunch of them. I mean, there's so many, of course. They're, they're only maybe six to 10. Um, there's a guy, I want to say his name is Trevor Blackwell. Uh, I'm also following some Olympic weightlifters,

• 1:20:57Tim Ferriss?

  or guys who do, uh, Olympic lifts, uh, who are beasts, just because that's another thing that I'm kind of focused on at the moment. Uh, but, uh, that's, that's a much longer story. Uh, let's, let's, let's flip gears a little bit and talk about some of your business rules or guidelines. Uh, and I knew you've, you've mentioned before, I think the, the four, one, one. Uh, and I was hoping you could elaborate on that and maybe talk about some of your other guidelines or rules that you have.

• 1:21:28Noah Kagan?

  Yeah, man. So come back to some of the business things that have worked really well. I mean, what I've learned, I'm noticing my brother's, you know, starting his own business. And, you know, Neville, as Mike mentioned earlier, is trying to get certain things organized. And I realized that like, simple rules are actually the easiest way for you to be successful. And so the 411 is specifically for AppSumo, and you could, you know, apply it to yourself. But we basically were like, how many deals do we need to do a month to be successful? And then we can just follow that rule. So for AppSumo, it's 411, which is just like, four deals a month? One free deal? One promotion of an internal product every month? And as long as we do that, we're successful. And that's for us. But for yourselves listening, how can you create simple rules? Like, once a week, I have to do a blog post. Once a week, I have to make a sales call.

• 1:22:11Noah Kagan?

  And do the 111 thing, which every week you do that one activity. And I've just noticed the more that we have simple rules, it just makes it a lot easier for us to be accomplishing those things, and we check in on them. And so it just makes a life a lot easier and a lot more effective and likely that they'll be accomplished.

• 1:22:25Tim Ferriss?

  Do you use a Google spreadsheet? Or project management stuff, like a Basecamp, or an Asana, or Trello, or whatever? How do you actually keep on top of that stuff with your team? So that it doesn't just get written down on a piece of paper and lost along the way?

• 1:22:41Noah Kagan?

  Exactly. So I'll call it, I call it the Susan Su formula? Or the Angry Asian Mother formula? Depending on who you're talking to. So Susan Su is this five foot nothing Asian chick, who's like, one of the most badass chicks you'll ever meet. And so she came and ran sales for us for about a year, two years ago. And what she did, and, you know, they do it, we do it on the sales team, is that they check in every morning and every evening. And so Susan Su would be like, what are three things you're gonna get done today? And then they, what three things did you get done? And that was, it's definitely a lot of work. But I've been doing that with, like Neville is trying to grow his email list. And every morning, he's, you know, he's gonna be like, here are things I'm gonna do. And at the end of the night, he checks in with me. He's like, here's what I got done today, and here's my progress. And so what we do, what I recommend for most people though is I do a once a week check in with

• 1:23:26Noah Kagan?

  everybody personally, and I find that to be the most helpful. If you want to be Susan Su level, do it daily in the morning and evening. And that's insanely effective because it's like, here's what I'm gonna do, here's what I got done, and you get that stuff moving forward for sure.

• 1:23:41Noah Kagan?

  For me on AppSumo at a higher level, I check in every week. Generally, I just check in in person, and we have a dashboard that we check in every day. Wow, is the dashboard in Google Apps, or what is the tech that you're using for that? The dashboard, you're gonna be pretty surprised. It's literally something we made. It's just one number. So I'll tell you, for SumoMe, our goal is to make a million dollar revenue business this year. So that's our goal for the business. And so we have a target of how much money you need to make a month, which is eighty-three thousand dollars. And then we know how, so the website is literally just, what is our revenue against that? It's literally one number. And if you ask anybody in our company, like, actually, I'm kinda curious to ask him. I don't wanna walk out of the interview.

• 1:24:24Noah Kagan?

  But if I ask, I'll ask him in my team chat right now, what is our team goal for the year? And this is something I learned from Zuckerberg in terms of how to get things organized. I don't try to organize everything. I try to focus on what's my number one goal, and that's what Zuck did, which is the number one goal for him was growth. And I think, I don't know if I mentioned this story to you before, but I went to Zuck trying to get him to make money. Ever tell you the story? No, no, I'd love to hear it. I went to him, and I was like, dude, Facebook needs to be real business one day. Let's make some money. Don't you wanna like stay in business and make a lot of money for, so that we can, you know, be a company one day and really profit? And he's like, Noah, does that help us grow? I'm like, no, no, it won't help us grow, but it'll help us make money and make, you know, make a business. He's like, does it help us grow?

• 1:25:05Noah Kagan?

  No. And so what he did, that I've applied at my businesses, and that's all I ever do now, is that I pick one very specific goal, and I check on it on a regular basis. So as an example, let me just break down the SumoMe one. Our goal is a million dollars a year. I have a spreadsheet that breaks out how much money that is each month. And then we have our dashboard that shows it every day about how we're progressing towards it. And on every month, on the first of the month, I just check how we did against what I projected that we need to be doing to hit our goal. And so everyone is focused around that one goal, and nothing else.

• 1:25:37Tim Ferriss?

  So I love this and this is something that when I'm say interviewing people and trying to obviously pick up lots of things that I can use myself, I mean this is not just for publication, I like talking to people like you so I can pick up new book recommendations, tools, approaches, and this is very consistent when you look at the very top, top, top performers where for instance, we mentioned Peter Thiel earlier and who is not only a billionaire, but he's done it several times over in different ways. I mean, that's very, very hard to do. And he was famous, it turns out, and this could be apocryphal, I don't know if it's

• 1:26:19Tim Ferriss?

  totally true, but I think it is, that at PayPal, he gave every person one top objective, and it was a measurable objective. And if they came to him for like an office hours type of meeting, or pulled him aside to ask him a question about like, why don't we do this, or hey, I need some help with such and such, he would ask them, how does this contribute to your number one priority, X? And like, how is it driving the numbers forward? And if it was not related, he wouldn't talk to them about it.

• 1:26:46Noah Kagan?

  I mean, that's exactly right. And I mean, that's what we do at AppSumo. I just, for the sumo me.com product, I asked our team, I just posed on our team chat, you know, what's our goal for the year? And well, the guy was joking, we put, you know, 100,000 monthly recurring potatoes. His nickname is potatoes, so that's what he calls money. But everyone on the team knows everyone is aligned. And for AppSumo in the past, it was like, last year was a billion people seeing sumo me.com. And we got, we hit a billion, a year before, it was a million dollars with monthly1k.com, which we did. A year before that was half a million email subscribers. And the point is not that, wow, Noah gets everything done, it's just I don't do anything else.

• 1:27:23Tim Ferriss?

  And that comes back to the essentialism book that you were mentioning earlier, which really kind of drives that point home.

• 1:27:30Noah Kagan?

  Yeah, I mean, and obviously you have your high level thing and you break it down. So like I was telling you, we're struggling right now with, we have two customers. We have small, medium business self-serve, and then we have enterprise. And so I have to come back and look at, all right, which helps us accomplish our goal better? And you know, that's what I have to go and spend time solving to then say, all right, what will help us faster and easier hit that number one goal? And then focus just on that. And then kind of keep going through that process. Like right now, I get interview requests, probably like every two days, every three days, "Hey, come talk my interview." And I'm like, "Well, this helped me get to my goal faster than doing another activity." And it won't, so I don't do it. And that's specifically like this interview. I'm like, "Yeah, okay, Tim, you know, a few people have heard of Tim Ferriss, and a lot of people will check this out. So it will be significant enough worth my time to help me really accomplish my goal." And everyone on the team is aligned with that.

• 1:28:15Tim Ferriss?

  So speaking of goals, I think a lot of people have goals. They're like, "You know, yeah, that Noah guy, he's been talking about building an email list. Yeah, I know he's helping Neville. I should really do that." And they have the "should do that," and that's as far as it goes, right? Maybe they take a note, maybe they put it into their notes on their iPhone, whatever, and that's where it lives forever and it never gets implemented. So you mentioned earlier that you would do a demo, or basically give people something they can do now to pump the ball down the field a little bit and make some progress. And I think you mentioned email subscribers. If I'm right, correct me if I'm wrong, but what is that exercise?

• 1:28:57Noah Kagan?

  Yeah, man. So SumoMe.com has free tools to grow your website. So how to get a bigger email list, how to get more shares, and...

• 1:29:04Tim Ferriss?

  And just for people who are listening, I use that on my blog. And it's not because, I do love you, but it's not because I love you.

• 1:29:10Noah Kagan?

  Oh, Timothy.

• 1:29:13Noah Kagan?

  So here's what we're gonna do. Like, I think one of the things that people love about you and what I respect about you is that you're about getting shit done. Like, you know, for our work, because how do I get things done? How do I do less work to get more, even more things done? And you know, you want to understand the elements of those things, and you're very curious and very specific about that. So, you know, I'd love for you to listen to the notes, but anybody who does what I'm gonna teach them to do, the highest result person, we're gonna do a giveaway, I'm gonna pay for it, where I will fly you to hang out with me... And our office and put you up in a room, not a room in a hotel. It sounds a little creepy. And I will, you know, you can work with us on any project you have for a day. We'll get you Taco Deli for the person who actually takes action. Cause I know for you, that's really important, Tim. And I want, I don't want you to just listen to this interview and not do shit.

• 1:29:56Noah Kagan?

  I want you to listen to this interview, take action and make your life better. That's what will make this worth it for me.

• 1:30:01Tim Ferriss?

  And just so people have a context here, what is the deadline for doing this?

• 1:30:07Noah Kagan?

  Well, I'm going to give you things that you can do in real time. So I will say a week from when this goes public, because you should be able to do those things within that day.

• 1:30:15Tim Ferriss?

  Yep.

• 1:30:15Noah Kagan?

  And right now, as you're listening. So I would say if you're a week, that's already long enough.

• 1:30:19Tim Ferriss?

  Okay, got it. So I'll just say for guys, and obviously avoid where prohibited, blah, blah, blah. You can't be minotaur, you need to be over 18 years of age. You can't be whatever.

• 1:30:29Noah Kagan?

  You could take over the prices, right, man?

• 1:30:30Tim Ferriss?

  Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And no, no purchase necessary, all that shit.

• 1:30:35Noah Kagan?

  None at all. There's actually, it's totally free. And what I want to teach people is how to start a business or how to share your message with the world instantly. If you, even if you don't have anything.

• 1:30:44Tim Ferriss?

  Cool.

• 1:30:44Noah Kagan?

  Right now.

• 1:30:45Tim Ferriss?

  And, and so the person who does the most, you're going to fly them to Austin and show them a good time. And perhaps free cuddles.

• 1:30:52Noah Kagan?

  Always cuddles, dude. Grow hugs, grow hugs. Well, so here's, let me just start with it. Like, you know, we did this monthly 1K product, monthly1k.com that showed people how to start a business. And 5,000 plus people, and I've been able to help a lot. And a lot of people just are like, well, how do I start? And I think the two things I want to say is either if you want to start a business, or if you just want to get your message out there, start it now. So that whenever you want to do in the future, I know, Tim, I actually read when I was studying all, you know, your popular interviews, figure out what stuff your audience would want to hear. And you actually said, hey, I wish I had an email list sooner. So as you have books or things you want to promote or get out there, you can have direct communication with your audience. So I want to specifically show how anyone listening right now can get 100 people on an email list for free. So that when they have a message, they can get it out instantly.

• 1:31:36Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, let's rock and roll.

• 1:31:38Noah Kagan?

  All right, so whoever gets the most on their email list within the week from when this goes live, I will fly you out, pay for food, pay for hotel, and help you with whatever business stuff you want to be helped with. So, all right, so here's what we're gonna do. You have a phone, you're listening to this podcast. Is that how most people listen to the podcast, Tim?

• 1:31:51Tim Ferriss?

  I think a lot of people are listening on their phones, maybe not exclusively, but on whatever device, but let's just say you have a phone handy. Sure.

• 1:31:58Noah Kagan?

  All right, so if you're on your phone, I'm speaking right into the microphone, come back to your phone, or if you're on your computer, come back to the computer and hang out. The, all right, so I want you to grab your phone, and here's what we're gonna do. The, I want you to get 100 subscribers, and I'll just say it again because I think it's important. If you want 100 subscribers, it's so that if you ever want to start a business, or if you ever want to promote something, or share your message even, start it now, so you can do it whenever you're ready, instead of waiting until later and not doing anything, which will piss me off. So, if you want to get 100 subscribers, here's what I want you to do. Choose any topic you're interested in. Like, Tim, let's actually, we'll do it, I'll do it live right now as well. What's a, what's a topic that you're interested in, Tim? Like, something recently that you've been thinking about, or reading, or curious about?

• 1:32:39Tim Ferriss?

  Interested in the ketogenic diet, which is like the Atkins.

• 1:32:42Noah Kagan?

  Oh, the keto thing?

• 1:32:43Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, I'm interested in that. I'm really digging deep in that right now.

• 1:32:47Noah Kagan?

  Okay, so, do you want to start a newsletter?

• 1:32:51Tim Ferriss?

  Uh, I am probably, I probably have my hands full.

• 1:32:54Noah Kagan?

  I think you're a little busy. All right, I will do the keto topic newsletter, I will get 100 people right now on it, so that I can share that message with other people, and then maybe I can say that Tim likes the keto diet. So, choose a topic that you're curious about, interested in, you want to talk about to certain people. Here's what I want you to do. Tim, do you have your phone on you?

• 1:33:10Tim Ferriss?

  Uh, I have my phone off, uh, because I didn't want it to interfere with what we are doing here.

• 1:33:17Noah Kagan?

  Pay attention to me. So, that's good. All right, well, for whoever's listening, here's what we're gonna do. I'm gonna take a photo of myself. Hi. So, take a photo of yourself. Now, I want you to go to your social networks.

• 1:33:26Tim Ferriss?

  And I'll post, I'll post all this stuff on, in the blog post also, which I'll give people info on, but continue now.

• 1:33:32Noah Kagan?

  And here's what people are gonna say, well, Noah and Tim have followers, or fuck, who cares about followers? Even if you have 100 people, don't worry about that. Doesn't matter if you have 10, 100, or 5. Take a photo of yourself. Now, I want you to post it on your social sites, Facebook and Google, uh, Facebook and Twitter. So, right, and don't even, you don't even have to sign up for a service. No, I don't have an email list. Guess what's an email list provider?

• 1:33:55Noah Kagan?

  That's a great way to start your newsletter so that, you know, I, just to give you context, like AppSumo is a high seven-figure business and 90% plus just come from an email list. So just to give you context about, you actually can just, the email list can create large businesses. So post in your social, "I'm starting a newsletter," and then attach your photo. You're gonna see my photo on Noah Kagan, and then say, "Email me," and then put your email. So I'm gonna do mine about keto, because I'm curious about keto. Email me, Noah, or I'll put [email protected], and this'll go to my inbox. And now I will get a list of people who will be curious about keto. So it didn't cost me any money. It took me about two seconds. So if you're on your phone, take a photo of yourself, go to your Twitter,

• 1:34:39Noah Kagan?

  then I'm gonna go to my Facebook, and just post it socially. "I'm starting a newsletter about keto. Email [email protected]." And so I just tweeted that. And now people are gonna start emailing me about keto. And so that's one tactic. So we're gonna do two more, and then you will actually probably have 100, if not more, people interested in what you wanna talk about. So if you wanna sell them something, or if you just wanna put out information. One thing I've noticed, Tim, is that one tactic that I do is, in my okdork.com newsletter, I have an auto reply when people join that say, "What's one thing I can help you with?" And then they tell me their questions, and that's actually businesses. Yeah. People say, "Hey Noah, I want help with this." And basically, you just look for the pattern of what the constant questions people keep asking you, and you say, "Hey, email list, I'm gonna create a book about this. It's 10 bucks.

• 1:35:24Noah Kagan?

  You pay me via PayPal, and I go make it." And this is what I've taught 5,000 people, and they do it, and they get businesses. The problem, Tim, is people are like, "It can't be that easy." Because they're looking for some magic bullet, or some golden trick, or something more complicated, but it's not. It starts with one customer and helping one person. And this is the way you can actually start it while you're listening to podcasts, instead of waiting to eventually start your business.

• 1:35:45Tim Ferriss?

  Definitely. No, I and I've seen, uh, you know, there are people out there like Neil Patel has done some very similar stuff, right? I mean, he's, he's been like, pay me this and then I will add you to this email list. It's so simple and makes a ton of money. I mean, there are, it doesn't have to be complicated. In fact, if it is really complicated, it's probably not the right answer. So, so you said there were a couple of other things that people should do.

• 1:36:10Noah Kagan?

  Yes. So you posted it. I posted mine on Twitter and then post it on your Facebook and have people email you to subscribe. That's number one. And they just email you. You don't need, you don't need any software. You don't need to sign up for Mailchimp, which is free, but that's complicated. Just keep it really simple. Secondly, go to your email signature. So Tim, for you, on your settings, on your phone. So if you have an iPhone, go to, I don't even know what Android, who uses Android. But on iPhone, go to settings, mail and scroll to the bottom to your signature. On your signature, say, reply to me if you want the latest tips on keto. And so if you already have a mailing list, make sure you update your signature and all your accounts on a regular basis. So unlike my personal one, it says, come eat tacos with me. And people click it all the time and then it's like, oh, you should join my newsletter.

• 1:36:56Noah Kagan?

  Basically what I try to recommend people as you're starting businesses is keep it as simple as possible. Don't spend as much money as possible and importantly, leverage the assets you already have available. What most people, Tim, don't realize is that they have at least 50 to 200 people minimum on LinkedIn. That could be potential customers. But they think, oh, I gotta do like a Facebook ad, which is going to cost you money. And I want to discourage that. And so I'm trying to say, how do you already have assets? Do you already have a church group? Do you already have a Facebook group? Do you already have, uh, your colleagues that you can use as your customers to join your newsletter? And eventually make a business out of, because you could say, hey, I'm creating something, you should buy it. And guess what? Now you have access to these people via your newsletter. Is this, is this connecting?

• 1:37:35Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 1:37:35Noah Kagan?

  I can't tell because I'm talking to myself a little bit.

• 1:37:37Tim Ferriss?

  No, no, no. This, this all makes sense. And I want to give a, just a quick tech suggestion for people who might be like, oh my God, but I don't have, you know, let's just say your name is, uh, Whatever. Bob Jones. So I don't have a bobjones.com domain. I don't, I can't, I don't know how to create a keto at bobjones.com email address.

• 1:37:57Noah Kagan?

  Gotcha.

• 1:37:58Tim Ferriss?

  A workaround for that, which a lot of people don't. It's so simple and I couldn't believe how useful this is when you figure it out. If, if your email address is, let's just say [email protected]. If you create bobjones plus anything you write at gmail.com, your email will still get delivered. So you could, you could put, hey, I'm, I'm, on Twitter, you can say, I'm starting a keto newsletter. Email me at bobjones plus symbol keto at gmail.com if you want to join. People email that and it allows, it then allows you to search by that email and sort. And you don't have to set up anything new. You're just using a plus sign and some kind of identifier before the at symbol.

• 1:38:43Tim Ferriss?

  Super, super useful and expedient. What you can also do for this is if you're signing up for a new service or anything, a newsletter, you can put plus and then some identifier. So it's like, if I sign up for, you know, whatever, super, super, you know, underu's heroes.com. And I, I'm like, you know, I wonder if these guys are going to spam me and I want to know if they do, or if they sell my information or anything like that. I want to be able to automatically send it to trash without giving them my real email address, right? So [email protected], that's valuable information. I don't want to be getting shit from all sorts of people potentially if they leak my information.

• 1:39:24Tim Ferriss?

  So I'll, I'll, I'll put bobjones plus, you know, underu's at gmail.com. And that way I know if my information has been leaked and I can, I can just junk that email address and have it all go to spam, for instance. So that

• 1:39:39Noah Kagan?

  Exactly.

• 1:39:39Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah. That plus approach is super helpful.

• 1:39:42Noah Kagan?

  I don't think enough people know that one. The other thing I would add to that is do the plus filter, do that? And then in your settings, create filters. You create, so I, what I would do for all these people in Gmail is, I don't know these other services and most people use Gmail, but in labs of Gmail, in your settings lab, turn on canned responses and enable it. Then what you do is create a filter. So whenever, and you can do this in the search box really easily. So I said keto at okdork.com or I could do my email address, which is Noah Kagan plus keto at gmail.com, which is what Tim was suggesting to you. And so what you do is you search to at keto at okdork.com. And I've already got, Tim, I already got two people emailing me for the newsletter.

• 1:40:24Tim Ferriss?

  That's fantastic.

• 1:40:26Noah Kagan?

  And so what you do here is you click the little down arrow and you click filter messages like these and you create a filter like this. Now it says, you know, create a filter with this search. And what I would do here is I have a canned response that, look, I'm not even having to create any software. So send a canned response and a canned response would be one I create that's like, hey, what are you interested in learning about keto? And they would just tell me what I should be creating for them and possibly even selling them in the future.

• 1:40:51Tim Ferriss?

  Definitely. And I want to point out just a couple of things. Well, actually, before I do that, are there any other steps or recommendations? And then I have just a couple of observations that I think might be helpful for people who

• 1:41:05Noah Kagan?

  Sure.

• 1:41:06Tim Ferriss?

  I might still find this intimidating.

• 1:41:07Noah Kagan?

  Yeah. What I want you to do is if you have a phone, you can do this right now. If you're listening to this podcast, you don't have to go anywhere else. You don't have to pay for anything and you could start your business instantly, which I've never seen anyone do before, but you can do it with the technology we have available for free. So number one, post it on your social, post it on Facebook and Twitter. I put a photo because it's a little more apparent. Maybe you want to put a little more text and just give them the email address to email you to join. On your signature, I wrote this, Tim, which I think you'll appreciate. It says, for all my signature on my phone, it says, reply to me with a hell yes if you want the latest keto news.

• 1:41:37Tim Ferriss?

  I like it.

• 1:41:38Noah Kagan?

  And I've actually used that in some of our sales collateral and it works really well because people are like, oh, hell yes, sure. And so now I'm going to, I do it for sales, but you can put in your signature and now that's done. So in every 50 emails I send every day on average, I now have probably about two to five of them being like, oh yeah, cool. Hell yes. I'm like, what are you hell yesing about? But set up your filter and they get the reply. And then now you have the questions to be answering. The last thing I would say that is really cool is go to your, Tim, do you have favorites on your phone?

• 1:42:06Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:42:07Noah Kagan?

  I'm actually really curious. That's fascinating. Who's on your favorites, man?

• 1:42:10Tim Ferriss?

  Ah, my phone is off, so I'm not sure.

• 1:42:12Noah Kagan?

  No, you know who's on your, don't act like that. Who's on your favorites?

• 1:42:16Tim Ferriss?

  No, no, I'm not sure. Honestly, I'd have to look at it.

• 1:42:18Noah Kagan?

  I know I'm not, I don't talk to you that often, but like all my favorites is just like my brother, my girlfriend, a few other people, like my coworkers. Go to your favorites because it's the easiest one not to have to think about and just click on their names and then text them, "Hey man, can I send you information about keto? It's cool diet information." What, I want to go back to that point that was critical and I thought most people probably ignore is that, just go to the people that already like you. If they won't even buy from you or are interested in from you, it's only going to get harder. It will not be easier. And what I want to do is, you know, you took your assets, you used it, you had, set up some passive things like your signature and text the people that are your favorites. And if they don't know someone, then you ask for a referral. "Hey man, do you know any person that's like a fatty or anyone who's like crazy into health that might be interested in keto news?"

• 1:43:02Noah Kagan?

  And this is just basic. Obviously, we can get more fancy and complicated, but this is the way that it starts. This is how you get that first customer. This is how you start the Facebook or Google or Amazon or Microsoft.

• 1:43:12Tim Ferriss?

  No, I started to interject. I just wanted to say to people a few things. Number one is, keep in mind, you can always abandon the project. I think a lot of people are like, "Wow, but I don't know how to run a newsletter. I don't really want to commit to another part-time job. Oh my God, like what happens if blah, what happens if this, what happens if that?" It's like, look, you can always just send an email to these people and be like, "Hey, had a huge fire pop up. The keto newsletter is going to have to wait. Sorry, guys, might have more newsletter." And then you're done. You don't, it's not a major life commitment that you're not getting, you're not getting married to the newsletter in like an Irish Catholic family. I mean, it's like you have options here.

• 1:43:51Noah Kagan?

  It happened to me, Tim. It happened to me six months ago. I started an events business to show people how to start an events business, where I sold tickets and then I made events and then I was like, "I kind of don't want to keep doing events because I'm trying to run AppSumo and Sumo me." And so I just refunded the difference to people. And you know, it's very straightforward. It's always with integrity and just letting people know their expectations.

• 1:44:09Tim Ferriss?

  And just, just to actually add another example, so I've done this many, many times. And sometimes things don't work out or you don't like it and you quit. So I tried to make a membership site, a very inexpensive membership site as an experiment ages ago for $10 a month or something like that. And it turned out that I just, at least at the time, didn't like managing it and the technology wasn't great, so the experience wasn't perfect. And I was like, you know, Just don't want to do this anymore. It's too much psychic drain. It's not worth the trouble. So I refunded everybody and there were several hundred people probably refunded everybody, everything that they had spent and just shut the thing down. And you almost always have that option. But there are other things like the podcast. I was like, you know what?

• 1:44:52Tim Ferriss?

  I'm not sure if I'm going to like this internally. I'm going to commit to doing six episodes as an experiment. And then I'll reassess it and I might ditch it and that'll just be like my mini series of podcasts. And it worked out, so I kept on doing it. The, so to bring you back to the competition then, for those people who are listening, they're like, yes, hell yes, I want to compete. Guys, you can find the blog post for this episode at fourhourworkweek.com/podcast, all spelled out. And in the comments, you have to leave your results. And you have to leave your results.

• 1:45:29Tim Ferriss?

  Just to make it easier for everyone on my side to manage, you're going to have to put hashtag Noah at the top of your comment. And if you can't follow that set of instructions, we're not going to look at your comments. So do that. Hashtag Noah at the top of the comment. And what should they include in their comment, Noah?

• 1:45:46Noah Kagan?

  Yes. So two things. There's going to be, there's definitely people on your audience. Like your audience is awesome. Like I've met a lot of people and they're all over the world. And they're like, yeah, I loved him and now my life has changed from it. So I know that there's already people who are kicking ass and running successful businesses. You're like, well, Noah, I already have a successful business. I'm in Australia.

• 1:46:03Tim Ferriss?

  That was a great Australian accent.

• 1:46:04Noah Kagan?

  Was that pretty good? That was like an Australian like kangaroo, British accent. So I'm looking more for the people who are taking action. So if you already have a mailing list, take action on really significantly growing that on the seven days. I'm looking for people who have the biggest results either from zero to a hundred or from a thousand to a hundred thousand. And so what I really want to see is what have you done to really grow your mailing list in the next seven days from when you listen to this? And for the people, just to remind you, if you don't have a mailing list or if you don't have a business, or if you have a business, this is the best way to communicate with your customers. Whenever you want to sell them something, or even if you just want to share your message with the world, you have direct access to something that, how often do you check your email? I know how often I check mine.

• 1:46:46Noah Kagan?

  It's a lot, especially because I'm on the toilet. You know, like, oh, email, it's toilet time. That and Instagram. The second thing that I wanted to mention, Tim, so number one, hashtag Noah, your comment, and show me what you've done in this week, and full expenses, flight, anywhere in the world, hotel, and you get to work with us for a day. The second thing is, if you already have an email list, I was talking with Tim about it, we've put together on our side, like, a free, no up-sell, cross-sell, down-sell, free course for you guys. So, go check it out if you have an email list already, that it's email1k.com/tim. And that's fully free, there's nothing to sell there. I'm sorry, if you want to give me money, you're welcome to, but not with this. And that will be, it's 10 experts that'll show you how to grow your mailing list on more advanced tactics, if you already have one.

• 1:47:29Tim Ferriss?

  Very cool. And I will put this in the blog post as well, guys, but, which will have show notes and links and all sorts of other things that we talked about in this episode. But, just to recap, so, in the comment, if you're gonna do this, hashtag Noah, your results, what you did, quantify it, whenever possible, and then I want you to end with the most important lesson that you learned in doing this exercise. So that the comments themselves become a very useful resource for everybody.

• 1:48:01Noah Kagan?

  Dude, good stuff, man. I just want to see people take action, and they do it, and they get results, because you can do it from your phone, there's no excuse.

• 1:48:07Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, no, there's no excuse. So, let's do this, Noah. I am, actually, you're making me think of all the things I want to do now. And I know you're running a company, but...

• 1:48:16Noah Kagan?

  Yeah, we're gonna go do a flotation. I'm taking my girlfriend for a surprise flotation. You ever done flotation tank?

• 1:48:22Tim Ferriss?

  I have done flotation tank. Actually, I was introduced, or finally pushed, to try it by Joe Rogan. And, you're talking about like a deprivation tank, basically?

• 1:48:33Noah Kagan?

  Exactly, yep.

• 1:48:34Tim Ferriss?

  Have you done it before?

• 1:48:35Noah Kagan?

  I have done it before. I actually did it on a first date, which I don't recommend, but I've done it many times.

• 1:48:40Tim Ferriss?

  First date is a very, that's an intensive, kind of creepy Silence of the Lambs first date.

• 1:48:43Noah Kagan?

  Dude, getting in a box naked in someone's house, it's not the idea.

• 1:48:46Tim Ferriss?

  Oh, is that, you have flotation tank at your house?

• 1:48:49Noah Kagan?

  No, no, I went, in Austin, a few years ago, there was not a, there wasn't, there wasn't a public one, so they had a private one in some lady's house.

• 1:48:55Tim Ferriss?

  That's so creepy.

• 1:48:56Noah Kagan?

  So, I was like, I swear, this is legit, I'm not just trying to get you naked, I just need you to get in this box naked, and I'm gonna close the door on you.

• 1:49:04Noah Kagan?

  And I'll tell you, on that experience, I was actually really scared because that was my first time. So I had a panic attack.

• 1:49:08Tim Ferriss?

  Wow, that's, yeah, that's no good.

• 1:49:10Noah Kagan?

  But subsequently, I've gone to like larger ones that are like super clean and legit. And I do it like once a month. I generally bounce between that and Chinese massages, like the Reflexology, because they're only 35 bucks. And it's like that's secret, it's a secret white people don't know. So I don't want all you guys going to do this now, but Reflexology massages are 35 bucks, or Chinese massage, there's no happy endings. And it's the most affordable, effective massage I've ever found.

• 1:49:32Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, I need to, I need to get on my Reflexology action. I use something called a RAD roller, R A D. It's like two lacrosse balls melted together to roll out my feet each day.

• 1:49:41Noah Kagan?

  Oh.

• 1:49:42Tim Ferriss?

  So these kind of like just nugget sized recommendations, I think are really fun. So let me, if you wouldn't mind, just in sort of wrap up, I'll ask you a couple of rapid fire questions. You don't have to answer super, super concisely, but just to the extent possible, we'll try to do short questions and short answers and we'll do a couple of...

• 1:50:00Noah Kagan?

  No, it's like, hey, could you speak shortly? Not long, just do it. I'm like, yes, I'll, less words.

• 1:50:05Tim Ferriss?

  I use my ESL skills.

• 1:50:09Tim Ferriss?

  When you think of the word successful, who is the first person who comes to mind and why?

• 1:50:14Noah Kagan?

  Evan Williams.

• 1:50:15Tim Ferriss?

  So for those people, he is the, I guess, co-founder of Twitter, blogger, medium, all around baller. Why, why is that?

• 1:50:25Noah Kagan?

  So, you know, I think it's easy to do a business once and be successful. I think when you can do it multiple times, you're a badass. And success is very relative to how you define it, but if it's money, or if it's whatever it is you want it to be. I think from like a business creation and making society better, Evan is very interested in communication. And he didn't, you know, it's pretty big that you did blogger. I think most people do blogger and tap out. You're like, you know, I'm pretty, it's like Elon Musk. He did one thing, you know, he's already, he sold a company, and then he did PayPal, and then he did another one. And it's like, him and Evan Williams is just like, holy moly, you don't just do it once, you do it many times. Because it's easy to hit a home run once, but to do it consistently, just, I think the consistency of it and dedication is what's really impressive to me about that.

• 1:51:09Tim Ferriss?

  No, I agree. And what's also impressive and really inspiring about that is generally speaking, the guys who have that type of consistency, or gals and do it repeatedly, are doing it for reasons other than the money, because they already have more money than God in some of these cases. And it's really about the mission. And I think that's partially why some of them, like Ev, you know, I've spent time with Ev, and he's, he comes across as a happy guy. You know what I mean? It's, and that's not-

• 1:51:36Noah Kagan?

  But does it surprise you?

• 1:51:37Tim Ferriss?

  It's incredibly surprising, because the, the, the type A personalities that I usually run into, who have made hundreds of millions or billions of dollars, are so driven that they, they have trouble appreciating anything that they have. And I don't feel like that's the case with Ev. So, all the more impressive to me, that he's able to-

• 1:51:56Noah Kagan?

  Yeah, man.

• 1:51:57Tim Ferriss?

  -maintain that type of perspective. Okay. Do you have any favorite movies or documentaries?

• 1:52:03Noah Kagan?

  Uh, yes. So, my favorite movie immediately is Commando. It's a horrible Arnold Schwarzenegger movie from the eighties.

• 1:52:10Tim Ferriss?

  So amazing. Oh, my god.

• 1:52:11Noah Kagan?

  It's, it's great. I just, I don't know, as a kid, I watched it over and over on Beta tapes, which you youngins probably don't know about. I love, two other ones I think are just really well done is Count of Monte Cristo.

• 1:52:21Tim Ferriss?

  Oh, yeah. I haven't, I haven't seen that.

• 1:52:22Noah Kagan?

  Oh, it's just such good revenge. If you just want to get revenge, like you have an ex-girlfriend or something, you watch this guy, and you're like, ah, I need to be like him. And then there's a recent documentary called The Jinx.

• 1:52:33Tim Ferriss?

  Oh, I haven't seen that.

• 1:52:34Noah Kagan?

  Oh, dude, you're gonna blow your mind.

• 1:52:36Tim Ferriss?

  What is-

• 1:52:36Noah Kagan?

  Which, and I don't think everyone wants you to do, and no one wants you to do, but this guy blows people's minds with his gun. And he gets away with it.

• 1:52:43Tim Ferriss?

  Huh. It's a documentary?

• 1:52:45Noah Kagan?

  It's a documentary about Robert Frost, which you probably have heard his name or seen his name somewhere. But they just like, they get you. And the ending is just insane. Don't-

• 1:52:53Tim Ferriss?

  All right.

• 1:52:54Noah Kagan?

  If you haven't watched The Jinx, go watch The Jinx and thank me later.

• 1:52:56Tim Ferriss?

  Awesome. I'll throw out another one for people who like documentaries. King of Kong.

• 1:53:01Noah Kagan?

  We'll give it-

• 1:53:02Tim Ferriss?

  King of Kong.

• 1:53:03Noah Kagan?

  Mmm.

• 1:53:04Tim Ferriss?

  Uh, or Man on the Wire. You can look at those two and then, and then choose one to suit your tastes. Uh, what, uh, advice would you give to, how old are you now, Noah?

• 1:53:13Noah Kagan?

  Thirty-three, dude. I'm like dead in the internet zone. I'm like, internet, here's I'm old, I'm dinosaur.

• 1:53:18Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, you are a dinosaur. Uh, what advice would you give to your 25-year-old self?

• 1:53:26Tim Ferriss?

  And I say 25, I've been asking, I've been telling people 20, but we're fucking, everybody's a fucking idiot at 20.

• 1:53:31Noah Kagan?

  Yeah. I was gonna say condoms.

• 1:53:33Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 1:53:34Noah Kagan?

  Morning, after pill condoms, no, um, you know, I'd say the number one thing that, and here's the thing, I think a lot of these things people can hear and then they just discard. So let me just tell you how to do it. So get a mentor, but you're like, I don't know how to get a mentor. Here's what you should do. Email the person that you respect the most, that's done the thing you want to do, that you know right now, like get, have your phone and text them or email them and be like, "Hey, I think you're the really best person I know in this space. Like, can I meet with you on a regular basis?" And if they're like a person who's too busy for you, ask them who they'd recommend. Like, who do you learn from locally or internetly or wherever? That I could just talk to on a regular basis. And I really wish I would have been more active in securing that. And you don't have to go try to get Peter Thiel or Tim Ferriss or Noah King, because we don't want to help you. Like, we want to, like, we don't. We're busy doing things.

• 1:54:17Tim Ferriss?

  Well, we want to help at scale. It's, it's hard.

• 1:54:19Noah Kagan?

  You know what, exactly. Okay, thank you. See, that's why we have Tim.

• 1:54:21Tim Ferriss?

  That's where the, I'll use the ugly word, the ugly S-word in that capacity.

• 1:54:26Noah Kagan?

  And so, it's not that I don't want to help people. It's just like, I don't have the capacity to help as many people as I'd like. And so, when I was 25, I think I would have spent more time finding someone that's done the things I want and helping them and having active meetings with them. To be like, "Hey, you've already done where I want to go. Why don't I just learn it from you instead of wasting all the time that I had to do?" Number two at 25 is I'd work for free, so I would go help that person. So email your friend, be like, "Yo, can I meet with you? I'll help you with whoever you want." And if they don't, if they're not busy, ask who they'd recommend. And then third, I'd really just kind of look at your phone or your internet browsing or in your home and look at the products or services that I was using at today, right now, and go work for those companies.

• 1:55:07Noah Kagan?

  So when I was 25, and I did do this, and I'm really happy to do this, but I was like, I just like Facebook. I'm gonna go try to work there. I just love personal finance. I did a personal finance workshop this morning with my team, because I just love talking about money. And so I went and worked at Mint. So go and try to surround yourself or put yourself in places, uh, doing the work that you really want to be doing.

• 1:55:26Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 1:55:26Noah Kagan?

  And the easiest way to do that is just look at what you're already enjoying and then go, like, think about if you could do that all day.

• 1:55:31Tim Ferriss?

  Absolutely. And some other related bits, I just actually heard this yesterday from someone,

• 1:55:39Tim Ferriss?

  older gent, actually, who's, he's not above asking for mentorship. And I usually discourage people from using the word mentor or mentorship because it's just, it screams unpaid full-time job. So if you're gonna pitch people, don't use that wording. But I think the work for free piece is huge. And what he said, he got one of the biggest names in Silicon Valley to mentor him effectively, although he didn't call it that because he said, pretty much the same thing, he emailed this guy out of the blue and said, "I really respect what you've done with A, B, and C. I've read everything about it. Here are things I've done. If you have something that might be credible, if not, that's fine." And then he said, "I know you're working on a book.

• 1:56:23Tim Ferriss?

  I would love to ask you some very specific questions. For every hour that you spend with me, I will spend four hours proofreading your book or helping you with the book pro bono." And that's how he got the first meeting. And then the guy agreed to meet with him on an ongoing basis for more than a year and never took him up on the proofreading offer, even though that was sort of the sugar that, that made the pill go down. So that's a really important point. And Charlie Hohn has some good writing on this. H O E H N on, on working for free. Really.

• 1:56:57Noah Kagan?

  Hundred percent.

• 1:56:58Tim Ferriss?

  Also.

• 1:56:59Noah Kagan?

  A book.

• 1:57:00Tim Ferriss?

  Oh, no, go for it.

• 1:57:01Noah Kagan?

  No, no, his book, Resession, Proof Graduate, is just epic for younger people starting out.

• 1:57:05Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, or anyone, or anyone who's starting over or trying to reinvent themselves.

• 1:57:09Noah Kagan?

  Really. The other thing, Tim, I think you said, which is super true, I just wanna highlight it for everyone listening, is don't email people, be like, "Hey, I'll help you with anything." Because I'm like, well, now I have to think about what to do and you're gonna be a shitty free labor person.

• 1:57:20Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 1:57:20Noah Kagan?

  Like, that's the worst. Because you're like, Tim, how many emails do you, like, roughly, how many emails are you gonna do? Like, "Hey, I wanna work with you. Can I hang out with you? Can I have coffee with you?" From people you don't know.

• 1:57:28Tim Ferriss?

  At least a hundred a day.

• 1:57:30Noah Kagan?

  Holy shit.

• 1:57:31Tim Ferriss?

  To my team or be if they manage to somehow spam a hundred emails and get one, right?

• 1:57:36Noah Kagan?

  Exactly. And so, you know, it's interesting to think about like, how do you, how does the person stand out to actually get ahold of Tim? And so here's how you do it. You one, someone told me this yesterday and I loved it. It was called the swipe, the one thumb rule, which is your email should be able to be one thumbed on the phone.

• 1:57:53Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 1:57:54Noah Kagan?

  Yeah, which I thought was a pretty good way. I thought that was a good way of looking at the one thumb rule. The second thing is, don't tell Tim, you can study Tim all day. All of your stuff is public, most of it that you're working on or thinking about. Go study Tim and do the work, then send it to Tim. There's a guy, [email protected]. And Brian does this for a lot of people. He emails you and he's like, hey, I made this video for you. Hey, I did this marketing role for you. Hey, I did this document for you. Here, I just sent it to you. I'm not expecting shit. And then you're like, well, damn, this is really good. What else can you do?

• 1:58:20Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 1:58:21Noah Kagan?

  Instead of emailing Tim like, hey, Tim, we should just like, can I help you? I'll be a free intern just so I can learn to pick your brain.

• 1:58:26Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah. And I don't, I don't reply to any of those. And number one, because they don't have the capacity. And I think for a lot of tasks like that, that are, and make no mistake, that's a task that I have to, I have to do that instead of something else.

• 1:58:44Tim Ferriss?

  Piece of advice that I got from someone that I'm blanking on who said this to me, but they said, and it was so, I was like, wow. Okay, that is great. And it's, it's, it's sort of comes back to your point about doing your homework. And they said, if someone hasn't done their homework to determine if something is a fit, I don't have the time to explain to them why it isn't a fit. And I was like, isn't that good?

• 1:59:07Noah Kagan?

  Damn.

• 1:59:08Tim Ferriss?

  And I was, and I was like, oh, man, that is a, that is a gem. And so that when I have ended up doing, for instance, ending up working with Charlie or whatever is number one, they, they did something of value that was highly specific and indicated they'd done a lot of homework. That was very helpful and they didn't expect anything in return, but they did such good work that I was like, like you said, I was like, huh, wow, what else can this guy do? Or, you know, maybe, maybe someone's like, hey, here's a, you know, a, this is not an example, please, I don't need a thousand of these sent to me guys, but like, here's a summary of Podcast X, and I thought this would be useful for you to use as a PDF. Has my logo all over it.

• 1:59:53Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, well, or, but if they're like, hey, if you want me to do a few more of these, like, I have some dead time between now and blah, let me know, but if I don't hear back from you, no problem, right? And I think another, another mistake a lot of people make is they, and I, and I've been guilty of this in the past, you know, and I look back at some of my behavior when I was just getting started and I like cringe because it was in retrospect, I'm like, no fucking wonder I didn't get any responses. If, if you send emails like any of what we've described today, and you don't get a response, don't take it personally. And that's easy advice to say, but I would take it one step further. And the way you don't take it personally is assume that the people who don't respond have excellent reasons for not responding, right? And like, maybe someone in their family

• 2:00:37Tim Ferriss?

  is sick, maybe they're trying to take care of their kids, having trouble at school, maybe fill in the blank, just assume they have a good reason for not responding. And there's another expression, God, I wish I could remember who told me this, but, you know, don't attribute to malice that, that, that which can be explained by incompetence, but I would modify that. And I would say, don't, don't attribute to malice what can be explained by incompetence, incompetence, or just busyness, right? So just because someone doesn't get back to you right away, or just because someone sends you a short email and misses something, don't immediately assume that it's because they're trying to fuck with you, or because they don't respect you. I see so many people get wound up and they're like, oh my God, so disrespectful, oh my God, so blah. And they shoot themselves in the foot. And I've

• 2:01:21Tim Ferriss?

  been guilty of that myself. I think that I'm pretty quick to anger and very impatient. So it's taken a lot of effort to try to sand down the rough edges, but.

• 2:01:31Tim Ferriss?

  Another last, just one last tip is for finding mentors, a great way to do that is to volunteer for local business organizations that host events. That's what I did when I moved to Silicon Valley. So you can volunteer at events where they have local icons or business leaders coming to speak, and you get to interact with those people. And if you're volunteering somewhere, by the way, it does not give you license to do a shitty job. And most people think that's true. So you can stand out just by doing twice what you're asked to do as a volunteer. And that's how you get to know people. Like I did, I got to know Jack Canfield, who co-created Chicken Soup for the Soul. And then many years later, introduced me to the guy who became my agent, who sold The 4-Hour Workweek.

• 2:02:12Noah Kagan?

  That's pretty cool.

• 2:02:13Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah. All right. So Noah, next question. What is the purchase that you've made in the last, say, six months for a hundred dollars or less that has had the greatest impact on your life?

• 2:02:24Noah Kagan?

  Purchase in the last six months? I would say, I purchased it around that time, but it's my NutriBullet.

• 2:02:32Tim Ferriss?

  I don't know what that is.

• 2:02:33Noah Kagan?

  It's the Magic Bullet's bigger brother.

• 2:02:35Tim Ferriss?

  The Magic Bullet, which is not a sexual device, it's a blender?

• 2:02:39Noah Kagan?

  I guess it could be, in some weird ways. But the NutriBullet is basically like, I like smoothies, I like my protein shakes, I like blending up things. But it's always a pain in the ass to clean.

• 2:02:51Tim Ferriss?

  Right.

• 2:02:51Noah Kagan?

  And this, you could just blend, drink out, and wash out, and there's no cleaning. And every time I get, this is like the gift I give to most people. I'm like, dude, if you don't have a NutriBullet in your kitchen, like, you're missing out. And it's just really effective for like blending anything and getting it in. Like, I have a Vitamix, which is like a $500 blender, and I just don't even use it anymore.

• 2:03:07Tim Ferriss?

  It's a lot of cleanup for that thing.

• 2:03:09Noah Kagan?

  Well, yeah, it's like I have to get a cleaning lady to assist me to clean that thing. And the NutriBullet, you can do, you know, in 20 seconds or less. And it's just been really effective. And it's one of those things, like, if you don't have it, I just buy it for people, because that's what I know they need.

• 2:03:20Tim Ferriss?

  Very cool. Well, action-packed. I love how many things we were able to cover. And I would love to hear what people think, and also the competition people can check out. So go to fourhourworkweek.com/podcast to check that out. One more thing I'm going to mention for folks is that you and I both were on an episode of The Tim Ferriss Experiment and coached someone through launching their business, and went through a lot of information that we weren't able to cover in this episode, like creating call scripts and... Tons of challenges like the coffee challenge and so on. So that I think people would enjoy checking out. But where can people learn more about you, Noah, find you online, etc.?

• 2:04:01Noah Kagan?

  Yep. Number one thing for my personal stuff is going to be at okdork.com. Okdork.com and business related, if you know, for the tools and a lot of the main things I was talking about. It's going to be at sumome.com. That's a lot of the business that we've been building and recommending for most people.

• 2:04:18Tim Ferriss?

  Awesome. Anything, any parting advice or thoughts you'd like to give to folks?

• 2:04:23Noah Kagan?

  I would, I would. Two other things, because I looked at, and this is kind of a thing like, I think there's a, there's a ratio of how much you invest in something to how much you get out. So if you're sending cheap emails to people like Tim or a customer or anybody you want, and you're sending a quick email, you're probably not going to get a response because you're not investing that much. So I invested in researching shows and comments to see what is going to make this the most popular episode ever. And that's what I want it to be with the number of comments. So make sure you go comment, even if you don't do the challenge. Well, two other things that a lot of people were asking about. You know, we did morning ritual, but you guys asked, what do I listen to while working out? And I want to share some of my favorite rap artists.

• 2:05:00Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 2:05:01Noah Kagan?

  For your audience. So if they want to get, they want to get pumped up.

• 2:05:05Noah Kagan?

  I listen to a lot of like hardcore rap and I get mixtapes from datpiff.com.

• 2:05:09Tim Ferriss?

  How do you, how do you spell that?

• 2:05:10Noah Kagan?

  D A T P I F F dot com. So I can't, I'll send, I'll send you my Spotify playlist too for my workouts. But the guys I listen to a lot lately are like Travis Scott and Wale's new album. Those two have been going really strong. So if you're going to look at a workout, go check out Travis Scott and Wale.

• 2:05:28Tim Ferriss?

  How do you spell Wale?

• 2:05:30Noah Kagan?

  W A L E.

• 2:05:32Tim Ferriss?

  Wale. Do you have any music you listen to that you're embarrassed to admit you listen to?

• 2:05:39Noah Kagan?

  Mostly emo, which is just going to be like Promise Ring. It's like kind of crying and crying stuff.

• 2:05:47Noah Kagan?

  It's like, oh, I'm a little bitch. I'm a little bitch. So that's number one. I listened to Promise Ring. A lot of their stuff is good. The other thing, Tim, you guys talked about alcohol and people seem to like alcohol recommendations. So if you're a tequila fan, Casa Amigos is affordable and delicious. And it's George Clooney's tequila and it's phenomenal. I drink the Reposado. If you're a little more expensive, which is the best for the price, it's called Classe Azul. And that's a hundred dollars a bottle or 89 and it's a porcelain white bottle and it's insane if you like tequila.

• 2:06:19Tim Ferriss?

  Is that what you order when you walk into a bar?

• 2:06:22Noah Kagan?

  Uh, it's normally $20 a shot, so it depends on my mood. I'm like, $20 a shot? I have the bottle at home. I could wait. I'll just get a soda water.

• 2:06:33Noah Kagan?

  And or if you're a whiskey fan, Balcony's Single Malt, anything by Balcony's. It's a number one whiskey in the world. And it's a Texas whiskey.

• 2:06:41Tim Ferriss?

  Balcony's, B A L C O N E S?

• 2:06:44Noah Kagan?

  Yes, sir.

• 2:06:45Tim Ferriss?

  Awesome. All right. No, well, we will have some tequila and tacos in Austin soon. Oh, my God, that sounds awesome. Uh, thank you so much for the time, man. And everybody, be sure to check out all the notes and goodies and links and recommendations, Spotify playlists, et cetera, at fourhourworkweek.com/podcast. This episode is brought to you by Athletic Greens. I get asked all the time, if you could only use one supplement, what would it be? And my answer is inevitably Athletic Greens. It is your all-in-one nutritional insurance. I recommended it in The Four Hour Body, did not get paid for that. And I travel with it to avoid getting sick. I take it in the mornings to ensure optimal performance. It just covers all my bases if I can't get what I need through whole food meals throughout the rest of the day.

• 2:07:30Tim Ferriss?

  And you can get 50, oh, my God, 50% off. Yes, 50% off if you go to athleticgreens.com/tim. That's athleticgreens.com/tim. Check it out. It's tasty, but more important, it will help you not screw up when you're doing your nutritional planning. So for me, it just covers the bases, takes a load off my mind, puts a lot in my body. And check it out, athleticgreens.com/tim. This episode is brought to you by 99designs, your one-stop shop for all things graphic design related. I have used 99designs for everything from banner ads to book covers, including sketches and mockups that led to The Four Hour Body, which later became

• 2:08:12Tim Ferriss?

  number one New York Times, number one Wall Street Journal. And the brainstorming, a lot of it took place with designers from around the world. And here's how it works. Whether you need a t-shirt, a business card, a website, an app thumbnail, whatever it might be, you submit that project and designers from around the world will send you sketches and mockups and designs. You choose your favorite and you have an original that you love or you get your money back. It's that straightforward. And many of you who are listening have already used it and created some amazing things that I'll be sharing in the future. But in the meantime, if you want to see some of my competitions, some of the book covers, as well as get a free $99 upgrade, go to 99designs.com/tim. That's 99designs.com/tim.