How This +$80M Founder Launches A Startup In A Weekend

Episode 546: Shaan Puri (https://twitter.com/ShaanVP) and Sam Parr (https://twitter.com/theSamParr) talk to Noah Kagan ( https://twitter.com/noahkagan ) about how to launch a million dollar business in 48 hours. Give Sam your email address at The Anti-MBA ( https://www.theantimba.com/ ) for a chance to win a free copy of Noah’s new book. No more small boy spreadsheets, build your business on the free HubSpot CRM: https://mfmpod.link/hrd — Show Notes: (0:00) Intro (1:00) Now not how (4:30) The upside of asking (5:00) Airbnb sales formula revealed (12:00) Appsumo quietly crushing it with $80M arr (19:00) The lore of Zuck and early facebook (32:30) Only say yes to 10x (41:00) Million Dollar Weekend giveaway — Links: • Noah Kagan - http://noahkagan.com/ • Million Dollar Weekend - http://tinyurl.com/vmmfwpcb • AppSumo - https://appsumo.com/ • Carrd - https://carrd.co/ • The Anti-MBA - https://www.theantimba.com/ — Check Out Shaan's Stuff: • Try Shepherd Out - https://www.supportshepherd.com/ • Shaan's Personal Assistant System - http://shaanpuri.com/remoteassistant • Power Writing Course - https://maven.com/generalist/writing • Small Boy Newsletter - https://smallboy.co/ • Daily Newsletter - https://www.shaanpuri.com/ Check Out Sam's Stuff: • Hampton - https://www.joinhampton.com/ • Ideation Bootcamp - https://www.ideationbootcamp.co/ • Copy That - https://copythat.com • Hampton Wealth Survey - https://joinhampton.com/wealth Past guests on My First Million include Rob Dyrdek, Hasan Minhaj, Balaji Srinivasan, Jake Paul, Dr. Andrew Huberman, Gary Vee, Lance Armstrong, Sophia Amoruso, Ariel Helwani, Ramit Sethi, Stanley Druckenmiller, Peter Diamandis, Dharmesh Shah, Brian Halligan, Marc Lore, Jason Calacanis, Andrew Wilkinson, Julian Shapiro, Kat Cole, Codie Sanchez, Nader Al-Naji, Steph Smith, Trung Phan, Nick Huber, Anthony Pompliano, Ben Askren, Ramon Van Meer, Brianne Kimmel, Andrew Gazdecki, Scott Belsky, Moiz Ali, Dan Held, Elaine Zelby, Michael Saylor, Ryan Begelman, Jack Butcher, Reed Duchscher, Tai Lopez, Harley Finkelstein, Alexa von Tobel, Noah Kagan, Nick Bare, Greg Isenberg, James Altucher, Randy Hetrick and more. — Other episodes you might enjoy: • #224 Rob Dyrdek - How Tracking Every Second of His Life Took Rob Drydek from 0 to $405M in Exits • #209 Gary Vaynerchuk - Why NFTS Are the Future • #178 Balaji Srinivasan - Balaji on How to Fix the Media, Cloud Cities & Crypto • #169 - How One Man Started 5, Billion Dollar Companies, Dan Gilbert's Empire, & Talking With Warren Buffett • ​​​​#218 - Why You Should Take a Think Week Like Bill Gates • Dave Portnoy vs The World, Extreme Body Monitoring, The Future of Apparel Retail, "How Much is Anthony Pompliano Worth?", and More • How Mr Beast Got 100M Views in Less Than 4 Days, The $25M Chrome Extension, and More

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

• 0:00Noah Kagan?

  I was in the sauna this morning thinking about you guys. And I was just, I was just thinking of how grateful I am. Just, there's so many cool people, I don't know, just crossing our paths across our whole life. Just made me kind of a little emotional, but also just happy.

• 0:11Shaan Puri?

  We're supposed to get touchy feely at the end, not, not at the beginning. YouTube stats show that touchy feely at the end works, but at the beginning, people just bounce.

• 0:21Speaker 02

  I feel like I could rule the world. I know I could be what I want to. I put my all in it like my days off on the road. Let's travel.

• 0:30Noah Kagan?

  All right, Noah, we're live. We've got Noah Kagan, one of my dearest friends, one of the OGs of internet marketing, of entrepreneurship on, on, on the, on the internet. One of my inspirations, you run this company called AppSumo, does like 80 million in revenue. Now you're a YouTuber. You have what, 1. something million subscribers? And you're here to promote a book, which you've clearly placed right in front of you. I didn't even see that there.

• 0:56Shaan Puri?

  Give us some of the, the sort of wisdom bombs or insight bombs from the book. So give me, give us some of the, the key ideas or highlights that you think, you know, you want people to take away when they read the book.

• 1:08Noah Kagan?

  All right, Sean, I have a quote of you in the book. I don't know if you actually said this, though.

• 1:13Shaan Puri?

  That's great.

• 1:18Noah Kagan?

  But so we, we kind of read this book like a tech startup where we did like surveys and beta testing and all this stuff. And so one of Sean's quotes, Sean, I hope you said this.

• 1:25Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, I'm saying yes either way. Don't worry. I got your back.

• 1:28Noah Kagan?

  Show me an experimenter and over the long run, I'll show you a future winner.

• 1:32Shaan Puri?

  That's true. I did say that. Yes.

• 1:34Noah Kagan?

  Thank God. I was gonna have to reprint and type tens of thousands of books. From the, you know what I will say, from the surveys that we've done and what people said, the results that they got. Number one thing is this now, not how idea? And it just means just fucking start right away. But people get so, especially with, you guys see so many people listening to your show and they're like, I don't know, I want to listen to more shows. I need to go listen to these like fake YouTube gurus that are out there that don't even run real businesses. But realizing they can actually do things like right now. Like, how do I get a buck right now? Just go get a dollar. Venmo Noah, at Noah Kagan. Go get it from a friend. Go get it from your uncle. And I think people are waiting to be ready and they're just never ready. And people like yourselves, me, who ultimately have gotten to somewhere of wealth.

• 2:17Sam Parr?

  We're just doing shit. You used to have this course called the Monthly 1K. I tell people, there's two courses that I paid for that changed my life. And it was Neville's copywriting course, and then it was your Monthly 1K course. I remember I bought this when I was 20, 23 years old. I think it was $300 and it was like a really big deal for me to buy that. And I started a business based off of it that was like making thousands of dollars a month, and then I shut it down. And one of the first lessons in the book was to go to a coffee shop and ask for a discount. And I was petrified to do that. I remember I was so afraid to do that, but I did do it. And then you talked about emailing people or calling people and getting customers before you even build a thing, which at the time,

• 3:01Sam Parr?

  now everyone talks about that, but at the time I was like, that was, it kind of blew my mind. And during that period of my life, it was all about action. And so I don't know if I could show my feet here, because I don't know if I can move. I won't even try it, but I got, I, I, I went and bought, I basically a sewing needle. Do you guys know what stick and poke is? Do you know what a stick and poke is, Sean?

• 3:21Noah Kagan?

  Sounds like a jail cell tattoo.

• 3:23Sam Parr?

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

• 4:06Sam Parr?

  Business plans are stupid. Business cards are stupid. LLCs are stupid. It's all about action.

• 4:11Noah Kagan?

  And social media. Yeah.

• 4:13Shaan Puri?

  That's the ROI, Sam. That's the ROI right there. He made you get tatted up. That's the ROI.

• 4:17Sam Parr?

  I thought he was going to say his tattoo is act Noah. I thought I was going to say Noah, not now. Dude, those are some feet. Yeah, dude, some people, some people would, would look at it and they're like, what's ACT? And I was like, yeah, I got SAT on the other foot. I just love testing. Be mad on his ass. Yeah. No, I mean, so number one for the book, now, not how, just what can you do today? I don't think people realize how much more shit they can do in a day. The second thing is what you just said, which is the power of asking. Like the upside of asking is like, I got on a private jet.

• 4:45Noah Kagan?

  The upside of asking, and we teach it through the coffee challenge and other examples. Coffee challenge is what you did, which is you ask for discount. So I did it. I did the coffee challenge last week. I did a YouTube video where I tried to do the coffee challenge. I got rejected a ton. And you know what? You get rejected and you're like, oh shit. Guess what? That's okay. Let's go forward.

• 5:02Sam Parr?

  Dude, this is such an immigrant mentality and this is why I love, or children of immigrants. No, you're, you've got immigrants, your father, and then Sean has an immigrant family. Most of my best friends do. They all have this energy where they ask for shit that I was so embarrassed to do. And then I hang out with Sean for a little while and I see how he negotiates. I hang out with Neville for a little while. It's just like this, this shameless ability to go and ask for stuff. And it totally changed my perspective. I used to be so embarrassed. Like I would go out to eat. And if you, if I ordered a pizza and you brought me like chicken parmigiana, I'd be like, nah, fuck it. Whatever. Just give it to me. I'm not going to say shit to this person. I'm not going to complain at all. And then I started hanging out with these guys and it totally changed my perspective on just being like ruthless about asking for things. And it, and it 100% worked.

• 5:46Noah Kagan?

  I mean, that's all business is, right? Business is like, hey, will you be my sponsor for your guy's show necessarily? Or will you be my customer? Will you be my partner? Or will you be my employee? It's an ask.

• 5:54Shaan Puri?

  So at Camp MFM, so this is a slide. I don't know if you can see it. So this is Joe Gabby, the founder of Airbnb and he gave us an impromptu presentation off his phone. So he had, he basically had like some old presentation he had given that he kind of like found slides on his phone. He started, he basically started screen sharing from his phone onto the TV. And he goes, he was, he was like, oh, this was our sales formula. So this is the Airbnb founder's sales formula and it's SW squared plus WC equals MO. So I don't know if you can, if you've ever heard that. He's like, anybody heard this before? We're like, no. He goes, no. So here's what it stands for. Some will, some won't. Who cares? Move on.

• 6:37Shaan Puri?

  And he's like, this is the sales formula. Once you realize that some will say yes, some won't. Who cares? Move on. He's like, now you have the entrepreneurial sales formula, the ultimate formula that will serve you.

• 6:49Noah Kagan?

  Yeah. But did he tattoo that on his ass?

• 6:53Noah Kagan?

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

• 7:00Sam Parr?

  On Craigslist, right? They, they, they, they had like a designers conference was in town.

• 7:05Noah Kagan?

  So they had a designers conference and they sent an email to the designers conference saying, hey, does anyone want to stay in our couch? That was how they tested the business. That's now worth a hundred billion dollars. And I think that when you start realizing like there's other ways of doing this, you don't have to do like some Silicon Valley funded way. You start realizing like, oh, and Facebook started that way in a weekend. Airbnb did. A lot of other companies can too.

• 7:24Sam Parr?

  So Sean and I lived in San Francisco for a long time. He's still there. We've had, I probably have had 10 Silicon Valley friends and I imagine Sean has had more. And they message us and they're like, hey, uh, you know, I used to invest in VC stuff, you know, I invest in startups. And they'll see what Sean's doing a little bit about investing in cash flowing businesses. And they're like, can you teach me how to do that? That is so much better. Or like, they, they want to just make profits now as opposed to, you know, waiting 12 years to sell business. And it, there, there is definitely this shift, it seems like that's happening. Have you had that Sean, where a bunch of your friends are hollering at you about that?

• 7:59Shaan Puri?

  No, they're not like asking me how to do it. It's pretty straightforward how to do it. I don't think that's the question. I think, uh, but you are right. That a bunch of, basically it's the losers of the Silicon Valley lottery, right? The winners are like, you know, you hang out with Joe Gebbia. He's not asking me about how to invest in cash flowing businesses, right? He's not, he's not, he's not trying to find, you know, the next, uh, 10% compounding or whatever. It's, but it's the rest of us. It's the 99% of the population who played the Silicon Valley lottery for 10, 12, 15 years. And then we're like, all right, I am smart, but can I play a game with a little bit higher odds of success? Cause guess what? I don't actually need $3 trillion to be happy. Um, you know, I'd actually just like to be financially free.

• 8:38Shaan Puri?

  And I'd like to use all this business knowledge I have, but in a way that's not 95% based on luck and variance, which is what I would call most Silicon Valley startups. And so, yeah, there's definitely a shift to doing things that just work, maybe buying companies that already work and making them work better. And also, people realizing that it's a lot more funny to have, it's a lot more fun to have money now than it is to maybe have money at an IPO 10 years from now. And so, sure, all those are definitely on trend, as far as I can tell.

• 9:06Noah Kagan?

  You said most of these companies succeed by luck and variance?

• 9:09Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, I think if you put, if I put 100 of my friends from Silicon Valley in a room, and I said, you know, and what ended up happening is that, let's say, five to seven of them ended up doing the thing we were all trying to do. We're all trying to build a billion dollar company, and maybe five to seven of them did it. I don't think it's because those five to seven were smarter, or more talented, or harder working than the other 100. What, the two things that I think they did do is project selection, market selection. So I think they picked the right idea in the right market. But it's not that they're better at doing that necessarily. It's not that they, those guys had a different insight, or a higher skill at picking, you know, they, they happened to pick, or the thing that they were curious about happened to be on trend, or happened to be the thing

• 9:51Shaan Puri?

  that, where the bigger opportunity was. So I think that's one. And the second is, you know, the, there are, you know, still like 12, you know, Plinko bounces of the, of the puck as they go, right? Like, I'm talking to the Airbnb guy, my biggest takeaway was, this company should have died like seven times. And I actually give them credit, because I think they are in the top 0.001% of like grit and resilience, that they actually did have a different thing that pushed them through. But most of the people I know that made it, they didn't have the same number of times it could have failed, once they, once they got going, if that makes sense. So anyways, I guess, I don't think out of the batch of 100 people, that the difference between the winners and losers was intelligence, or talent, or hard work. I don't believe that that's what was the difference.

• 10:36Noah Kagan?

  I would agree with that. I think these people figure things out. But it is interesting, because right now, we glorify this person that like, it's not working for 100 years, and then finally, like, the lightbulb works. You know, it's, it's interesting, we glorify that. But a lot of it is like, for you guys and myself, how many things have you guys done that did not work?

• 10:52Shaan Puri?

  I mean, at least 15, 20 projects that I've tried that did not work, right? Some are day project, and some were two years projects, or three years.

• 11:00Sam Parr?

  Yeah, I mean, I've, I've done many, many, many things, and like, three have taken off. This podcast being one of them. Yeah, so like, 30, 10% have worked.

• 11:14Noah Kagan?

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

• 11:38Sam Parr?

  You're fascinating right now, I think, because you've, you run one of these companies that was talked about a ton when you first launched it. Because you were one of the early guys in, you're, you're kind of in this world with Tim Ferriss and Rami. And so you were part of the kind of the zeitgeist in 2008 to 2014, maybe. And then you started this company AppSumo, which is like Groupon for software discounts. And you've kind of been quiet, or at least the company has been quiet, AppSumo. But it's one of those stories where you're like, what's going on with that soon? And then you find out that they're just quietly crushing it. Wherever you, you know, I don't know what you did in the year one, but it's probably 10 years old. You're at 80 million in revenue.

• 12:19Sam Parr?

  And what I admire about AppSumo and what you've built there is that you've just done the same thing for about a decade or even more. And it's just been quietly crushing it. How long, how, how old is it?

• 12:29Noah Kagan?

  So it's 14 years, almost 14 years old. It's going through puberty. So we've got some growing pains here.

• 12:35Sam Parr?

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

• 12:47Noah Kagan?

  Yeah, they do.

• 12:48Sam Parr?

  I think there's a bunch of companies that like, they get a lot of hype and then they just get quiet for five, 10, however long years. And they just are quietly killing it and building the business.

• 12:57Shaan Puri?

  I'll give you an example of one, Card.

• 12:59Sam Parr?

  Oh, yeah. We talked about it.

• 13:00Shaan Puri?

  About seven to 10 years ago, it was really popular to create like your, your personal website, right? You'reabout.me And then there was like Wix and Weebly. And those were like hot, weisy startups that were, you know, that were doing the thing. Squarespace was like on every podcast, advertising everywhere. And then Card came out and it was just simple, single page websites. I still use Card today. I love this, love this app.

• 13:25Sam Parr?

  For what?

• 13:26Shaan Puri?

  Anytime I need to make a site. It's, it is for me, still the fastest way to make a website. Like, I think Webflow is more popular, probably. Card's easier to use.

• 13:34Sam Parr?

  It's really hard, though.

• 13:35Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, like I need to find, there should just be a blog for low IQ people. It's like, hey. If you're just, you know, let's be honest about where you're at capabilities and talent wise. This is the software you should be using. It's like card is in that bucket of really, really like stupidly easy to use. And they came out, they were like kind of hot on product hunt and stuff like that. Like in the kind of when indie hacking was like, it had a little moment, they kind of disappeared. Nobody really talking about it for a while. And I met the founder one time and he's told me the numbers and they were just crushing it. And I was like, what? He goes, yeah, I know. He goes, actually, a really random thing happened. He's like, every like political movement started using card.

• 14:15Shaan Puri?

  So like during the campaign, like 2016, 2020, thousands of websites got created using card to promote like election stuff or any cause. It was like, it became like a thing for causes. He's like, yeah, that drove a ton of growth during that period. And now, and I think they just raised like a venture round 10 years later. Like they bootstrap for 10 years and then raised like a single round from investors. Cause they kind of couldn't deny like, hey, this is now much bigger than a two person project. We should probably like, I don't know, hire an employee and see what we can do with this.

• 14:45Noah Kagan?

  Yeah, they had two people for 10 years, right?

• 14:47Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, this guy AJ and I think one other guy, then that was it. And then now they raised a little money. Now they're trying to go for it, but it was this company that you heard about, then you just didn't hear about it for seven years. But that didn't mean it went away. It just meant like it's out of the tech crunch or whatever.

• 15:01Noah Kagan?

  I think there's something not talked about about longevity.

• 15:05Noah Kagan?

  Right? Like just doing it over, over and over and over and over and over for a very long time. I think the second thing is really market selection. Right? Like we've stuck with it 15 years almost, but really it's also, we chose a good market, right? Like software went from 10 deals our first year, give or take to not like, how many software products out there? A hundred thousand plus and more coming. And so something when people are starting businesses, it's like, okay, well, is this something that's going to be bigger maybe in the future? And then how do you at least be mindful of that as you start?

• 15:30Shaan Puri?

  Did you bootstrap it or did you raise money?

• 15:32Noah Kagan?

  I bootstrapped.

• 15:32Shaan Puri?

  So you've bootstrapped it 14 years and 80 million. So it's profitable. I don't know how wildly profitable or just sort of profitable.

• 15:39Noah Kagan?

  I can share the numbers. I'm happy to talk about it.

• 15:41Shaan Puri?

  Okay, great. Let's do it.

• 15:43Noah Kagan?

  In terms of net revenue, I think we ended, it was 76 something was the actual final at the end of the year.

• 15:49Sam Parr?

  And that's like gross revenue, meaning you give a

• 15:52Noah Kagan?

  Everything.

• 15:53Sam Parr?

  You give a percentage to the software companies.

• 15:55Shaan Puri?

  But he said net, so that's after you paid out the software company, right?

• 15:58Noah Kagan?

  So gross sales is 76.7, net revenue was 56.

• 16:05Sam Parr?

  Wow.

• 16:05Noah Kagan?

  Pretty good. And then profit was 7.5.

• 16:09Shaan Puri?

  And what do you do with that profit? That's like Noah's piggy bank or where does it go?

• 16:13Noah Kagan?

  Yeah. No, no, it doesn't go there. So what we do is it's been the same approach we've had. So we copy Amazon for, if you actually look at our net profit over the past, literally 14 years, it's like 0.5% net income margin. And so what we do is in Q4, we try to spend all the profit we have so that every year gets bigger and bigger. So take everyone on the team to Mexico, ads, servers, sponsorships if we can, hiring investors, prepaying for things, whatever we can within tax rules. And pay the team distribution and then whatever's left after that, then me and my partner get some distribution.

• 16:48Sam Parr?

  What's confusing about that?

• 16:51Shaan Puri?

  What's confusing about that is, what's the point? Wait, so you're, but you're including you're paying yourself out of that, right? Like, what's the point of running this business for 14 years without the profits is my, my question.

• 17:02Sam Parr?

  He included, he included it just distribution and then you prepay ads for the next year.

• 17:08Noah Kagan?

  Yeah, you try to invest everything as much you can theoretically, if it's a, if you think it's a positive investment so that the next year is bigger.

• 17:14Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, but it's pretty hard to do that. I, we do that for our econ business. It's pretty hard to pay $7 million ahead of time. So what's the big chunk there?

• 17:22Noah Kagan?

  No, we spend like, I think almost $2 million distributed back to the team just so that they have bonuses. And for the first five, just for what was interesting, the first five years, I didn't pay myself anything. Right? It was like, how do I put everything back in? Even though we were doing pretty good in terms of the business, like the business hit right away, which most businesses don't, you guys know that. Like you try a lot of things and not all of them work. But after, I think year six, I was like, I got nothing to show. I don't think I'm going to go public. No one's trying to buy us. Like, I'd like to have some money in the bank. So I think.

• 17:49Sam Parr?

  Were you broke? I mean, because like before this, you'd ran, what was it called? Game kick or kickflip?

• 17:56Noah Kagan?

  Kickflip was one of them and then Gambit.

• 17:58Sam Parr?

  And then you were with Mint and then you were famously with Facebook. Were you cash poor for a long time?

• 18:05Noah Kagan?

  No, I've never been broke.

• 18:09Noah Kagan?

  I had a million dollars at 30 from day jobs. I think that's kind of like not recognized by most people, meaning one, I was super cheap. Right. So I lived on floors for a year. That's a good way to save money. Lived at my mom's house, lived in my aunt's house. So just as cheap as possible. I did get two paydays. One payday was from the Gambit Payments Company. So I think I made around 350,000. That was payments for Farmville and all those annoying games. And then the conferences. So those plus just being really conservative with the cash. Like it was about a million dollar liquid around 30.

• 18:42Shaan Puri?

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

• 18:58Noah Kagan?

  It was more of a few hundred million dollar payday.

• 19:01Shaan Puri?

  Every year it gets worse.

• 19:02Noah Kagan?

  It was a good, it was, thanks for rubbing it. Do you know this word, schadenfreude?

• 19:06Shaan Puri?

  Yes, you have pleasure in other people's pain, right?

• 19:10Noah Kagan?

  It's like one of my favorite words. It's like they have a word for that. I think it's just kind of the wild thing about it. I mean, you know, it's funny, I posted on Twitter, some of these like old Facebook memories of like me and Zuck and Moskowitz and Bosworth, who's now the CTO, or Chris Cox. Charlie Keever, Adam D'Angelo. It was, it was, you know, Arrington from TechCrunch. It was, it was a special time, man. It was a really special time.

• 19:32Shaan Puri?

  So how did you get there? What were you doing? What was it like and what happened?

• 19:37Noah Kagan?

  I worked at Intel, had a day job, but I was always building stuff on the side. So I was always kind of just doing things like built collegeup.org, Grigis for college students. No one used that. Ninja carrd.com, discount cards for college students. That did really well. And then I was putting on conferences, so Entrepreneur 27. I was basically just really wanting to get the hell out of a day job and have an own business. So I sent in my resume cold, but the differentiator was that I sent in mockups. So I took Facebook and I was like, here's Facebook Maps. If we ever have a Facebook Maps feature, so if you want to go see your friend, here's how it would look. And they were like, wow, you have a bunch of businesses for college students and you're doing, you're showing us what you would do here.

• 20:14Shaan Puri?

  And you're not a designer, right? So you're, you're scrapping these mockups together. You paid somebody, what'd you do?

• 20:19Noah Kagan?

  No, that was myself. So I think I was either using Google Slides. I don't even know if that was around, probably Microsoft Paint. I'm talking super basic. It doesn't have to be fancy. Google Slides is probably that and Canva are probably the best free things you could use.

• 20:31Shaan Puri?

  Did you just cold email Zuck or who'd you send?

• 20:34Noah Kagan?

  No, no, no. So I was gonna quit Intel in December because I was waiting for my health insurance to kick in. I wanted to get my HSA payment. And then I just saw the job listing. I didn't know anyone there.

• 20:45Shaan Puri?

  And so you send that in, they're like, cool. You go, what was your first impression walking into the office? I guess, what was it like back then? Because what year was this for Facebook?

• 20:54Noah Kagan?

  This was 2005. I think one of the things for people out there, if you want to get a job, which I think could be cool, is just go look at what you're using all the time. You know, if you listen to a podcast, if you're working on a project, to be clear, though, it is work. People think that at AppSumo, they're like, I'm gonna come party with you guys. Like, you realize like 90% of our day sitting on computer, working. 10% said, yeah, we do a lot of cool stuff. But when I came in there, it was chaotic. I mean, I posted one of these photos, it was a good memory, where like there's cables everywhere, the desks were kind of all over the place.

• 21:22Noah Kagan?

  But it felt like there's something special happening. It felt like there's like, holy shit, we're on a mission that no one else is a part of, and we know where this is going. And then we have this truly fearless leader that seemed like a savant. He's definitely awkward as hell. But I was really impressed about, you know, what he was able to do and how big he was thinking about this company could be.

• 21:43Shaan Puri?

  What numbers was he throwing around?

• 21:45Noah Kagan?

  Yeah, so a few crazy things, crazy things that people forget, though. He copied Connect You, I don't know if anyone remembers this, in a weekend. He copied someone else and then emailed out to his dorm, and that's how it got going. So I think people think these big companies start very complicated. No, he copied someone else, launched it, it worked, then he kept going, and then he changed his vision. So some of the crazier things that I recall was at a very early time, he rejected a billion dollar sale, which now maybe sounds a lot or little. But imagine, like Sean, you're what, 30 something?

• 22:15Shaan Puri?

  31, yeah.

• 22:17Noah Kagan?

  35. You're 24 years old, and there's like, hey, I'm gonna give you a billion dollars. This was Yahoo. I think all of us would take that in a heartbeat.

• 22:25Shaan Puri?

  I took a $100,000 job, so I think I was gonna take the billion dollar to offer too.

• 22:30Sam Parr?

  I heard this crazy story where they're like, I think it was Yahoo that was offering to buy him. Where, you know, Zuck's sitting there and all the Yahoo gray hairs are talking to him. And they make the offer and he was like, hey, can you guys leave the room so we could discuss this? And Peter Thiel's in there and the executives leave the room and everyone's looking at Zuck like, all right, so let's take this. And he goes, so I just wanted to like, sit in here and pretend like we're talking about this. Cause obviously we're not going to take this deal.

• 22:54Shaan Puri?

  By the way, you're totally making this up. That's not what happened.

• 22:57Sam Parr?

  I, that's what I heard. I read a blog post on it.

• 22:59Shaan Puri?

  The story is they got the offer, then there was the next board meeting. At the next board meeting, he was like, which is like where Peter Thiel and others were. He was like, okay, but housekeeping, we got to discuss, you know, we're supposed to talk about this. Got this offer, obviously not going to take it. And they were like, whoa, whoa, whoa, maybe we should, Mark, that's a lot of money. We should talk about this. That's what they said. But even that, I think is-

• 23:19Sam Parr?

  John, don't let facts get in the way of a good story.

• 23:21Shaan Puri?

  Well, I think there's even more revisionist history, which, which is interesting here because then later, there's another story that Zuck actually accepted an offer from, I think it was, I think it was Yahoo. And it was either Yahoo or Microsoft, I don't remember. And then they reneged. They came back and tried to negotiate down. So like, you know, he took 1.2 and then they came back and said, no, it's going to be like 900 or something. There's another story like that. And so none of these are concurrent because Peter Thiel tells the story, right? That's where, that was the source of that story where he was just trying to say how Zuck is this, you know, he was this like visionary, you know, balls of steel, turned down the billion dollar offer. But then there's this other story where he kind of took it. And I'm like, well, and they're like, maybe he wanted revenge because they negotiated him down. It's like, but wait, he said yes?

• 24:06Shaan Puri?

  So I don't really know what the truth is, but I know there's a lot of this BS in startup lore where people make up stories that make somebody sound more, more brave or-

• 24:15Sam Parr?

  100%. I would, you know, someone asked me a few days ago, like, is Zuck good or bad? And I think he's good.

• 24:21Noah Kagan?

  I think people might have negative pressure, but he was, he, he's ambitious. But I think he always, at least when I was there, had good intentions of being ambitious. It wasn't like, I need to manipulate the media. He's probably like, what are you talking about? It's just an algorithm. I don't know, like, change it up again, we'll fix it.

• 24:34Shaan Puri?

  No, can I share the environment? Cause I remember once in, when I lived in San Francisco, we were, I was doing a startup. I thought I was doing a, I thought this is it. We're, we're all, we're just like every other startup. We're in the race, we're in the hunt, we're gonna make the next big thing. And then I went to a friend's office who was doing a startup and they actually had product market fit. And like, the market was pulling their product, they were growing faster than they could handle.

• 24:54Noah Kagan?

  Yes.

• 24:55Shaan Puri?

  And I walked into that office, which was smaller, way less nice, you know, didn't have like, didn't have, it wasn't super organized. They had like, you know, people were sitting on the floor and like, there was just like, people everywhere, there's cables everywhere. It was like a different vibe.

• 25:09Noah Kagan?

  Is the company still around?

• 25:10Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, yeah, it's, it actually sold for, you know, a few hundred million dollars. And so I walked home and I remember thinking on my way home, oh fuck, we're just playing house. Like, that's what it's supposed to feel like when it's working. I didn't even actually realize it till I stepped foot in there, but that's a totally different energy. They have it and we don't. And did you feel that when you went into the Facebook office?

• 25:32Noah Kagan?

  A hundred percent. I felt it, I've been lucky to feel it a few times. At Mint, I felt it, AppSumo feels it. And I think inside at Facebook, one, my boss got fired the day I, I started. So I walked in and my boss was walking out, which was a really strange, you know, I just left Intel, which, you know, I had, you know, eight meetings a day and I had all this training, it was horrible. And I, you know, I go into a room and Zuck's like, your, your boss Doug, who ended up founding GoodRx, he has no GoodRx.

• 25:57Shaan Puri?

  Yep.

• 25:57Noah Kagan?

  Oh, wow. Pretty, pretty, pretty impressive. I just fired him because he, he wanted, he's, a lot of guys from Facebook came from Yahoo. And he's like, he tried to sell the company, so it's my company, I fired him, welcome to Facebook. And then I just grabbed literally a corner of a desk and it was like, all right, well, what should I work on? Right? And it's literally like a stark contrast from Intel where like, everything is regimented. And it was amazing. I think the thing that was interesting that others didn't know is that we saw the internal metrics about the growth. So we knew there was something happening that others didn't see. In terms of like, I think we were at 10 million the day I started, by the day I got fired, it was about 50 million. So we just saw that like, wow, this growth, but the threats were serious. Like, Google was a threat, which people, you know, kind of forget today. MySpace was a huge threat. And obviously now those things aren't even really talked about.

• 26:43Sam Parr?

  What were you doing the the math when you were thinking about how much your stock's eventually going to be worth where you're like, man, this might make $10 million?

• 26:52Noah Kagan?

  My whole thing was that I just thought the equity is going to be insanely valuable. I didn't know at Mint, I had a very specific number I thought I would sell for, which I was accurate there. Facebook, I was like, I don't know the limit because Zuck's vision was to connect the entire world. And his whole, his quote was like, we want to be a toll booth for the internet. I remember that. And that was inspiring. It was nice. You know, even at AppSumo now, I'm now like, okay, what are we excited about? And now we're excited to promote software. Like, we love promoting software. And it's like, his was like, I want to connect the entire world. Imagine showed up to work, and he's connecting the entire world. And what he did, a lot of really clever things, which was, how do we reduce all distractions? So like, he paid for all of our parking tickets. He paid for all of our cleaning. He paid for us to live close. He paid for like, everything. So all we had to do is focus somewhere.

• 27:33Shaan Puri?

  And that wasn't normal back then, right?

• 27:36Noah Kagan?

  No, it was super abnormal.

• 27:37Shaan Puri?

  Pay your parking tickets and be like, hey, there's just bring your laundry here. Shit, like, shut up about your life and just bring your laundry here and just work. Because when we were hanging out with Mr. Beast, Jack Smith said this the other day, he, we were hanging out and he goes, I like how he just has no disregard for social norms. Because we were like, how'd you hire this guy? Or like, how do you train people? And he's like, they move in with me, basically. Like, they just, I attach them to my hip, they follow me everywhere. We work seven days a week. And then after six months, like, now you could start to give your ideas because you now, you have now fully absorbed me. And they're like, all right, well, I don't think I could, it's similar like California labor laws, like, how does this work? And, and I think it was right. The absolute disregard

• 28:19Shaan Puri?

  for social norms, I've now learned is like a very, very positive attribute or signal in highly, highly successful people. Sounds like Zuck was kind of like that, too.

• 28:29Noah Kagan?

  I don't know that, I think asking and doing things that you believe, like, I think you guys are very good at that. But there's also, I think, negatives. Like, I remember this guy, Dan, died, and a tree fell on him. This during one of the workdays, he was biking, and a tree killed him. And I'm like, okay, are we gonna put a bike rack outside? Are we gonna have a moment? And there was not even any acknowledgement. It was like, let's just work. And I just thought that was, that was insane.

• 28:50Sam Parr?

  Yeah, I mean, there's a price to pay for being crazy like that, right? Like, there's pros and cons.

• 28:55Noah Kagan?

  Yeah, I mean, it's special to be a part. And you have to think, like, we had Harvard PhDs in customer support. Like imagine that, like people that wanted to be there so badly, it doesn't matter your degree, you just come work there. And so being in that environment was really special. And just like learning, seeing all this amazing talent that that was there and that has left to go do really cool things.

• 29:13Shaan Puri?

  And so why did they fire you?

• 29:15Noah Kagan?

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

• 29:19Shaan Puri?

  Like you dipped out?

• 29:20Noah Kagan?

  I was like, I was drunk and high at Coachella. And then for me, I was blogging about Facebook because I was so excited about it. I think go find things you're excited about it and tell the world about it. If you think it's a good thing, that's how I've always felt with the stuff I do. And I let Arrington at TechCrunch know like, hey, Facebook's opening up to at Microsoft and at corporate emails. In the morning, I think you should write about it and get and talk about it because Facebook wasn't going to do any press. And he wrote about it that night. And then I emailed Zuck and somebody other E team and I let him know what I did. So I think it was that. And then I think for me, I also felt frustrated. You guys have seen these people where for me at 30 people, when it was like, no, just figure things out. So I was like, all right, I'm going to help build mobile with Sli or I'm going to help build ads or I'm going to help do the status update thing, which they didn't even want to do.

• 30:03Noah Kagan?

  It was just fun. It was very like, there's a lot to do there. And I was also probably more immature. And then as I got older and it grew, I didn't want to be in meetings. I didn't want to do Excel project management. I didn't want to have long discussions with 30 people about basic ideas.

• 30:17Sam Parr?

  When did it become corporate?

• 30:19Noah Kagan?

  I mean, at that point, it was 150 people. It felt very corporate to me. It felt very, you know, and if you look at Facebook, what's the last great thing Zuck has done since 2005?

• 30:29Noah Kagan?

  Besides acquiring other people, what does he come up with Portal? That was a floppage. Like, name one thing he's actually done. Besides make, he's acquired, he's made good decisions acquiring people. I'd say that.

• 30:40Sam Parr?

  Yeah, just gotten bigger. I mean, that's why Facebook's great. It's just it's because everyone uses it. I mean, it's so big. I remember when Sarah, my wife worked there, they were like, we're doing this thing in India where we put blimps or drones up in the sky. And I was like, why are they doing that? And they're like, well, because the only people who aren't on Facebook are the people in India who don't have internet. So we're just going to go give them free internet so they can use Facebook. I mean, his relentless drive towards growing to everyone is what he's done.

• 31:08Shaan Puri?

  Yeah. And stuff like, you know, the part of things, the bigger you get, the harder it is to move the needle. So it's like Marketplace, super successful, but. Kind of like, who cares? It's like, yeah, you built Craigslist inside Facebook. It's fine. They need us, they need to do something so big, right? That's why it's like the metaverse or AI. Like they have to go on these huge waves just to kind of like move the needle for how big Facebook is.

• 31:32Noah Kagan?

  I think what was really interesting, what people can think about in their own businesses is the core really great. Cause like Facebook Marketplace or Facebook events, I was really excited to grow and improve and monetize early on. And he was just against it completely. And I noticed that with AppSumo, our core business is go find cool products, get a deal on them, promote them. That's it, right? But it gets very exciting to think, all right, could we do MRR? Could we do all these other options? But really it's like, can you do the core excellent? And then start adding new things at a later point.

• 31:59Sam Parr?

  Some of the, some of the cool stuff. So you've had this video where you went on this plane with this guy who I think was a commodities trader. I think that's what he said, you know? And I assume he was worth hundreds of millions of dollars. I know that you have a bunch of friends who are billionaires. You told me ahead of time, you said, uh, most billionaires that you know are unhappy. What, what, tell me more about like what you've noticed about hanging out with some of these like uber, uber successful people.

• 32:23Noah Kagan?

  Most of them didn't set out to be billionaires. Like you hear people online like, I want to be a billionaire. It's like almost every billionaire I know, and I've worked for them or multi, multimillionaire was just like, here's something I'm curious about or excited about. And yes, maybe in private equity or finance, but a lot of the entrepreneur ones. It was just like stuff they're curious about. All of them got rich as well in one way. Like I was just at FedEx this morning because I interviewed the guy from, uh, Kingos. He just focused on copiers. That's it. But a lot of newer entrepreneurs I've seen are ones that haven't had as much success. They're like, I'm going to do five different solopreneur startups this weekend. It's like, okay, you can test five, but which one's working? Let's just do one. These billionaires just did one, but they tell us to diversify.

• 33:06Noah Kagan?

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

• 33:16Sam Parr?

  Yeah, I mean, 20 years, 30 years, a lifetime, a lifetime, a career.

• 33:20Noah Kagan?

  A lifetime, a lifetime. And we're trying to get rich in a weekend or which, you know, crypto rich in a month. And I think the, the slow compounded growth over long periods of time is what doesn't get recognized.

• 33:31Sam Parr?

  Sean, didn't you say that was like your major takeaway from your camp MFM?

• 33:36Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, I wouldn't say it exactly like that, but, um, When I was talking to Jimmy and I was like, yeah, I think the thing I'm, you know, most, the thing that's standing out to me the most as I get out of my bubble, I reassess, I reflect, it's the start of the new year, is I think I'm spending so much energy, but I'm spreading it out, I'm spreading it too thin, and that's a mistake. Like, I'm doing more and getting less. And I put it differently. I said, I think you have a thousand times more opportunity, opportunities coming to you every day, and you've said yes to half the things I have. So something's wrong here. I think in general, the more successful you get, the more opportunities

• 34:19Shaan Puri?

  you get, but the more things you should and you should be saying no to. I think Hormozzi said a nice thing about this that I thought resonated. He goes, let's say you get, let's say you're making 10,000 a month, and now somebody comes and offers you something that's going to make you $1,000. Pretty easy to say no. Like, you have a going rate. If you're making 100,000 a month and somebody comes to you and says, here's something that'll make you 10 grand, easy to say no. The hard thing is when you're making 100 grand and somebody comes to you and says, here's the thing that can make 100 grand. And you're like, that's my rate. But what happens is, you now, you've now split your focus and you're basically, you're losing life balance, but you're also doubling down on the amount of work that you have to do, only to get, you know, one more unit compared to where you were. He's like, the best people, the smartest people, they basically, when they're

• 35:03Shaan Puri?

  at the 100, they don't say yes to the next thing that can get them 100 or 200. They will only say yes to something that might get them, you know, 10x more than that. And so the right way to do it is to basically say, all right, this gave me the right to say no to certain things. And the hardest one to say no to is the one that's at the current level where you're currently at. And the people who really break out and get to the next level, they're the ones who are able to say no, stay focused until they see something that is truly 10x better opportunity than what they have.

• 35:33Sam Parr?

  So how are you, how are you changing this year?

• 35:35Shaan Puri?

  Well, I said Dota a bunch of things. I shut down two of the things that I was working on that were working, but they were more in that like 1X, 1X type of category. And then every day I basically start my day with the first three hours because I was like, you know, the main thing I want to focus on is making great content. It's the thing I love doing the most. It's the thing I think I'm best at, but the hard part is a deal comes on the table and now I'm spending, you know, the first eight hours that day working on that deal or that investment or that opportunity or that new, new idea. And so I just carved out where the first three hours of the day I'm only doing content. And I was like, cool. I want this to eventually be eight hours, 10 hours a day, but the thing I can control is that the first three hours, I'm not going to say yes to anything else. I'm only going to say this. And the cool part is as soon as you do the first three hours, you have so much momentum.

• 36:21Shaan Puri?

  The natural thing to do is just to keep going. And so that's been very effective so far.

• 36:25Sam Parr?

  Where are you, Sean, where are you going to start making content? Like when you keep saying content creation, are you talking specifically text? Are you talking about text based? Are you blogging is coming back?

• 36:33Shaan Puri?

  Sean blogger.com. Come back. All, all ideas are on the table. So right now I'm just prototyping. So I'm basically trying to figure out which one do I enjoy the most? I knew I would enjoy podcasting. I listened to a ton of podcasts. I had prototyped it. So before this podcast, I had recorded two other podcasts, one with my roommate and brother-in-law at home, where we talked about sports and never released it. There's only been three listeners ever. It's me and the two guys I did it with. Then I did another podcast at my office when I was doing a startup. It was me, Furcon and a couple, a couple of the guys, three episodes. I think they're up on YouTube somewhere. Nobody ever watched them, but doing that, even though those podcasts went nowhere, it did do one thing, which has showed me, oh, man, I really like doing this. And how cool would it be if I actually like could do this all the time?

• 37:17Shaan Puri?

  Or it was actually, you know, if people actually listened to it, man, that would be amazing. And so I had prototyped, I had felt it out before I, in order to know that that's actually something I wanted to do. So when I say new content, I'll dabble with, let's say, short form or, or write, you know, I'll write a a brief to a book, like, you know, an outline to a book of the first two chapters. Cause I'm trying to understand whether, do I want to write a book or not? I don't need to commit to that because I can prototype and feel it out first.

• 37:44Sam Parr?

  You definitely should go the book route. The problem with the book route, Noah, you've seen, it seems so fucking hard. It seems so hard. Everyone I know who, who writes a book, they describe it exactly how my friends who run marathons do, where they complain constantly while they're in training. They say the race is miserable. And then about two weeks after the race happens, or the book goes live, they go, all right, I think I want to do this next book on this topic. And I'm like, man, I just heard you complain for two years. No, you've been talking about this freaking book for years. I think it's been way longer than four years, actually. I remember you talking about how you wanted to write a book forever, and it took four freaking years to do this thing. Is it, you think it's going to be worth it? What's the ROI going to be?

• 38:27Noah Kagan?

  I like it. I'm proud of it. I think it's first off, and you know, coming back to the ROI on that, I think it's going to impact people. I think one person at a time, I've already seen it, right? I've seen people read it and I'm like, holy shit, really? You know, even, I think with these things, like what, what you guys have done with your show, and Sean's like, what you're exploring on yours, your content. It's like, what's something you're excited to do and that's kind of hard? Right? Like, no one's ever proud of themselves, like, yeah, I wrote, I walked five feet. Like, but if you run a mile, or if you run a marathon, you're like, damn, that was hard, but I can actually do this. And I think that, that, to me, was really the ultimate ROI in this book. Thinking, can I actually face myself and work on a book and to help other people? And then can people do it for themselves?

• 39:10Sam Parr?

  Dude, why did you become so political?

• 39:12Noah Kagan?

  What do you mean where I like, I'm, it's called?

• 39:14Sam Parr?

  You're like a politi, you're like a politician, my friend. Like, so old Noah, I gotta tell a story about old Noah. I remember Sean, one time, there's a coworker who I work with, who Sean, you are friends with. And she, we go into this meeting and Noah shows up shirtless. He's got no shirt on. He's at his house, I think he's like on his couch. And I'm like, Noah, what the fuck are you doing, dude? Like, he, he was this like crazy madman. And that's actually what made him brilliant, was like, he would do all this crazy stuff. And he executed crazy stuff really, really, really well. But now, when I ask what the ROI is of this, you, you're showing so much evolution. You're talking about changing people's lives. It's so funny to see you say this, this stuff.

• 39:59Noah Kagan?

  Well, one, thank you. I think we should all evolve.

• 40:02Shaan Puri?

  Trying to change people's lives back then, too, just in a different way, one nip at a time.

• 40:09Noah Kagan?

  I've also, I was gonna talk about inverted, my inverted nipples, which I'm very self-conscious about, okay? No, I mean, look, I'm maturing. Do I wanna show up shirtless? Maybe if we're hanging out in our sauna. Like, come over. But I think as you get older, you also realize, like, what kind of behavior do you wanna do? And I think that's fine. Do the book, I think people have these, these like bullshit ROI things, like, I wanna help a million people. I don't give a shit about that. I don't. But I am happy if like one or two or five or a thousand or 10,000, then read the book and do something for themselves.

• 40:40Sam Parr?

  Noah, we appreciate you doing this, man. I, I forgot to, I should have plugged this earlier on, but I'm doing, I'm buying, how many, how many books am I buying? 30, 50 books?

• 40:50Noah Kagan?

  Something like that.

• 40:52Sam Parr?

  So I bought a bunch of books. I'm trying to do my part to help you rank up in, in the list. So if you go to theantimba.com, between now and February 15th, to anyone who gives me their email, I'll just like pick, I'll randomly pick 50 of you guys and I'll send you a link to buy the book for free or to enter your address in and we'll send you the book. I'm excited to see you do this. I hopefully, hopefully you impact some people, which I know you will, but also the ego side of me is like, hopefully you rank on some type of bestseller list, which I know is also pretty cool.

• 41:24Sam Parr?

  We appreciate you doing this. What do you wanna, it's called Million Dollar Weekend. You're Noah Kagan on Twitter, appsumo.com, Noah Kagan on YouTube. I'm missing any other plug?

• 41:35Noah Kagan?

  No, man. It's

• 41:36Shaan Puri?

  By the way, Noah, I had an experience like this that shifted my life. I'm a testimonial for this even before your book came out. I was working on a startup, my very first startup. We were working on it for like nine months, trying to get everything right. We literally had a 300-page business plan. It was embarrassing, now that I look back, but we thought that meant we were, you know, doing everything. We were dotting every, you know, we're dotting Ts and crossing Is out here. And so I was like, all right, well.

• 42:01Shaan Puri?

  At a certain point, I looked at my, my co-founder and I was like, my co-founder is my roommate, my friend. And I was like, um, I was like, dude, I feel like we just keep telling everyone we're doing a business, but we don't actually do any business. He's like, what? And I was like, like, how long have we been sitting here with this whiteboard and this plan? And like, how much? We have no revenue. We've never made a dollar. Like, I can't believe this. And we just keep tricking ourselves into thinking that this is legit. I just read the four hour work week and I was like, all right, this weekend, we are going to make money. I don't care how, I was like, we're in our, we set a goal for a thousand dollars. I said, we're going to try to make a thousand dollars in the next, you know, basically it was Friday. It was like, we're going to make it by Sunday night. And I don't care how, let's go. And instantly, just by having

• 42:45Shaan Puri?

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

• 43:00Noah Kagan?

  Yeah.

• 43:00Shaan Puri?

  To somebody who's, uh, their parents were having an anniversary and they needed like 200 of these. We charged them like, you know, four or five bucks per, we made a thousand dollars in one weekend. And I felt like the champion of the, of the universe. And I was like, this is what business is supposed to feel like. Taking action, actually going out there, try to sell a product, um, moving fast. Don't try to perfect everything. You don't need a 300 page plan. And after that, like literally my, my whole game shifted just from that one experience. And so, I haven't read your book yet. You sent it to me. I'm going to read it, but I already like in my soul, I'm on board with what you're all about.

• 43:35Noah Kagan?

  Dude, I did that wristband business too. That's so crazy.

• 43:38Shaan Puri?

  They were, they were hot at the time, right? Like every kid was wearing them. Every college kid was wearing them.

• 43:42Noah Kagan?

  But I think that the thing you called out, which is interesting and that's awesome is like, because you said, hey, I'm going to do something and I have this limited time and you have 52 of them, right? So especially if you guys got kids and all this stuff, you don't have a lot of time. But you can make an hour or two in a weekend to do something. And then look what you did in a weekend, which you didn't do in months.

• 44:00Shaan Puri?

  Right. Yeah, exactly that. Look what you did in the weekend that you didn't do in months. That's, that's how, it's exactly how it felt. And then I was like, I either can go back to the old way. Or I can go this new way, this action way. And the action way became the way and that, you know, basically that became, I don't know. Like Sam, it's so funny. You have that tatted on your feet like that's, it's been tatted in my brain. That's like the only thing, you know, I remember literally looking around, I was at Duke and there's a bunch of smart kids at Duke. I thought when I was in high school, I was the smart kid. Then you go to a college with all the smart kids from those high schools and you realize, oh, you ain't shit. And I was like, all right.

• 44:33Sam Parr?

  Yeah.

• 44:33Shaan Puri?

  Am I just going to be like forgettable average? Cause that's where this is going. And I was like, am I really going to get smarter than these people? Am I gonna, I don't have any like special talents that they, that, that nobody else has. But I realized that a lot of smart people are over thinkers. They hesitate, they doubt, they overanalyze. And I was like, that's my thing. I'm not going to do that. I'm just going to immediately take action and that will be the difference. And that will be my thing. And I could just, that'll be the bedrock that I can build any kind of success on, rather than trying to have been like a special snowflake. That was, uh, you know, uh, pre, predestined to do great things. And that just became my, uh, my, my motto.

• 45:11Sam Parr?

  I've still got the needle, bro. We can change that. We can, we can.

• 45:14Noah Kagan?

  Let's tatted, let's tatted. Well, Sean, but most people who listen to your show want to make a million, they don't ever make a buck. They never even make that one dollar. And that's where they have to get, you know, get off their ass.

• 45:26Shaan Puri?

  Bars dude, that was, that was great. Like, like good lyrics. Nice, nice words. Thank you.

• 45:31Sam Parr?

  Like, bro, you're a 40 year old YouTuber. How do you not know these things?

• 45:37Noah Kagan?

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

• 46:05Sam Parr?

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

• 46:19Sam Parr?

  I've got a pirate ship. Is that?

• 46:21Shaan Puri?

  Bro, live, laugh, love is bold.

• 46:28Sam Parr?

  Yeah, I mean, that's true.

• 46:30Shaan Puri?

  I moved to Austin and I found myself.

• 46:32Sam Parr?

  Yeah.

• 46:34Shaan Puri?

  I did the work, Sean.

• 46:35Sam Parr?

  It's self love.

• 46:36Shaan Puri?

  You did the work, dude.

• 46:39Sam Parr?

  Well, you know, the reason I like homemade tattoos is you do what you want. When I found out, when you go to tattoo shops, basically find an artist that you like and you're like, here's kind of what I want. And they're like, yeah, I'm just gonna do whatever I want. And you're like, too embarrassed to like, tell them exactly what you want because this guy, you want to impress him. And so I basically have a whole bunch of tattoos on my legs and throughout my body that I was just trying to, trying to impress Hector, my tattoo artist. So.

• 47:04Sam Parr?

  So that's pretty much how it works when it comes to tattoos. No, we appreciate you coming. We'll wrap here. That's the pod.