Noah Kagan: Notes From Meeting Peter Thiel and Books that Helped Him Make Millions

Sam Parr (@theSamParr) is joined by Noah Kagan (@noahkagan) to discuss how AppSumo started, what he's working on now, what he learned from his recent meeting from Peter Thiel, the books that have had. the biggest impact on him, and what he's reading now. _____ * Do you love MFM and want to see Sam and Shaan's smiling faces? Subscribe to our Youtube channel. * Want more insights like MFM? Check out Shaan's newsletter. _____ Show Notes & Links: (0:30) - Noah's schedule and what he's working on now (11:30) - Why Noah doesn't think 10 years ahead (22:15) - Does being rich really make you happier? (Yes) (35:05) - Noah's thoughts from meeting Peter Thiel and startup cities (47:10) - How would you live differently if you were a billionaire? (58:15) - What Noah and Sam are reading

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

• 0:00Noah Kagan?

  No, it just started as a side hustle. Like I was in a basement in San Francisco that was like, yo, I have a theory about what I think will be big and I want to make 3,000 bucks a month. Never was it like, I want to make millions of dollars or I want to have a bunch of people or I want to have a bunch of customers.

• 0:26Noah Kagan?

  How are you, Sam? How are you today?

• 0:27Sam Parr?

  I'm good. What are you doing?

• 0:29Noah Kagan?

  Well, I just got back from Albuquerque. I was hanging out with my family.

• 0:36Noah Kagan?

  And then I just got home and there's like back to back meetings before we go to the Trail of Lights tonight in Austin.

• 0:41Sam Parr?

  I know. Neville and Neil, I've heard all about you guys are going to have some exciting times tonight. Did, um, do you, you weren't working today like a normal schedule?

• 0:50Noah Kagan?

  Uh, I actually work really best in airplanes. So I got up, worked in the airplane, landed, then just been kind of back to back meetings now until 6:30.

• 1:00Sam Parr?

  Do you enjoy having a normal schedule now?

• 1:06Noah Kagan?

  Oof. It, um, I had some trauma, you know, by the way, like Silicon Valley tech worker trauma is like, my boss didn't give me a 20% raise. It was a 10% raise and I am traumatized. Like when I worked at Intel, all I did was meetings and it was like, and I was like, this is the worst thing ever. And now I'm, I'm in, all I do is meetings. But then, you know, I will, I will say though, today I was in some meetings and I was interacting. I was like, man, I love you people. There's some meetings where they suck and you have to figure out how to get rid of them or change the meeting. And there's some where it's like, wow, we're business forward. Like there's things that are happening that are making shit happen in the business.

• 1:43Sam Parr?

  So Noah, you Noah Kagan's here, founder of this company called AppSumo, which we'll talk about in a second. But you basically like you, you kind of, I don't know. Do you say you stepped away? You weren't like actively running the company day to day for like a couple of years. Now you're the CEO again. I, so I was active for a long time. Now I'm not active. It's amazing. It's the best. I don't know. Like, I don't think I have it in me to, at least not right now, to go back and do that. Do you think that you have it in you?

• 2:14Noah Kagan?

  It's hard. It's, I mean, I was not working. I mean, it sounds such like an ass stuff, but like, I wasn't really working. I was doing podcasts, which isn't really working. And I was making a lot of money and now I'm working. I actually think I'll make the least I've made this year.

• 2:33Sam Parr?

  Wait, what does that mean? You're making a lot of money from what?

• 2:36Noah Kagan?

  Well, amen. So we hired this guy to run appsumo.com. He was running it and I was like, oh, well, let me make YouTube videos and do podcasts and I'll like build Sendfox and experimental stuff. And then I would get paid. And then amen wanted to step out and to be an advisor and I stepped in and now I'm having to do all his work. I will say, and then, yeah, I think I'll make less money this year. Two things with that. One, sometimes when you criticize another, because I criticized him a lot. But

• 3:03Sam Parr?

  Well, just like, just like, you could be better. You could be better, amen.

• 3:05Noah Kagan?

  Yeah, like Jewish.

• 3:06Sam Parr?

  Why are you doing this?

• 3:07Noah Kagan?

  Yeah, Jewish mother, like Noah, why not? Your cousin, he, so you could have been like your brother. He's a doctor. And one, under being in his shoes definitely makes me respect him so much more, but I just a lot, just a lot. Like he is a very impressive guy. Also, he had a deal with me. But I'd say the second thing is that the work now is harder. It's hard, but it's much more rewarding. And so I was even writing that down in my diary this morning. I said, Dear diary, hard work is rewarding.

• 3:43Sam Parr?

  Noah, you have the weirdest. So like, you talk about having a diary. You always talk about going to therapy, which is no big deal. These, none of these, all these things are great, but you act like a tough guy sometimes. And then you talk about like, how you gotta complain to your diary. You kind of shocked me.

• 4:00Noah Kagan?

  I think, you know, I think of myself like a Chinese dish. I'm like sweet and sour pork. You know, like, you're not really supposed to have pork as a Jew. And then sometimes it's sweet and then sometimes you're like, kind of sour. It's just like, it's a mixed bag. It's a variety. It's entertaining.

• 4:16Sam Parr?

  You're, since I've known you now for, I think, like eight or nine years, and you've, you're, you're KG with numbers. So I don't want to push you if you don't want to be pushed. Can you talk about how big you guys are now, given, I mean, in your YouTube video, I think you said 100 million in revenue.

• 4:32Noah Kagan?

  Yeah, we're not gonna hit it. We actually missed our goal this year. It's gonna be less than that.

• 4:37Sam Parr?

  Well, you said 80 in another video. What?

• 4:42Noah Kagan?

  Because someone doesn't want to tell you how much they make as a cage?

• 4:46Sam Parr?

  Um, yes. I don't think that's wrong, though. I don't like, I don't talk about a lot of stuff either. I say like round numbers sometimes, or I'll just say, I don't want to talk about that.

• 4:55Noah Kagan?

  All right. How much did you sell the hustle for? Let's try these. Let's try cagey numbers.

• 5:00Sam Parr?

  Um, tens of millions of dollars. Uh,

• 5:04Noah Kagan?

  Yeah. How much do you make a year now, working at HubSpot?

• 5:08Sam Parr?

  Well, I get paid, uh, I got, I get paid a whole lot of stock, but my base salary, I think, is only $250,000, maybe?

• 5:16Noah Kagan?

  Only?

• 5:17Sam Parr?

  Well, my stock is, is significant.

• 5:20Noah Kagan?

  I will say, this is, you know, in all these shows nowadays and crypto people, they always like, this is not financial advice. I'm going to give financial advice. I buy a lot of HubSpot stock. I think it's one of the most undervalued stocks on the market. So,

• 5:30Sam Parr?

  Dude, when they bought us, I think it was, um, they were worth $17 billion or $16 billion in late January, around when they bought us. I think today it's 40. So, yeah, it's gone up a lot. So, and, and that's why when people ask how much we sold for, I'm like, well, we sold, we, I basically, I got tens of millions in cash and then I also got HubSpot stock, but it's already, it's, it's up significantly since we sold. So, and I don't know, like, what price do you say?

• 5:57Noah Kagan?

  Who's wealthier?

• 5:59Sam Parr?

  Yeah, sorry. I don't know. And I don't love exactly saying, what are we going to ask? Who's wealthier?

• 6:03Noah Kagan?

  You or Sean?

• 6:04Sam Parr?

  Oh, dude, I don't, I don't know. I, I, here, I'll tell you this. We did a podcast. We did a podcast recently. And I basically said, my goal was to make at least $20 million by the age of 30, and I did that.

• 6:16Noah Kagan?

  Dude, good for you.

• 6:17Sam Parr?

  And that was the goal. But you, you know, like, I, I also don't, I own assets now in the, in the, in some real estate and I own, HubSpot stock and Airbnb stock, but like you own AppSumo, which an $80 million a year business, what, do you think you're worth 200 or 300 million dollars?

• 6:34Noah Kagan?

  Um, I think AppSumo is worth somewhere between a quarter billion and a billion dollars.

• 6:39Sam Parr?

  Isn't that crazy?

• 6:40Noah Kagan?

  Uh, yeah, I don't really look at that as part of my net worth. I just look at my own. It's interesting. We've talked about this a little bit. You like, I think there's Silicon Valley entrepreneurs that think about your valuation of a company. And then there's me and you who are normal people that are like, what's your profit? What's your revenue? All right. You're worth a million, not like, oh, well, the multiple is this. They say multiple, they're Silicon Valley.

• 7:01Sam Parr?

  Well, I mean, you guys would sell if you're, if you're, if you think you, if you said that you're going to do in the range of 80 million in revenue. I mean, I don't know how I would value that five times profits or five times that number, I guess, right?

• 7:14Noah Kagan?

  I don't know, man. It's a little, it's a little surreal and I don't, I'm not sure how different my life would be. My brother did ask me, he's like, if you were to sell, you know, how much would you sell for? And I was like, I don't know. Like if it was a billion, that's like, and I think people don't realize that. Like when Mark Zuckerberg, I worked at Facebook and I, my, Catherine's like, shut up talking about that. But you gotta give him credit, man. He turned down a billion dollar offer at 24.

• 7:36Sam Parr?

  Yeah, he's crazy.

• 7:37Noah Kagan?

  Like dude, you took the first offers anyone offered you.

• 7:40Sam Parr?

  No, I didn't, but, but like, yeah, I was like eager. I mean, I think.

• 7:45Noah Kagan?

  I say that with love. I say that with love, dude.

• 7:46Sam Parr?

  No, we, we, we had a few other ones, but it was a good one. And I knew that hubs, I, I didn't know. I was betting that HubSpot stock was a good buy. And I think that I just like, I'm not Zuck. I, I can't imagine working, dude, he gets, do you think his life is enjoyable? I can't imagine it's enjoyable. I mean, I guess he enjoys it, but I, I just think that that's hell to me.

• 8:09Noah Kagan?

  That's why he has to have a virtual character enjoy it more for him.

• 8:12Sam Parr?

  Yeah, I don't know. I mean, like we had, you and I have this buddy, remember that one time we were out to eat and you could say his, I don't know. You're, he's your friend. So you could tell me if you want to say his name, but he was like, Noah, you're not growing at three times a year. What the fuck? You're leaving so much on the table and you're like, dude, I just went mountain biking, like on a Tuesday. And then on Wednesday I like did this, and then on Thursday I did this. We're going to make like 80 million in revenue this year and I own most of it. I'm so happy. And he was criticizing you as a friend and, and I was like, no, is he, is he crazy? Like you've got it. This is perfect. This is, don't change. This is perfect.

• 8:53Noah Kagan?

  It's, um, I don't know. I guess how you want to live, do you think that, I guess that changes over the years, right? And I think what, what's that? No, no, how you want to live. I mean, I think in your twenties, you're just like scrambling and wanting to, I know for me, I wanted to prove myself. I wanted to have status. I wanted to have it. And then as your thirties, you know, I'm still doing it.

• 9:15Noah Kagan?

  No, I'm just like, you know, you, you figure out more what really gives you fulfillment. And I think everyone's got their own stuff. I think figuring it out for yourself is a really tough thing.

• 9:22Sam Parr?

  You, um, how many people work there? A hundred?

• 9:25Noah Kagan?

  I think now we have 140.

• 9:27Sam Parr?

  Isn't that crazy?

• 9:30Noah Kagan?

  It's.

• 9:32Noah Kagan?

  Yeah. Yeah, it is crazy.

• 9:34Sam Parr?

  Do you?

• 9:34Noah Kagan?

  Like, it was just, it was just started as a side, oh, sorry. Am I cutting you off, too?

• 9:37Sam Parr?

  No, keep going. I want to hear.

• 9:38Noah Kagan?

  No, it just started as a side hustle. Like, I was in a basement in San Francisco that was like, yo, I have a theory about what I think will be big. And I want to make 3,000 bucks a month. Never was it like, I want to make millions of dollars, or I want to have a bunch of people, or I want to have a bunch of customers.

• 9:53Sam Parr?

  Why 3,000 a month?

• 9:56Noah Kagan?

  A thousand was for living, a thousand was for eating, and a thousand was for saving.

• 10:00Sam Parr?

  That's funny. That's almost exactly what I did, too. It was about that number. Did you, how big do you think it was gonna get?

• 10:07Noah Kagan?

  I never thought that far ahead. I mean, there's a, go for it.

• 10:12Sam Parr?

  I keep interrupting you. I'm sorry. Go ahead.

• 10:14Noah Kagan?

  No, it's all good, man. Well, like, there's a, there's a quote I read by Paul Graham, and it was like, if you're so worried about what's gonna, your company's gonna be in 10 years, like, you're never gonna make sure you can take care of your customers today, and your business won't exist in 10 years. So don't worry about it. And I just kind of, I guess that's how, that's, that's served me well. I, I think someone asked me, they're like, what did it take to become a millionaire? And I think one of the things for me was just like, following the curiosity. And I was like, curious about all this stuff that, like, that we, me and you get paid for.

• 10:43Sam Parr?

  Yeah, I mean, I'm in the same boat. I think when I, having 140 employees would, I don't know if it would freak me out, but like, I remember, do you still look at your payroll when you pay it every two weeks?

• 10:56Noah Kagan?

  Well, so do you want to just tell you the call? I literally, that's why I was late to the podcast.

• 10:59Sam Parr?

  Yeah.

• 11:00Noah Kagan?

  Because I'm, you know, we're, we're taking the whole team out to Costa Rica. And then we're also, we're, it was some spend for advertising. It was like $50,000. And I'm just like, yes, we make revenue, but at the end of the day, if you don't have income and you're not a funded business, you're gonna go out of business. And so I think it's figuring out, how do you create, you know, checks and balances? So I'm not stressing about it weekly. But there's definitely some net income issues that are keeping me up. And then we're doing budgeting projections. And the fucked up thing with budgeting is if you budget for 100 million, 120 million, whatever, 150, and you spend on that and you don't make it, then yeah, you get kind of fucked, too.

• 11:38Sam Parr?

  I think that you and I are similar in that like when, when I see the, so I'll like say, yeah, I wanna, I think we can hit a hundred million in revenue. And then they say, all right, well, then we have to spend $80 million. And I look at it and I'm like, oh my God, what the hell? What is this $50,000 expense? What is this $10,000 expense? Are you crazy? We can't do this. This is ridiculous. And I get fearful. I think that's the cool thing about having a guy like Aman where he's a little bit less attached. This company called Nerd Wallet, you know, Nerd Wallet?

• 12:05Noah Kagan?

  Yeah.

• 12:06Sam Parr?

  Tim Chen gave me a little bit of money to start the hustle. And it was his idea to give me money. He was like, hey, can I give you some money to start this? And I took it. And they just went public at like three or four billion in valuation. And I went to him one day. I go, Tim, we're spending $80,000 a month in expenses. We're making more than that. But like, that's crazy. He goes, man, it's just an Excel number. Like, it's just, it's just, it's a spreadsheet. You, it has an input and an output. That's all you should care about. You shouldn't actually care that it's $80,000 a month. And I still find myself freaking out over that stuff. And so for you, let's say, I don't know, I imagine your payroll is like 10, 40, 50 million dollars a year, or something like that, or your payroll and marketing expenses. I would, I'd flip out when I think about that, because that's all

• 12:50Sam Parr?

  basically your money. Whereas with Aman or someone else, you could be, you could be more detached.

• 12:55Noah Kagan?

  Yeah. I mean, Aman always cared. And Aman, I have a lot of respect and admiration for him. And he's still very involved. I think the way that I've tried to approach it generally is two pieces. Number one, when does the red flag need to be triggered? So every week, we have a Monday KPI sheet that they update our gross margin, they update like customers. And so there's color coding. And it's like, okay, are there red flags in any of the numbers that I need to call shit on? And I think that, that obviously reduces your anxiety and it helps you make sure that you're trusting but verifying. I think the second thing around it is that, how much, if something is a profitable spend, how much should you spend?

• 13:29Sam Parr?

  It depends on, it all depends on a lot of different stuff. But if you're spending money and you're making 30% profit, go all in.

• 13:36Noah Kagan?

  Uh huh. There's no budget. It's unlimited. And I think that's part of the question with the spending for me is that, where is our spending very profitable? Like, is it in marketing? Is in development? Is in sales? Is it in the partner success team? Or is there things like that that should be more like AWS where they're, they're a little bit more scalable up and down? And they're not as profitable. So we need to be mindful of that.

• 13:56Sam Parr?

  How big do you think this business could get in like 10 or 20 years? Do you have, do you ever think about that?

• 14:01Noah Kagan?

  I'm just trying to survive to next year, dude.

• 14:04Noah Kagan?

  I mean, you know, it's funny, we've had, as we've grown, and it's been interesting because I have my YouTube channel, which is a very small team of like five people. And then we have AppSumo, which is a larger thing. I come back to the why, right? Like on AppSumo, it's very simple. We promote dope tools at great prices and we help people start and grow online businesses. AppSumo.com. And I think we have to come back to that because people are like, we're going to be in five years. I'm like, probably helping people grow and start online businesses.

• 14:30Sam Parr?

  No, I know you're going to be doing the same thing, but like

• 14:32Noah Kagan?

  revenue was, I mean, we were, yeah, we, we, we went to the spreadsheet and we tripled numbers. Silicon Valley, double, double, triple, triple from in and out. And we became a billion dollar company revenue in like five years or something like that. I, I think right now, what I candidly, some of our mechanics in terms of the scalable business means as we add partners, do we get customers and does business grow? The, the, how do I say it more clearly? It's just not adding up. Like we added more partners this year and the proportional amount of customers did not come with that. And so we have to work a little bit more on that flywheel, which is

• 15:08Sam Parr?

  Well, I think that you must have with trends. So we had trends, our subscription service, we fucking crushed it during COVID. We crushed it. And I think now sales slow down a little bit. I think it's cyclical, but this, the like, I bet if I had a bet, COVID was like the best times you ever had.

• 15:26Noah Kagan?

  COVID, COVID was great, man. I thought it was just great in general, right? I thought it brought, there's a lot of good about COVID, just about humanity and not the death part, maybe, but like the bringing people closer. I don't know, man. I've been doing the internet shit since 2004. I've never had a recession. And it's not that I have some superpower, but it's like, well, the only way to not have recession is just keep doing things that people want. And basically, I think one of the other key things to kind of consider is how do you have discipline when times are good? So you don't have to be as disciplined when times are bad. And I think right now, Candidly with AppSumo, I think we're being a little bit undisciplined with our spending and our hiring because times have been better. And I'm trying to get that a little bit more tighter, whether the, you know, the future is good or not.

• 16:05Sam Parr?

  Why is your YouTube team so big?

• 16:07Noah Kagan?

  Five people? I don't even think it's that big. Mr. Beast has like a hundred people.

• 16:11Sam Parr?

  No way. You think he has a hundred employees?

• 16:13Noah Kagan?

  At least 50 full-time, at least 50 full-time, if not a hundred contractors.

• 16:17Sam Parr?

  Yeah. And are they, what's his name?

• 16:19Noah Kagan?

  The Mr. Beast, Jimmy.

• 16:21Sam Parr?

  Jimmy. Are they all like, it's, cause it's like the Jimmy show, right? So it's like, whatever he wants, you do. Do, I think that'd be weird to have 50 employees where it's like, hey, guys. Next week, I'm thinking I want to do this. The reason I would hate that is because then you've got someone like, "Hey Jimmy, what if we had a Rolling Stones song in the background?" "No, I don't want that." Just like, "Let me do what I want to do, please." Just like fulfill that.

• 16:42Noah Kagan?

  It's a, so we have a head of staff. And one thing I've never, one thing I hate, I hate when someone's like, "Hey, can you remind me about this?" And I'm like, "No bitch, just write it down. I just told you. You want me to remind you, like do your job." But I will say, you know, becoming CEO, which I never called myself over the years until recently. And is that there is times where you're like, "Yo, remind me." And you're like, "Oh my God, you're going to remind me?" And her name's Anna, who's head of staff. She's phenomenal. And then with the YouTube channel, I'm like, "Hey, I want you to come back with more ideas. Come, go pitch me 10 more ideas. Go, go." And they come back and they, I'm like, "This is the best ever." And so I think it is figuring out, you know, what eras you like to play in, and then being around people that you're just consistently impressed with. But having people that'll do, help you figure out shit, oh my God, it's epic.

• 17:27Sam Parr?

  Are you getting noticed on the street now?

• 17:29Noah Kagan?

  No, not, just a home.

• 17:31Sam Parr?

  Really? You don't?

• 17:33Noah Kagan?

  It varies. In Austin, you know, it's kind of our hometown. So I think more people do it. Um, not, not, actually not, even though the channel's gotten bigger, we doubled this year. I actually used to get noticed a lot at the gym.

• 17:45Noah Kagan?

  The guy, "Hey bro," I'm like, "Hey." I don't know. I'm always still excited when people came, come and say hi.

• 17:50Sam Parr?

  I just got, uh.

• 17:52Noah Kagan?

  Did you get recognized?

• 17:53Sam Parr?

  Yeah, weekly. I just, this like this morning, just walking down the street. And it makes me a little nervous sometimes because I'm like thinking I gotta like, uh, like, like, like, uh, I love smoking cigars. And I'll just walk around smoking cigars. And I'm like, "I don't want people to see me smoking."

• 18:11Sam Parr?

  It makes me a little nervous.

• 18:12Noah Kagan?

  You know, don't you think it's flattering? I'm always so, I always feel honored that like

• 18:15Sam Parr?

  I feel honored.

• 18:16Noah Kagan?

  I've worked on, yeah, something I've worked on has impacted this person and they're excited to, to say hi to me. Like, who, who have you seen that you've said hi to that you're a little nervous?

• 18:24Sam Parr?

  The other day I saw Logan Paul and I, and I, and I, and I respect Logan Paul and I said, what's up? And I could just, I just pounded and I go, I just pounded it while I was walking by. He's huge. Logan's huge.

• 18:35Noah Kagan?

  Was this here or?

• 18:36Sam Parr?

  New York when I was in, or I guess it wasn't the other day, about two or three months ago. I saw him and I, and I respect it. I respect what he built and he was a big old dude and I, I, I could have stopped and be like, hey, like this is what I do for a living. Your brother was on my thing and I probably, we probably got friends of friends, but I was honestly kind of nervous and I just like, just pounded it when I walked away.

• 18:58Noah Kagan?

  Well, you, I'm sure he'll do a Twitter thing like, hey, I want to have Logan on the show. But anyways, that's, that's awesome, man.

• 19:03Sam Parr?

  Did you see my Twitter thread about when I met the Silk Road guy?

• 19:07Noah Kagan?

  No.

• 19:08Sam Parr?

  You didn't see that? I posted it the other day. I was looking through old Dropbox pictures and, um, or go to my Instagram or something. You'll see it. And, uh, I posted your, yeah, I want you to see it. It's me with Ross Albright, the guy from Silk Road.

• 19:22Noah Kagan?

  Oh, I think I remember that story you posted about it.

• 19:25Sam Parr?

  Yeah, I talked about it like here, but I was looking through old Dropbox pictures and I found the pictures of us together and I originally took them down off Facebook because I was nervous, but now it's no big deal. And, uh, I posted the pictures about how I met this guy named Ross at a party and we just chit chatted and he got arrested like a month later and I know, I recognized him and I was like, oh my God, that was Ross, the guy we hung out with at the party.

• 19:52Noah Kagan?

  How much better is your life now being rich?

• 19:55Sam Parr?

  It, you, you know that $70,000, um, that $70,000 study?

• 20:01Noah Kagan?

  I've heard that. It sounds like bullshit to me.

• 20:02Sam Parr?

  It's bullshit. It's way better. It's way better. It's significantly better.

• 20:08Sam Parr?

  It's significantly better. I think like, I still worry about stuff and I was just talking to my friend about this today. And I was like, why am I nervous about this and that? I told Neville, I go Neville, Neville bought this $800 vacuum. And I was like, I went to up to his house to borrow it. And I was like, I can't buy one of these. It's $800. It's too expensive. And he's like, why are you worrying about that? I'm like, I don't know. It freaks me out. I'm afraid to buy stuff. So do you have that?

• 20:34Noah Kagan?

  Yeah. Well, I think two things are interesting. One, I went to the grocery store. I was with my parent, you know, for Thanksgiving. My mom bought, we get grapes. I really into green grapes lately. And she's like, Noah, these are really expensive today. Let's not get them. I'm like, Deborah, it's your birthday. I'm gonna treat you. You get two of them. So

• 20:53Sam Parr?

  I don't, I have no problems. Anything that's health related, I'll buy.

• 20:56Noah Kagan?

  I don't know. I'm still mindful of it. I think what's fascinating on the other side of it, Sam, is like, I mentioned it to you on text, but you didn't want me to talk about it. It was just like crypto and NFT crap, which all these, you know, former Shopify store runners now are crypto experts, which is funny. And I like trade and I'll make or I'll buy something and make like $100 or I'll lose like a thousand. And I'm like, not devastated. They're like AppSumo, like we promote partners and, you know, we'll do like a million dollars in a day and the partners make like 700,000 and our customers are happy. And I'm like, well, that's cool. Yeah, it's funny the things that

• 21:30Sam Parr?

  There's a phrase, it's called a penny poor, pound rich, I think, right? Or yeah, something like that. Do you, we're talking about crypto, but you don't actually buy crypto, right? You just bought a bunch at one time and you held on to?

• 21:44Noah Kagan?

  No. Well, two things. One thing I want to highlight, this is a phrase that Chad said, my business partner at appsumo.com. You like how I plug it. He actually had this phrase that was great. He's like, Noah, don't confuse the anthills for the mountains. I was like, damn, that's good. And he's like, when we're doing work at AppSumo and, you know, the different products we've built or whatever it is, he's like, is this a macro thing or a micro thing? And let's do the macro thing. Let's get some fucking mountains, man. He's like, don't sweat this bullshit stuff. And I'm like, all right. But that's hard, man. Especially, I was telling someone recently where There's all these productivity tools and everyone's always, everyone's always like, what's the latest, I'm like, you're not even doing anything. Like, don't worry about the calendar or the productivity tool. We're about just doing important things.

• 22:25Sam Parr?

  This is the best productivity tool, the back of an envelope.

• 22:28Noah Kagan?

  That's damn.

• 22:29Sam Parr?

  It's a good, it gets the job done.

• 22:31Noah Kagan?

  My crypto thing, yeah, I buy, I'm a boring investor. So I think there's active income and passive income and I try to focus on my active. So I just started buying in 2015 and I just put it on autopilot and I just auto bought it every month for the past six years.

• 22:44Sam Parr?

  And it's like made up of substantial, I mean, you've, you've done well with it, I think, which is pretty great.

• 22:50Noah Kagan?

  I'll tell you the number on that, that I don't mind.

• 22:52Sam Parr?

  Well, okay. I mean, you can.

• 22:53Noah Kagan?

  I don't, I have to tell you, it's fine.

• 22:55Sam Parr?

  I, if I had a bet, can I, can I guess?

• 22:58Noah Kagan?

  Oh, yeah. I'll be cagey.

• 22:59Sam Parr?

  I would guess between one and two million.

• 23:02Noah Kagan?

  Not four million, but.

• 23:03Sam Parr?

  It's four million?

• 23:05Noah Kagan?

  Yeah.

• 23:06Sam Parr?

  Isn't that nuts?

• 23:08Noah Kagan?

  Well, it's always so funny because then you're like, yesterday I was, this weekend, I was like disappointed I didn't buy CryptoPunks when my buddy was like, you should buy it, buy it, dude. But it was like $50,000 and I'm like, that's fucking crazy to buy status and imagery and like, it's an investment. It's a little investment when it goes up. It's gambling when it goes down.

• 23:25Sam Parr?

  Well, the NFTs I think are mostly fucking stupid.

• 23:29Noah Kagan?

  Oh, don't get me started, dude. I just went on a deep hole.

• 23:31Sam Parr?

  Are you on board or not?

• 23:33Noah Kagan?

  Dude, I just got scammed. I lost my, I'm like, I can't, I don't even know what happened for the past two weeks. I'm like, yesterday I woke up at 8am to buy apes. I just spent $1,600 on apes.

• 23:45Sam Parr?

  What, of the, of the four million in crypto, how much did you, what's your, what's your basis there?

• 23:50Noah Kagan?

  Um, I can pull it up. It's probably maybe about half a million or 400,000.

• 23:56Sam Parr?

  Isn't that amazing? Is that crazy?

• 23:58Noah Kagan?

  Uh, yeah. Well, I think I've always just, it's interesting because I've always, not always. When I started using it, I was like, oh, I can see why this is going to be big. But yeah, the return on it as an investment is pretty insane.

• 24:11Sam Parr?

  That's nuts. What else, and like, what else could do that? Like some public equity, equities, but you don't even angel invest, do you? I mean, angel invest could do that. It just takes forever.

• 24:21Noah Kagan?

  Yeah, it's not, I mean, I think the best investment for everyone is their own business. So if you look at it like active income, like really creating your own company has pretty much the highest multiples I can imagine. Also, you can control it if you can get something to work because most of them don't work that well.

• 24:35Sam Parr?

  Yeah, but you gotta grind sometimes. Often.

• 24:39Noah Kagan?

  I talked to this guy, I was biking on Saturday and this guy named Nick, he's like, man, I gotta grind. And I was like, how much do you, I was like, how much does he make? He makes, he's like 60K. And I was like, why don't you, you know, it doesn't, I don't care. I'm not judging him how much he makes. It was like, but if you're gonna grind, at least grind in something that has higher upside for yourself. Cause it's the same amount of work. Like he doesn't work harder than me. I don't work harder than him. I just worked on something that from a strictly financial perspective, has a better opportunity.

• 25:03Sam Parr?

  When you're working with Aiman, so Aiman is, was your CEO, good friend, my good friend too. When, how, how often would you talk to him?

• 25:13Noah Kagan?

  It varied, like it varied, probably like once a week on Fridays. And then one, a little bit throughout the week, but they actually kept me out of Slack. They kept me out of everything. Cause it's kind of like, you know, like my mom's a Jewish mother. It's like Noah, what's that on the screen? What is that? It's better to be out. And I think that's probably the reason he wanted to step out. And this is, I don't think we're airing our private stuff.

• 25:34Sam Parr?

  Wait, he wanted to step out because you were nagging him?

• 25:37Noah Kagan?

  Yeah, I think to some extent. I don't think anyone feels really excited. No one wakes up like excited, you know, unless it's some weird kink. To be like, oh, what are you doing today? And I think there's probably a little bit too much of that.

• 25:49Sam Parr?

  Do you think that, I mean, I have, I've had people quit for that reason. I do the same thing. You and I are very similar. You know that, right? And, and I did the same thing where I'm like, why are you doing this? What's going on today? What are you doing right now, today? Like what actions can we take immediately to fix X, Y, and Z? And I think you need both. You need that urgency, but like, if you have a good, if you have a winner, you do gotta let them chill and get it done.

• 26:15Sam Parr?

  Do you think that Aiman, whenever I have hired people to run stuff, I always, I get, I freak out. I'm like, this guy's gonna, when he finds out that I'm like profiting off their work, like they're gonna bail. This is so unfair. And I hope they don't figure this out. Did you freak out about that?

• 26:31Noah Kagan?

  I used to have a lot of that where I'd never would post anything on social.

• 26:34Sam Parr?

  Same.

• 26:35Noah Kagan?

  Like I wouldn't post any activity. I wouldn't post like my, you know, our YouTube videos like, hell, I made my first million. Like I would never say shit about that. And eventually I got to a point where I was like, well, am I helping these people do their best lives at the company? And what I, can I, am I doing my best to pay them whatever they want? So like with Aiman, I'm not gonna share his numbers. But I asked him, I was like, how much do you want to make? And he said numbers and he made more than that. And so I never really felt guilt because that guy got more than he wanted and I got well too. But I think within the company, it's also people are free to work wherever. So it's like, how do you create an environment? That people are like, yo, that guy's doing well and I'm doing well.

• 27:11Sam Parr?

  Are you interested in any projects right now? You had Sendfox, did you shut down Sendfox?

• 27:17Noah Kagan?

  No, we're still running Sendfox.com. It's a Mailchimp alternative.

• 27:21Sam Parr?

  What do you like? What type of projects are keeping you up?

• 27:24Noah Kagan?

  The two things that I'm, I mean, number one is AppSumo. So, you know, becoming more of a marketplace. So you buy or sell software, tools, books. And then the second stuff is like, all this NFT stuff is mind blowing. There's just so much. So Sam, I think like you, you kind of smirk. And, you know, at first I think that's what a lot of people have done with it. Same with crypto. When I was buying in 2015, people were like, I don't, I don't fully get it. But there's something just interesting. Same when I joined Facebook and I joined Facebook, people were like, you're going to go work at a social network. Okay. Same, you know, it seems weird, but there's just a lot of these really interesting use cases that I'm very tempted and I'm very excited about, right?

• 28:03Sam Parr?

  What use cases?

• 28:05Noah Kagan?

  So some of the really interesting ones, one is called CityDAO. So basically everyone pools their money. And then they buy a city. So they bought land in Wyoming. And now if you own one of the NFTs or tokens within it, you get votes to what they're going to do with the city. And so I find, I find that really fascinating. Plus everything's public. So you see who's voting. You see what the votes are. There's not much hidden. There's other ones that I've liked. One's called HeadDAO. It's kind of a stupid ass one. I think conceptually it's really interesting. I don't know if it's run well. But what I like about it is it is a fund where you buy their NFTs. So there's 10,000, everyone buys an NFT. And if you hold the NFTs and the fund goes and buys stuff.

• 28:49Noah Kagan?

  And based on your NFT, you get some return for whatever the fund invests in. So it's kind of like a index fund of crypto and other assets. So I think there's just something.

• 28:58Sam Parr?

  What's the city one called?

• 29:00Noah Kagan?

  CityDAO.

• 29:01Sam Parr?

  The, who's, who's organizing it?

• 29:04Noah Kagan?

  City Dow, I don't know, but it's all public for the most part, but there's just, there's so much stuff like that. Like, think about this. You can do housing. So like, right now, housing is like Noah owns a contract, goes to the thing and all this. It's like, you can have a house that's shared by a thousand people. Or like Roblox or Minecraft and the game stuff is really interesting where it's like, there's not like Facebook and Twitter that get everything or Roblox. It's like the creators and the consumers own the whole thing. Same with AppSumo. Like, how could we create it so the whole customer base owns AppSumo? So they're incentivized even to start doing it at AppSumo. I guess it's kind of like owning a share in Amazon, but kind of on a deeper level.

• 29:38Sam Parr?

  Are you, have you ever like paid money to be part of like a membership group? Like a Tiger 21 or anything like that?

• 29:44Noah Kagan?

  Not yet. I've always, not yet.

• 29:46Sam Parr?

  So there's this thing called, what's it called? Friends with Benefits? Have you seen that?

• 29:50Noah Kagan?

  I've heard of it. What is this?

• 29:51Sam Parr?

  And so I think the market cap is like hundreds of millions at this point. And so it was basically a Soho House online. So like cool New York young people paid either 500 or 1,000 or $2,000 to be part of an online group that held meetups. And it was like hot people and fucking young people wearing vans and Supreme and shit, like cool kid shit. And it was, you know, you had to buy an NFT or a coin to join the, the, the community. And you're incentivized to make the community awesome because people could sell their membership or like give it up. And it could be worth more than when they initially bought in that. And I think that's interesting.

• 30:37Noah Kagan?

  There's just a lot of you. I mean, it's still so early. So what's gonna, like, what's gonna, like, after the dust settles and the consolidation of all the junk? Cause I'll tell you, I jumped in, there's like all this Discord, Discord, you know, it's like Slack for juvenile delinquents.

• 30:50Sam Parr?

  Dude, it's so hard to figure out. I feel so old.

• 30:53Noah Kagan?

  It's not just that. It's just hard to use. And then it's just like so spammy. Like, I go in it and they're like, but anyways, there's just a lot going on in this space. And so trying to Try not to rush into anything, but just understand like, all right. I think AppSumo, we did a good job where people were like, I want to start businesses. I want tools. And it's like, how is entrepreneurship and startups and all that stuff evolving? And there's definitely something where there's so much money and there's so much speed being happening in this crypto NFT space that I find, I don't know, at this current time, I'm like obsessed with.

• 31:22Sam Parr?

  The guy or the people setting up the town in Wyoming, how are they going to make a profit? How did they get paid?

• 31:28Noah Kagan?

  So there's a lot of different, dude, there's all these different, I fully don't understand every single one out there. I'm not biology, but what they do is a few different things. So one, they could keep some of the assets. So when they, so they do a few different things. When you mint the tokens or the NFTs to give out, you, people buy into it. So when I create the baseball cards and I sell it to you, it's like one ETH each to, for you to buy, I, the, the city Dow keeps all that. And then they could decide how much of that goes out to use to buy land. They could say 80% buys land or 50%, they can decide that. The second thing they do, which is really interesting, this is what's really clever about NFT stuff is a lot of times on the secondary sales, the original owner gets a cut. You know that?

• 32:08Sam Parr?

  Yeah, I didn't know how much though.

• 32:10Noah Kagan?

  So it varies. So you could have a thing where if I create NFTs and it's ever resold, I get 5% of all sales forever. So there's just, there's some really interesting things. And then you could have people contribute more.

• 32:22Noah Kagan?

  There's just a lot of variations and look, in the end of the day, people have had partnerships. So this is not brand new. I think the, the medium of exchange through crypto and all this stuff is creating new, new opportunities.

• 32:32Sam Parr?

  Would you, you and Neville and then a couple of other friends went and hung out with Peter Thiel a few weeks ago and you could decide what you want to publicize or not. But one thing that I think I can say is, I think he said this to Neville or something where he was like, you know, businesses are, are neat, but they die. And he said something like a city, any city that's ever been a somewhat major city, it's never died before. And apparently his obsession right now is on cities. And I actually invested in this one company where they're doing gene editing. You know what gene editing is?

• 33:05Noah Kagan?

  Not familiar.

• 33:06Sam Parr?

  It's like basically the the kind of explain like I'm five version is if you get a disease and your skin like goes away or something happens to your skin and it gets messed up. Gene editing, you can tinker with someone's genes and it will grow, they'll grow back new skin, whereas before they probably wouldn't have. The issue with gene editing is that it's highly regulated by the FDA. And so like the future of gene editing could be like, if you're an amputee, you can grow back a new leg or, or you could grow a new liver or kidney or whatever, you know, shit like that. And Peter Thiel has this city in like Bolivia, somewhere in Central or South America. And he basically is like the founder of this city. And this company that I invested in is based out of that city because there is no FDA in

• 33:50Sam Parr?

  that city, which is like potentially horrible, but it's kind of interesting. He said that he's in, he's incredibly invested and interested in new cities. And I think so, I think that that's cool. When I hear about all these new startup people like Mark Laurie, the founder of Jet, he has a new cities. I think these new cities are actually incredibly fascinating.

• 34:10Noah Kagan?

  Yeah, I, I'm more interested in kind of like shared home ownership. I think there's something just kind of clever, like, how do I own a building? But there's a lot of people that own it and a lot of people can use it. I think there's, there's just like too many people that have too much house for just one individual. So I like the, the concept of that.

• 34:28Sam Parr?

  What did you think about meeting Peter Thiel?

• 34:30Noah Kagan?

  You know, what was it? There's a lot of interesting things about him.

• 34:34Noah Kagan?

  I think one I tweeted about this at no Kagan was that he just uses like an iPhone seven, right? Like the guy's like-

• 34:40Sam Parr?

  What are we on now? What, I've got the new one. What is that?

• 34:43Noah Kagan?

  Yeah, 13pro dot five, whatever.

• 34:45Sam Parr?

  And he's on a seven?

• 34:47Noah Kagan?

  Yeah. And he had like, you know, crappy ass New Balances. He looked like he was wearing like Mervyn socks and like, you know, like Wrangler jeans. I gotta give a fuck about it. And, you know,

• 34:56Sam Parr?

  Was he really? You think he was wearing regular jeans?

• 34:58Noah Kagan?

  Wrangler.

• 35:00Sam Parr?

  Just like, like Kate Mart jeans?

• 35:02Noah Kagan?

  Just like normal and, you know, but he also had three security guards and, you know, cameras and they checked the building and all that kind of stuff. I think I admired that he is a thinker. And it made me appreciate, you know, I met him when I worked at Facebook and I still remember this story. He like bought into our poker game and then he had to go meet with Zuck and then he lost. And then he's like, hey, can I get my money back? And then Boz, who's now like the CTO was like, fuck no.

• 35:26Sam Parr?

  He asked for his money back?

• 35:28Noah Kagan?

  Yeah, Peter did. And I was like, can't believe, and then also we would say no to the guy who's the, our only, you know, the main investor at the time. I think the other thing that I appreciate about him-

• 35:37Sam Parr?

  How much, how much was the buy-in?

• 35:39Noah Kagan?

  Like 10 bucks.

• 35:40Sam Parr?

  And he asked for it back?

• 35:41Noah Kagan?

  Yes, there's money, but I was like, what are you doing, dude? Like, I was kind of surprised he wanted it back, but then I liked that boss, like, fuck you.

• 35:47Sam Parr?

  He told, and he, he said that exactly like that? He said, fuck you, no.

• 35:49Noah Kagan?

  No, no, no, he just was like, no. And then the funny thing about that, I like busted out, I don't know, maybe like 20 minutes later. And I go outside and his like half a million dollar McLaren is sitting outside. I was like, all right, all right.

• 36:03Sam Parr?

  What, did he tell him that, do you remind him of that story when you were with him recently?

• 36:06Noah Kagan?

  No, I don't think he remembers me. But yeah, I think the second thing about him is that he's a very, I have, I'm just looking at my notes of him. I don't mind sharing. I think just like, he's just a deep thinker. It just felt like this guy's like really, like him and this is another, you know, him and like Keith Raboy and all these guys. There are a lot of history readers. They're like deep ass, like reading boring fucking books about 1900 history that I just won't, I'm not won't, I just don't do. And I think that gives, that's where a lot of their advantage comes from.

• 36:33Sam Parr?

  So Ben, who's on this podcast, has this podcast that's on history. And he just talks about historical figures and he does a biography on them. It's incredibly fascinating. And right before you came on, we did a whole podcast on history and how you could just learn, you could learn, you basically could just not make the mistakes that other people have made just from reading about them. So it's kind of interesting. Keith Raboy, I don't know Keith Raboy other than Twitter. Dude, he comes off like such a jerk on Twitter. I don't know if I want to hang out with him, but I would definitely would want to meet Peter Thiel.

• 37:03Noah Kagan?

  Dude, Keith's a legend. I love me Keith Raboy, him, David Sacks. Oh, I don't listen to the All In Show.

• 37:11Sam Parr?

  Have you met Keith? Is he, is he cool?

• 37:13Noah Kagan?

  Keith is sharp. Keith doesn't really respond to me. He, he doesn't respond to me as much anymore because I've been trying to get him on my show, on the No Kagan Show. And, but he's just fucking bright, man. Like the guy's very bright. I think he's very astute. I also like people that have, I think lately I'm more considerate. And I like when you're, he's at a level of wealth in the hundreds of millions that it's just like, fuck it. And he's like, yo, that guy's a dumbass. San Francisco's bullshit. I think this is crazy. I have a lot of admiration for anyone who has a

• 37:40Sam Parr?

  I like that too. I just think that you could do it. I don't think that you need to be polite all the time. I'm an asshole too. I just think that like, when you are a boss and you're a winner, and you maybe pick on the weak ones publicly, in a rude and abrupt way, it makes you look weak and soft, and like a bully. And I think that I, that's how, I don't like how it comes off online, but whenever I have seen interviews with him, he seems incredibly kind. Not kind, but polite.

• 38:08Noah Kagan?

  I don't know. I mean, I think, I guess I also agree with his opinions. So I don't mind his approach. Like, he's like, Elizabeth Warren sucks. Miami's the best. Here's like, businesses that I'm, you know, really bullish on.

• 38:21Sam Parr?

  Dude, you like Miami?

• 38:23Noah Kagan?

  I'm more neutral to it. I haven't spent enough time. It seems appealing. Like, there's, I really wanted to go to Art Basel. Like, that's on a bucket list, man, to see all the cool art and NFT and just like, the vibe. I'm not, I think every city's got, everyone has a calling when they get into a city. Miami's never called me to live there when I visit, but it's enjoyable.

• 38:40Sam Parr?

  Would you stay, or do you intend to stay in Austin for a while?

• 38:43Noah Kagan?

  Yeah. I think it's also, if you ever feel like stuck in life, like, I was feeling a little flat and like frustrated with a lot of work shit going on. And, you know, I don't know, I wanted pity party. And I think to take, you know, to take a power party and you gotta get the fuck out. So like, I was in Albuquerque last week. I'm gonna go to Cabo this weekend, gonna go to the Bay area in LA in a few weeks. I think you need to get the fuck out sometimes and just change geography.

• 39:03Sam Parr?

  So tell me about Peter Thiel. What do your notes say?

• 39:06Noah Kagan?

  I would, okay, here's a shocker. This is shocked me. Sam, if you had five, he's probably worth like 10 billion. I was like, Peter, how much are you spending on longevity? And he's like, almost nothing.

• 39:17Sam Parr?

  What? That's crazy. I would like, that's, spent everything on that.

• 39:20Noah Kagan?

  I was like, dude, drop a bill. Give me a billion. I'll solve it.

• 39:23Sam Parr?

  So he doesn't spend anything on longevity?

• 39:26Noah Kagan?

  He spends very little. He's like, I do Oh, I don't want to say how to say some of this stuff. He does some stuff, like male things to help, but like very like I thought he would be like, yeah, I have scientists on staff and I have an institute and I'm like, you know, and the other thing is I was like, oh, do you have a crazy diet? And he's like, he's like, none of that really is going to move the needle dramatically. He's like, I eat dark choc- I eat chocolate cake at night. Like he was telling us how his assistant hides food from him so he doesn't eat it when he travels. And I was like, you think the guy who's like this genius, which he is, is like hyper disciplined. He's like, no, I'm not, but he also knows he's not, so he accommodates. So I think I was just shocked that he's not doing more longevity.

• 40:07Sam Parr?

  And we talked about, um, on the podcast, we talked about this guy named Brian Johnson, who started Braintree and he's like a billionaire guy now. And he's got a whole website where you can look at, where he's spending millions of dollars a year on his, on longevity and you can go to his website and look at all the stuff that he's doing and it's incredibly fascinating. And when I saw that, I'm like, this is exactly what you should do if you're, if you're that wealthy and I'm amazed that Peter Thiel doesn't do that.

• 40:29Noah Kagan?

  Yeah, that was shocking. I was shocked that he had low willpower. He talked, you know, cause you kind of, you watch all these fucking videos and you listen to the podcast, it's like, I wake up at five and I have, you know, celery and I take a cold shower. He's like, nah, I like eating chocolate cake. And he's, you know, and he was drinking wine and like he eat carbs and I was like, he's a fucking human, which made me have a lot of appreciation for him. And I mean, and I felt like he also was very generous, way more than I thought. He stayed and talked to us the whole time, like four hours without checking his phone, without tweeting any bullshit and was very present, which I really appreciated.

• 41:01Sam Parr?

  I read this book with him and Ryan Holiday and Ryan Holiday said something really, I thought, cool about him, where he said, basically, if you ask him a question, he'll say, well, you know, some people believe this, other people think that it's this, this and this. Like he like looks at, uh, he looks at all sides and he doesn't actually always tell his opinion.

• 41:21Noah Kagan?

  It's an interesting thought. Um, I think one of the things, he had a lot of phrases. Do you want to hear for you these like, he just had these phrases. I'm like, man, these are great phrases. Look ahead function. I thought that was good.

• 41:32Sam Parr?

  What's that mean?

• 41:33Noah Kagan?

  Uh, basically like, how are you looking, when you're thinking about a decision, how are you looking ahead to what the outcome could be? And I thought that was really clever. Like, how much are you thinking further ahead on things? Uh, zomification. He's like, everyone is a dumbass. There's no, everyone has like the same thoughts. He's like, I'm looking for anyone who has unique thoughts. Incremental versus monumental shifts.

• 41:55Sam Parr?

  God, that's a baller. That's a baller one.

• 41:58Noah Kagan?

  That's a really good one. Companies are mortal. Cities are immortal.

• 42:03Sam Parr?

  Yeah, I was. I was thinking about that. And we I was talking to Neville. He goes, yeah, Peter told me about this. And he and I was like, Yeah, I think that's true. And I was trying to think of like a city in America that is like just gone away. And one that was at least a mediocre city, and there's nothing.

• 42:19Noah Kagan?

  Hmm. Well, I think the thing that I never thought of that he had. I was like, Whoa, that's so interesting. Like, we think of cities is like, um, he was trying to talk about how cities, you're kind of like a shareholder of a country. And I never thought about that. He's like, you can, you know, remote work is the worst thing that can happen to cities.

• 42:36Sam Parr?

  Did he have an opinion about that?

• 42:38Noah Kagan?

  Yeah, he thinks places like California and San Francisco are people can vote now with their feet. And so the ability to work remote now hurts them.

• 42:46Sam Parr?

  Yeah, and and I agree with that. But doesn't he live in LA?

• 42:50Noah Kagan?

  Yeah.

• 42:51Sam Parr?

  That's kind of weird, right?

• 42:52Noah Kagan?

  I admire that. I think I get annoyed with people like I'm in Puerto Rico to save four nickels. And I'm like, Well, yeah, but you have to. Puerto Rico is actually not horrible, but you have to live there.

• 43:01Sam Parr?

  Yeah, there's no fucking power for two weeks if there's a hurricane.

• 43:04Noah Kagan?

  And look, there's you're on the beach. There's I love Mexican food. It's got margaritas. It's got a good life. But the other side of that is like, is that, how much is it worth to live a suboptimal life? And I admire that. He's like, Fuck it. I'm in LA. I'm going to live baller. Even whatever tax rate this is.

• 43:18Sam Parr?

  I read that in that same book. What's that Ryan Holiday book? It's awesome.

• 43:23Noah Kagan?

  Do you want to tell you or not tell you?

• 43:24Sam Parr?

  No conspiracy or conspiracy theories or something?

• 43:28Noah Kagan?

  Yeah, that's it.

• 43:29Sam Parr?

  Is that just conspiracy theory? Is that it?

• 43:31Noah Kagan?

  Conspiracy.

• 43:32Sam Parr?

  He's in that book. He said that wherever Peter Thiel goes 24 hours a day, he's got a black Mercedes waiting for him.

• 43:39Noah Kagan?

  Oh, that's what was outside the car. That was outside the restaurant.

• 43:42Sam Parr?

  Was it a black Mercedes?

• 43:43Noah Kagan?

  Yeah, yeah. He had a disco ball inside. It was crazy.

• 43:46Sam Parr?

  And he and I think I'm almost positive. He says it's running at all times. He tells him he has they have to have it running.

• 43:52Noah Kagan?

  That's really interesting.

• 43:54Sam Parr?

  In the book, that's what he said. He goes, he has a Mercedes for him all the time. And apparently he's got like some residence or something in New Zealand, where I think there's also a jet waiting for him. Like in a close vicinity, wherever he's going. And he goes, just in case if anything bad happens, he could bolt to New Zealand.

• 44:09Noah Kagan?

  I think the question that I'm curious that you got me thinking about for myself or for you or for the audience is that if we had a billion dollars, how would we live differently?

• 44:16Sam Parr?

  What do you think you'd do?

• 44:18Noah Kagan?

  You still want to do stuff, right? Like you still want to work, like work is fun. People are like, oh, it's like, dude, sit around all day. See how that goes.

• 44:25Sam Parr?

  Fucking boring.

• 44:26Noah Kagan?

  It's fucking lame. Um, not too much. I think I would just do the things I'm doing at a higher level now. I would like not worry about buying houses. I'm not sure. Dude, I don't know. The absolute most stuff is hard. I don't think I would pay right away to get out of it, but I'd try to figure some, something else. It's, it's tough. Like I got another like year or two in it for this, this role. Then probably buy houses and I would just try to figure out how to adjust the work to only do the area I want.

• 44:52Sam Parr?

  I would accumulate large amounts of land and I would create nice residence on all of them. So me and my friends can just go and like, it's so rare that we can go someplace and do whatever we want. And that's exciting for me. Like that's what we, we should do. Do we have any friends that have lots of land that we can go and shoot guns and drive motorcycles and shit? And just be like 12 year olds. That's what I want to do.

• 45:14Noah Kagan?

  I thought what you were going to say, I was really hoping Sam, our answers would be like, you know, I would take that billion dollars and give it out to the world.

• 45:21Sam Parr?

  Well, I'm not giving it to the world, but I would like any, anything like, like I felt bad. Do you remember that Tony Shay, Tony Shay, the guy from Zappos, you know?

• 45:31Noah Kagan?

  That's sad.

• 45:31Sam Parr?

  It was sad and, but when I saw that, I'm like, man, I wish it didn't go that way. But at the same time, like he would travel with an entourage and I'm like, that is sick. As you know, the substance abuse thing was bad, but wherever I went, I would just say, crew, who, who's, who's coming with? And you and I have a friend, uh, this guy who started rent jungle or not rent jungle jungle scout, Greg Mercer. And he bought these fancy seats to F1. And I don't know how much it costs, but I bet you this box costs 50 to a hundred thousand dollars. And he was like, um, hey, do you want, do you want to come? And I just had cheapo tickets and he's like, we, we took care of everything. And I was like, what? I was like, well, how much is it? I'll pay you. He goes, I don't know. It's cool, man. It's fun.

• 46:14Sam Parr?

  I like sharing and he brought me and it was awesome. And he's told me stories about how he takes people to tele ride. He just, if he's doing cool shit, he's like, hey, anyone who wants to come, come with me. And it sounds awesome. That's what I want to do.

• 46:28Noah Kagan?

  I did, I think I've told you this, I did my will like a year ago. And then it was kind of like, it was surreal. I was like, oh, I guess I'm gonna maybe die one day. But then it really inspired me to, to live while I'm here and spend the money now while I'm here. So even with my brother, I'm like, do you want to kill me and get the money now? Or can I just give you some of it now? And it's just, it's exciting to start thinking about how to live like you have the will and like, live like you're dead and enjoy the money with friends like you're talking about. I think that's a great way to approach it.

• 46:55Sam Parr?

  Do you, are you gonna have kids anytime soon? I mean, it feels weird making a will where you gotta like give shit to your mom and your brother.

• 47:02Noah Kagan?

  Yeah, my brother has a kid, which I was like, that guy's gonna get all this money? Like, that's crazy.

• 47:06Sam Parr?

  It's not even yours.

• 47:08Noah Kagan?

  Yeah, it's not even mine or it's not his.

• 47:11Sam Parr?

  Like, it's not your kid. I mean, it just feels weird that like, you love him, but you're not, it's not your, your blood, or your, you know?

• 47:16Noah Kagan?

  It is part, some blood, I think genetically.

• 47:18Sam Parr?

  Some.

• 47:19Noah Kagan?

  Uh, yeah, I think I'll have kids. I mean, I, maybe I'll go to sperm bank and just donate a ton. And then each of those kids gets like a mill. Maybe they get, each one of them gets a Crypto Punk.

• 47:28Sam Parr?

  Yeah, shit.

• 47:30Sam Parr?

  We're gonna wrap up here in a minute, but this has been a meandering episode. I actually think it's gonna go over kind of well. I, I, I think people are gonna dig it.

• 47:39Noah Kagan?

  You know, I got nothing to say to that. I, I thought it's interesting. I mean, talked about a variety of subjects and then what, what do people want out of the show? Why do you think people listen? Something to like entertain, like empty calories?

• 47:51Sam Parr?

  Frankly.

• 47:52Noah Kagan?

  Business advice?

• 47:52Sam Parr?

  So there's a few things. One, I will say I'm shocked anyone listens. But at this point, we're at, we're at, we're, we're like over a million downloads a month now. Um, which is crazy. So some episodes, like 50, 60, 70,000 downloads, which is pretty crazy. Two, shockingly, people find us funny. Like, that's what the comments say, which amazed me. And three, I would say Sean's really good. I think Sean's good. I think a lot of people listen for him.

• 48:22Noah Kagan?

  You're good too, man. You did a good follow on. I mean, I think what it is, is you're the only ones left podcasting. Like, everyone gave up like a few years ago and you're like, no one told you, so you kept going.

• 48:31Sam Parr?

  It's been so hard.

• 48:33Noah Kagan?

  It is hard, man, but I think that's, you know, you forget, my mom always says this, like, you forget how hard the last lap is. And I think sometimes when you just kind of push through and you're like, oh, I guess that wasn't so hard. And the further away you get from it.

• 48:44Sam Parr?

  Well, is YouTube easier, you think?

• 48:48Noah Kagan?

  It's hard, you could, you could define easy, right? Is the bullshit answer?

• 48:53Sam Parr?

  Well, yeah.

• 48:55Noah Kagan?

  It's challenging in a different way. I think the intimacy of an audience is really high with podcasts. Like, they're really spending a lot of time with you. YouTube, it's harder to be successful on it. I think it's harder. Nah, I don't know, harder. But there is a broader audience available for you to reach. So that's why I spend all my time. That's why I stopped podcasting, more or less. I do have my show, The Noah Kagan Presents, but, you know, of my content creation, audience building, 95% of that's in YouTube world. It's so hard for people to do it. Like, you can't just go.

• 49:23Sam Parr?

  It's so hard. It's so.

• 49:24Noah Kagan?

  I know, you put out a video and like, well, all of it takes forever. It's just like, I think, you know, the bullshit answer is find the thing that you could work forever on.

• 49:32Sam Parr?

  My video that I made my first YouTube video, I'm gonna start doing one a week. It got 3,000 views, baby.

• 49:37Noah Kagan?

  Huh, which one? The drinking one?

• 49:39Sam Parr?

  No, the, um, the real estate one about my project. How many?

• 49:43Noah Kagan?

  2.4 thousand views? 2.4 thousand? That's good, man.

• 49:48Sam Parr?

  Look, dude, I didn't even remove the Descript logo at the bottom because it costs $25. And I was like, I don't know if I'm gonna even do this next, next month.

• 49:55Noah Kagan?

  Did you edit it yourself?

• 49:56Sam Parr?

  Yeah.

• 49:57Noah Kagan?

  Good for you.

• 49:58Sam Parr?

  There's no editing. There's just like, I splice clips together.

• 50:01Noah Kagan?

  How was it for you? How was this experience doing it?

• 50:04Sam Parr?

  It sucks. I hated it, but, um, uh, it's, it's cool to see the result. Like, I understand why it's good. You know who the best at, here's the best YouTuber I think out right now? He's, he's out of this world. Nick Bear.

• 50:18Noah Kagan?

  Oh, dude, love Nick Bear.

• 50:20Sam Parr?

  Nick Bear is the best YouTuber I've been seeing lately. The other day, he put out basically a documentary and he's doing like one or two a week. He did a documentary on the Leadville 100, this 100 mile race he did. Nick Bear is the most impressive YouTuber I've seen lately. Do you agree with that?

• 50:33Noah Kagan?

  Have you had him on your show?

• 50:34Sam Parr?

  Yeah, but it was a little bit more, it was before he was really famous.

• 50:38Noah Kagan?

  Nick is just dope, man. He's just like a good dude. And like, you, when you find out he like started his business at 4:00 AM when he was in, on, on base in Korea, like, damn, that like, I'm not surprised when people are successful. I'm like, oh, yeah, you put in the work and you stuck with it for a long period of time. That's it.

• 50:54Sam Parr?

  Did you meet him in person?

• 50:56Noah Kagan?

  Yeah, it's awesome.

• 50:57Sam Parr?

  Is he just yoked?

• 50:59Noah Kagan?

  Yeah, yeah. I'm gonna, I think I'm gonna work out with him next month or in January.

• 51:02Sam Parr?

  Oh, you stepped up with him?

• 51:04Noah Kagan?

  Yeah, I think part of it is like, you know, I've said this before, it's like, most of my net worth is from who I know. And so Nick, I gotta meet him and help out, help his stuff. He helps me out. But there's certain people that you see like Nick, that you're just like, yeah, man, I hope you get there. And he's getting there, obviously, but there's just people you want to see succeed. I think people don't want to see me and you succeed, Sam, but they just can't stop us. Some do. Some are like, Noah, why do you say that? I want to see you succeed. But I think it's just like, it's not in us to stop.

• 51:30Sam Parr?

  You and I are very punchable.

• 51:34Noah Kagan?

  That's why we do boxing. We let other people have a chance to punch us.

• 51:38Sam Parr?

  Let me ask you a last question. What can I learn from Nick, from you knowing him?

• 51:43Noah Kagan?

  Oh, I would definitely have him back on the show.

• 51:47Sam Parr?

  When he was on the show, he was super like, almost naive, like it felt like, like not, but that not in a bad way, where he was like learning as we were talking to him. Like he acted like he was unaware of certain things. And I'm like, dude, I know you know about this, but you're just like a sponge. And you're just trying to get me to tell you everything. So, you know, he was just interesting. He just felt like a student.

• 52:09Noah Kagan?

  Yeah, that's, I mean, that could be his, I don't know if he's trying to be strategic about that. I think that's interesting.

• 52:20Noah Kagan?

  I don't know. I guess with Nick, I'm impressed his evolvement from like someone who was a Marine, or I think he was a Ranger, to a business operator. Also, he's kind of in a, to some extent, commoditized space, right? Like the sugar powder. Yeah, the powder that get everyone gets from the same place, but you put a different sticker on it. I think I've been impressed specifically with Nick, how he evolved from like, you know, I'll be straight, like a meathead jock lifter, to like, one, a content creator at like an elite level from the storytelling. And I think he's just, his physical fitness is really well-rounded.

• 52:50Sam Parr?

  So well-rounded, man. Who on earth can weigh 195 pound and, you know, squat 500 pounds and run a three hour marathon? It's so interesting.

• 52:58Noah Kagan?

  There's a lot of, there's a lot of good YouTubers out there, man. It's just unbelievable how much great content is being created.

• 53:03Sam Parr?

  Who do you like? We'll wrap up with that. Who do you like?

• 53:06Noah Kagan?

  Uh, let's look at my homepage. So obviously Noah Kagan. Colin and Samir are studs. I love Colin Samir. Oh dude, you know who's the best? Andrew Callahan, Channel 5. He was the all gas, no brakes.

• 53:19Sam Parr?

  Wait, what?

• 53:20Noah Kagan?

  Oh, he is, dude, watch the Chet Baker. So Channel 5 with Andrew Callahan.

• 53:27Noah Kagan?

  Watch the, um.

• 53:31Noah Kagan?

  Watch the Pickup Artist Boot Camp or Chet Hanks.

• 53:33Sam Parr?

  Oh, yeah, this guy, he used to be part of like a business that he bailed on.

• 53:38Noah Kagan?

  He was, I think, for Vice or something like that.

• 53:40Sam Parr?

  All gas, no brakes. Yeah.

• 53:42Noah Kagan?

  Yeah, he's sick. Colin and Samir are sick on, on just specifically on creators. I like watching, dude, my weird freaky fetish lately is just I love watching like outdoor survival.

• 53:53Sam Parr?

  Same. Which ones?

• 53:55Noah Kagan?

  Uh, who's the guy in Ohio? Dave Canterbury? So I watched Dave Canterbury.

• 54:01Sam Parr?

  Just writing all these down. Dave Canterbury.

• 54:03Noah Kagan?

  Yeah, Dave Canterbury, Architectural Digest is gangster. I love seeing like celebrity homes.

• 54:08Sam Parr?

  Do you like primitive technologies?

• 54:10Noah Kagan?

  Uh, I think I've seen him. I think I'm pretty aggressive on unsubscribing. For some reason I unsubscribe from them. I see primitive.

• 54:16Sam Parr?

  Dude, I'm looking at Dave Canterbury. He looks amazing. This is exactly how I want my guys to look.

• 54:20Noah Kagan?

  Have you watched the show Alone?

• 54:22Sam Parr?

  No. Oh, oh, on Hulu?

• 54:25Noah Kagan?

  Yes.

• 54:25Sam Parr?

  Where they're like, have you met like with the guy that looks like, uh, like he, like he's wearing like bearskin around. He looks like a Native American, the white dude, but he's like, I actually don't know where he is. And then there's another guy who was in the caves of Missouri.

• 54:37Noah Kagan?

  Uh, there's a bunch of weird ass people in there, but dude, it's epic. So I definitely would recommend Alone. So I like all the survival stuff from that. I watch a lot of, dude, this is the weirdest one. I watch a lot of squash videos. I probably watched like, like it's on right now. Watch this. While you're talking to me, Sam, I have it on in the background.

• 54:54Sam Parr?

  Like hydraulic, hydraulic press?

• 54:56Noah Kagan?

  No squash, like the game, like the British game.

• 54:59Sam Parr?

  Why are you watching that?

• 55:01Noah Kagan?

  I just leave it on. It's just like white noise I put on the background. So I watch a lot of that on YouTube.

• 55:08Noah Kagan?

  That's kind of a lot of, that's the main things like outdoor survival, architecture, of course Neville. And, uh, yeah, that's about it.

• 55:16Sam Parr?

  All right. Well, Ben, what do we think?

• 55:19Noah Kagan?

  What other books?

• 55:19Sam Parr?

  What are you gonna say?

• 55:21Noah Kagan?

  Well, I, I'll tell you some, I'll tell you another good book I read, man. I'll tell a weird one that people.

• 55:25Sam Parr?

  Dude, I've been reading all crime books. So like.

• 55:28Noah Kagan?

  Like on like the real murder mystery?

• 55:30Sam Parr?

  Well, yeah, I like that, but like, I just like one on nine 11. Um, another one.

• 55:37Noah Kagan?

  Favorite book this year?

• 55:38Sam Parr?

  Favorite book this year? Okay, you're gonna like this one because you do this. It's called Travels with Charlie in Search of America. John Steinbeck wrote it in 1930 and John Steinbeck, you know, famous author. And he was like, you know, I live in Cape Cod and I'm rich now. I'm in my 60s. I've been writing about middle America for the past 50 years and I'm so out of touch right now. And he just drives his pickup truck around America and just talks to people and writes about it. And it's amazing. Do you know who Lieutenant Dan is and Forrest Gump?

• 56:08Noah Kagan?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 56:09Sam Parr?

  He, he's the narrator of the audiobook. So that's a good one. And then Empire of the Summer Moon. You'd like that one. It's about.

• 56:17Noah Kagan?

  I heard that one.

• 56:18Sam Parr?

  The Comanche Indians. And they're, they're just nutty, like the Texans were evil and the Indians were evil to each other. The Indians and the Texans were just like, it's about how they just destroy each other. And then finally, The Operator, which is basically the guy who killed Bin Laden. And he like tells the story of finding Bin Laden and that was really good.

• 56:39Noah Kagan?

  Some of these military books are kind of weak.

• 56:41Sam Parr?

  No, man, that one was pretty spectacular. Yeah, I mean, he talks about like finding, he goes in depth about hunting down Bin Laden and, and shooting him in the head. Like it's intense.

• 56:54Noah Kagan?

  All right, a few questions here. One, do you get books from the library at all?

• 56:57Sam Parr?

  No, but either you or Neville have been bragging about how amazing it is.

• 57:02Noah Kagan?

  I'm a huge library guy. There's a Chrome extension called Library.

• 57:06Noah Kagan?

  It's called Library Extension that'll show you if you can get digital or audiobooks for free. And it shows you when you go to Amazon. So you just put in Austin Library. Dude, I use it all the time.

• 57:15Sam Parr?

  How do they make money?

• 57:16Noah Kagan?

  I just donate. I don't know how they actually make money.

• 57:18Sam Parr?

  Okay.

• 57:19Noah Kagan?

  But I book, thank you for those books, dude. Yeah, Library Extension, you just add the Austin Library. One book I read recently, dude, that is so good. I think you'll really enjoy it. It's called Free Country. It's two guys in Europe who backpack, who try to go from the bottom of UK to the top of UK biking. And they just start in their underwear. That's all they start with.

• 57:39Sam Parr?

  Huh? Is it amazing? Wow. What?

• 57:42Noah Kagan?

  Yeah. So they start at the bottom of the UK in their underwear. That's it. And they have to get to the top of UK on bike in three weeks.

• 57:49Sam Parr?

  It's really good. It got like crazy good reviews. Audiobook or download? Or audiobook or normal?

• 57:55Noah Kagan?

  I think the audiobook is good, dude.

• 57:57Sam Parr?

  All right.

• 57:57Noah Kagan?

  I think I got it at the library for free.

• 57:59Sam Parr?

  Oh, and it's on Kindle Unlimited. It's free on Kindle.

• 58:02Noah Kagan?

  Dude, hell yeah.

• 58:04Sam Parr?

  All right, I'm gonna do that. Any other ones?

• 58:06Noah Kagan?

  Uh, that one was awesome. I really enjoyed that. I didn't know if you wanted more.

• 58:11Sam Parr?

  Yeah, dude, we're reading the same travel stuff. So I'll give you another one then. Little Golden America in the 1930s. Two Russian journalists from the USSR were welcomed into America and they just traveled for four months all over America. And they're like, you know, it's pretty crazy in America. And they just like, you just explain from their perspective what America's about. They're like, in America, everyone's so optimistic. For example, we met these guys. It's cool. And it's, no one knows about it in America, but it's one of the most popular books in Russia.

• 58:43Noah Kagan?

  In Russia, you book read you.

• 58:49Noah Kagan?

  What else? Oh, there's some other good ones. Did you read about the, dude, you know, Ryan Holiday's book list is really good.

• 58:54Sam Parr?

  His email list?

• 58:55Noah Kagan?

  His email list. He just recommends books.

• 58:57Sam Parr?

  I don't know how he could, he consumes so much.

• 59:01Noah Kagan?

  He's like audiobook speed.

• 59:03Sam Parr?

  It's like 10 a month. There's no way he does an audiobook.

• 59:07Noah Kagan?

  No, I think he reads, he's probably, it has to be paper. And if it's not this like certain density of organic paper, I won't read it.

• 59:13Sam Parr?

  He once said, if you're not taking notes, then you're not reading effectively.

• 59:17Noah Kagan?

  I think that's true.

• 59:19Sam Parr?

  Yeah, but that's like, I mean, I'm not gonna take notes on like Killing of Bin Laden.

• 59:23Noah Kagan?

  I don't think, but most of the books on Kindle are physical. I either highlight and then I'll reread them.

• 59:28Sam Parr?

  Yeah, but dude, if I'm just listening to like, a book like about these guys walking around their underwear, trying to like get from place to place, I'm not gonna like, you know, or like Fight Club, I'm not gonna like write notes.

• 59:40Sam Parr?

  Any other ones?

• 59:42Noah Kagan?

  Um, dude, Trevor Noah's book. I was like, I don't care about that guy.

• 59:47Sam Parr?

  Everyone talks about that book.

• 59:49Noah Kagan?

  It's it's just a really well written book.

• 59:50Sam Parr?

  It's that good?

• 59:52Noah Kagan?

  Well, it's like David Goggins book. I'm like, all right, David, you're gonna yell at me. You're really hardcore. I get it. You could do pushups or pullups. That's great. His book, if you haven't read David's, like, everyone talked about it. It's honestly a phenomenal. One, it's very well written. And two, it's just a great story. It's just a

• 1:00:06Sam Parr?

  The audiobook is cool, too.

• 1:00:08Noah Kagan?

  Yeah, him, the Wright brothers. I got that.

• 1:00:10Sam Parr?

  Oh, I read that one recently. Amazing.

• 1:00:12Noah Kagan?

  That was awesome.

• 1:00:13Sam Parr?

  I drove to Dayton, Ohio after I read it because it was so good.

• 1:00:17Noah Kagan?

  Oh, that's good. Did you read Million Little Pieces?

• 1:00:21Sam Parr?

  No, what's that one?

• 1:00:22Noah Kagan?

  I actually think you'll like that one. It's about drug addiction.

• 1:00:27Sam Parr?

  Fuck you.

• 1:00:28Noah Kagan?

  No, but it's a true story. That's the crazy part.

• 1:00:31Sam Parr?

  Okay.

• 1:00:31Noah Kagan?

  I really enjoyed that. These are just ones from this year.

• 1:00:35Sam Parr?

  All right, I'm gonna read it. Wait, I think this guy, James Frey, Million Little Pieces, didn't he? Isn't he famous for a bunch of stuff?

• 1:00:43Noah Kagan?

  Yeah, he actually wrote a few other books and then there's some like drama about him.

• 1:00:46Sam Parr?

  Oh, uh, they say that he lied about his book. My my, uh, yeah, the, apparently he, uh, it's made up.

• 1:00:56Noah Kagan?

  There's debate about that. So it seems like for the most part, a lot of it is not made up. And there's just a few pieces that are.

• 1:01:02Sam Parr?

  Yeah, I remember this because he went on Oprah years and years ago and there was this big controversy.

• 1:01:07Noah Kagan?

  Well, so she talked shit on him and then she actually apologized, I believe. Because I got you after you read the book, you're like, is this real or not real? I can't believe it.

• 1:01:13Sam Parr?

  That's how crazy it is?

• 1:01:15Noah Kagan?

  Yeah.

• 1:01:16Sam Parr?

  All right, I'm gonna read it. This is good. This is the best part. I'm gonna read all these things. I mean, I I could, I I try to walk a lot, so I listen to all these audiobooks. So I'm gonna, I'm gonna, uh, download this one. A Million Little Pieces. I'm gonna get the, uh, the guys doing their underwear thing and I already installed the library extension.

• 1:01:32Noah Kagan?

  Bro, game over. Hon, this little golden America, did they have an audiobook or it's just paperback?

• 1:01:37Sam Parr?

  Uh, you could do a paperback or you can, um, There's free PDFs online. Did you see the description of it? It's interesting. There's like no reviews of it, but in the first page, they go, we translated this into Russia and yet no one or into English. And yet no one in America knows about this. However, in Russia, everyone reads this book in schools like this is like the kids summer reading for schools. It's like very, very, very popular. Um, you see it?

• 1:02:03Noah Kagan?

  Yeah. How did you hear about this?

• 1:02:04Sam Parr?

  Goodreads recommended it to me. When I was reading the In Search of America, uh, the John Steinbeck book, I love that. That was one of the best, like I, it was like, I got addicted to that. It randomly popped up on things recommended and it had five out of five reviews, five out of five stars on, on Goodreads and it had like 3,000 reviews, but when I Googled it, I couldn't find a thing about it. So I was like, this is kind of intriguing. Did you look at it on Goodreads?

• 1:02:30Noah Kagan?

  I did not. It's so funny. Goodreads. I saw someone talk about this and maybe it was you. It was like the site that hasn't been updated from like 1960, but it's still dope. It's still like a, there's just like, there's nothing better yet.

• 1:02:41Sam Parr?

  It's badass. Uh, the guy who started it spoke at HustleCon. His name's Otis Chandler and his grandpa started the LA Times. And Otis sold to Amazon for like a billion dollars, I think, either, I think it was a billion or a hundred million, but he sold it to him like 10 years ago or something like that. So we just knocked it out the park.

• 1:03:00Noah Kagan?

  Do you ever, you ever blown away by like how much awesome books are out there that we don't even know of? Like this book existed. I'd never fucking heard of it and it's got it on the reviews. I'm like, I did not know that.

• 1:03:10Sam Parr?

  Yeah. And I've always thought, I want to read all this, but then, you know, I started thinking, one time I, I listened to like Thinking Real Rich on audiobook and I loved the narrator and I was like, I want to remember those narrators or the, the audio guy. I want to remember his voice because he's so good. And I looked at what else he had done and he's read like a thousand self-help books. And I'm like, wait a minute. You've read all these and you're still fucking making 50 bucks an hour, read these damn books? What the hell, man? This is not effective. And so after that, I, I almost quit reading business book or self-development books entirely.

• 1:03:43Noah Kagan?

  It's just boring. I'd rather read like biographies or like, I'm reading this book, this running book right now, Out of Thin Air.

• 1:03:50Sam Parr?

  The Bass, right?

• 1:03:51Noah Kagan?

  I just started. It's really interesting. I'm liking, I guess, outdoor activity books. So.

• 1:03:56Sam Parr?

  Well, Out of Thin Air, that's not, that's a different one. Wait, Out of Thin Air?

• 1:04:00Noah Kagan?

  Oh, you're thinking of, um,

• 1:04:03Noah Kagan?

  The one about the guy in Alaska?

• 1:04:05Sam Parr?

  Who? What's Out of Thin Air? Oh, it's about the Kenya.

• 1:04:07Noah Kagan?

  Yeah, this guy like goes and runs with Kenyans. I think you're thinking of Into Thin Air, the John Krakauer one.

• 1:04:13Sam Parr?

  Which is also awesome, but okay, someone gifted me this Out of Thin Air book and I wasn't sure if it was that good. Is it amazing?

• 1:04:19Noah Kagan?

  So far, pretty interesting. I mean, I'd go read Free Country. That one is like, I didn't want to read it because I didn't want it to be over.

• 1:04:25Sam Parr?

  All right, I'll read it.

• 1:04:26Noah Kagan?

  All right, I got a rock.

• 1:04:28Sam Parr?

  This was good.