Transcript
This isn't your average business podcast, and he's not your average host. This is the James Altucher Show. Today on the James Altucher Show. I know when Noah Kagan comes on the podcast, there's going to be fireworks. First time I had him on the podcast was in 2014, and he literally changed my life. He he told me, do this right after the podcast. Go to your nearby Starbucks for a coffee, a donut, whatever, and simply ask for 10% off. And I'm like, what? And he said, just try and do it. And I tried it, and I was really scared and nervous. And they didn't give me 10% off. I asked. They did not give me 10 percent off. They kinda looked at me funny, and they had to ask the manager. But since then, I've done it many, many times. It's literally changed my life, and I wanted Noah to give me much more kind of advice and techniques for getting out of my comfort zone just like this. So we always have fun conversations. Noah's was one of the first employees at Facebook, and he got fired. One of the first employees at Mint, he got fired. Now he runs AppSumo. It's a great business. That's not why I have him on. I have them on just to hear what fireworks come next, and this podcast was no different. Sometimes I can't believe the things I say. Lately, I've been going to parties, like, house parties, and then I apologize afterwards. I'm I text I texted my friend Vanessa Van Edwards, and I said, was I too much? She's like, nah. It's just right. I don't know. It's funny the how we get self conscious. Well, okay. You're did you just go to a party last night? Like, why are you self conscious right now about it? Not right now, but it's just like sometimes I'll, like, come on. Like, I don't know. I just got a lot of energy, and I have, I guess, weird things, like, that I say out loud. And, sometimes I I I'm curious how people experience that. We had a guy quit our company last week at AppSumo because he just was like, I don't like Noah. Well okay. Let's talk about that for a second. You have you have a very intense personality, which I think is a positive. Like, you're always filled with ideas, and you're optimistic, and you're inspiring to people. But maybe that he was overwhelmed by that, and maybe you don't pick up on his cues when he needs something other than that. It's an interesting thing in the world, though. Like, how do we take input? Right? And then and then filter that input to make our own decisions. Like, I have therapy at 4 right after this, and it's like, you know, I get this input from my therapist, and I it's I'm very I'm in a very vulnerable place when he tells me his stuff. And then I'm like, I don't know. Is that true? And I have my own opinions and, you know, like, this guy and so it's it's hard to filter through that at times. Like, this guy who quit, he you know, he's like, I don't I don't like Noah as a CEO. He doesn't seem stable potentially or consistent. And I was like, you know, the people who I do work at that you know, not everyone is on the same wavelength. Yeah. And, obviously, you're you're so so so what makes a good CEO? The first thing, of course, is the metrics of the business. Like, is the business profitable and growing? And the second thing is, of course, is how do you nurture the people who depend on you, whether that's employees or shareholders or even customers? So do you think part 2 of that is a little harder for you than the profit making aspect? The the team part? Yeah. Oh, I think it's finding the right people. Right? You know, like, there's, you know, the right I you know, who's the right people in the canoe going on the same direction? I think we just have a very specific culture at AppSumo where it's not we we had a guy who worked for us for 6 months. He came from Amazon, and he's like, you guys are not professional. And I was like, we're professional. We're just not very we're not very corporate. Like, if look. Did you see the shirt I wore for you today? Like, I have a drug paraphernalia shirt on. I don't I don't do all these drugs. But, anyways, I it's not that it's like, why takes why so serious? And that's not a bad thing. It's just, like, find the place and company or the people in your life that, you know, that are that your tribe or whatever they call it. Yeah. And, like like you said, Amazon has a very, corporate kind of culture. In order for something to get done, what is it? You have to write the suggestion as if it was a press release of a of your idea being announced by Amazon, and then it has to go all the way up the chain to Jeff Bezos pretty much. And then they so it's a very, like it's a very corporate like, they they have books about their culture. It's been their culture for 20 years, so it's, like, baked into their their their DNA as a company. And a young company is excited about new things and can pivot quickly and tries things just to try to see what happens. You don't have to write, like, a whole press release. So that I understand the diff difference is there. But I'm just wondering if if if you're a like, was this employee a good employee, an employee that you wanted to keep? He worked he joined the company for 4 days. Oh, okay. Well, then forget it. He's a loser. I I and he he's gonna quit just because he doesn't and he's gonna tell you that he's quitting because he doesn't like you after 4 days? I was like, that's a loser. You don't need to think about him ever again. I I don't miss him. I'm I'm glad it happened in 4 days. You know? Then the question is, how do we miss it in our recruiting process to get ahead of that for the future where it's not you know? Why how did we miss that he wasn't gonna be a good fit for us to to in the future? I think the thing that yeah. With him, I think he kept his old job too. I think he actually there's have you heard about this new trend where people have, like, 3 to 4 jobs? No. Oh, it's actually, like, on it's it's pretty big on Reddit and, like, the so these software engineers, and it's on Y Combinator, software engineers are so in demand right now. You can be a senior software engineer and make, like, 200, 300, and you keep 3 jobs. And because it's so in demand, the expectations in places, not all the places, are very low. So you could actually do a lot of like, you don't even have to do that much, and you're making a mil plus with 3 jobs. Somehow I feel like that's like like a girl cheating on me or something. I don't open relationship. Have you have you read no rules rules? No. Oh my god. If you're if you're in a business or you wanna be growing a business, it's how Netflix operates. And most business books are f**king lame. It's just like Wait. Is this called you just said no Rules Rules? Yeah. Top top 10 business book of all time. Like, I I I think my I like my barometer of reading, books in your notes. I I read a ton of them. But one of the things he says in his in this book that I thought was so clever is that they encourage their employees to go get offers from other companies. Yeah. I think that's a good idea. I thought it was well, someone did it in our company today, and I was like, I don't want you to leave. I love you. I would love for you to be a part of AppSumo forever. And but it it helped knowing your market rate. So I thought that was interesting. That's kind of the Netflix thing. You know, that that was I got this advice in 1995 where the head of HR at HBO told me, send your resume around at least once every 2 years. And in these days, I think it's probably every year or 6 months just to see what your value is on the marketplace. The the market is supply and demand. Find out where you stand. Yeah. Some of the people, I'm like, you're definitely not gonna get paid as well as you do. Like and some of them, it is fair. Like, we have this guy at our team, and he's been there a while, and I love him. And I'm like, do you you know? He told me he's like, yeah. I've thought about going to these other companies, and I really just love you, and I love part of the, you know, other things going on. And I'm like, alright. Well, let me see how much more I can get you as part of our company. I think I've kinda CEO to some extent, which I'm working on is, I do care a s**t ton. I care so much about I not this sounds f**ked up, but not everyone, but most people team. And my job is like, how do I help them live a great life? And in turn, then I get to live a great life. The company gets to have a great life. But it's been an experience, man, and it's also trying to figure out how to how to be a good mentor. There's not a lot of material, like, how to be a good leader. There's, like, leader, but it's not like how do you actually be a mentor or coach in a support in a good way? I'm, like, still working on it. It it's hard. I think you kinda have to have like, I always have 2 things that I think about. 1 is at the end of a day if if someone's working for me, at the end of the day, do they call up their parents and say, mom, you can't believe what great things I did today. So that's thing number 1. Thing number 2 is, I want the my goal is for them to be better than me and quit and start their own company competing against me or even a better company altogether that I can't even compete with. So if I keep those two goals in mind, I stay happy because eventually they quit, and, b, I I enjoy the benefits of their improvement along the way until they leave. And, c, you know, what goes around comes around. Like, you never know. Maybe if I'm gonna be homeless on the street 10 years from now, they'll find me sticking a needle in my arm, and they'll save me. So those are those are my guiding principles. Dude, I was reading an article about that, this weekend around have you heard about meth Zoom rooms? You see this on the New York Times? This is why I like talking to you. Everything you say, I haven't heard about. Dude, you say all the things I haven't heard about too. Like, I just wrote it down about happy mom and and, hopefully, they quit. But, yeah, there's this new thing. I I don't know. I love reading Wall Street Journal. That's, like, my Saturday treat, but this might have been a New York Times article. And it was around how, like, there's a there's, like, the new trend for drug addicts is actually to go in these Zoom rooms, and you could find them on Reddit. And you go and do drugs on Zoom with other people. Because, like, you know, when you have to go out and do meth on the street, it's, like, embarrassing and, like, you know, people but now you can literally do it and not feel so isolated. But the reason they do it on the street is because that's where they get the meth. Yeah. But who who wants to do it on the street? You know? It's nice to do it at home. I see. So they get the meth, and now instead of, like, just doing it with their buddies on the street, they they do it on Zoom from their privacy level. Strangers. You can also order on the dark web. Like, the dark web is the best. And I always think, like, if if you go on the dark web, it it's, like, totally monitored by the government. I think okay. So I've ordered stuff. Have you ordered stuff on the dark web? I I don't even know how to get to the dark web. That's how naive I am. I can tell dude, it's super easy. I mean, I just do you mean Tell me. Yeah. So you it's really it's actually people like, when people say dark web, I'm always like, it's not that that crazy. It's more like a gray web. Yeah. You download the Tor browser. That's it. Number so number 1, download Tor browser. Number 2, you get a VPN. I use ExpressVPN. Not affiliated. I'm gonna I'm gonna write all this down. So download Tor browser. Yep. ExpressVPN. Yeah. So you download Tor, which is a browser that's more secure, then use ExpressVPN. ExpressVPN is another thing that'll help you be on a VPN. So your your I look. The government can find you. Don't worry about it. If you're really worried, don't do it. Then you're gonna go to a site called dark.fail. Dark.fail? Yeah. So dark.fail shows you it's a URL, more or less. So it's a URL of verified marketplaces of illicit stuff. I see. So it's like it's like the Yahoo or the dark web. That's exactly right. Then you go to these sites. You log in. You register. You do all this stuff. The only other thing that you need to be mindful of is how do you actually transact. So you transact. I use a thing called Wasabi app. It's a Mac app. So you download Wasabi app. How you get crypto in there, there's a bunch of different ways you can probably figure it out. Then what you wanna do is actually do a tumble. They call it a coin join. But, theoretically, this is how the people I think got caught, those, the billionaire people in New York, those the girl and guy. Yeah. You put your crypto in that wallet. You coin join it, which basically blends it with other people's crypto, and then you use that to send it to whatever marketplace you use from, the dark fail recommendation. Ah, that's genius. And then I think you do have to do a PGP encrypt, but you can literally Google PGP encryption, and then you post your address in the encryption. And I generally send it to, like, some other person's address with a fake name or, like, an Airbnb. And then I'll use a fake name, and then I pick it up there if I ever do that stuff. I haven't done it in a little while. And and I've heard that the biggest user, though, of the dark web is the government because they do a lot of illicit things. Dude, how crazy do you think the government is that we don't know about? Oh, I mean, I think pretty much everything we hear and and I'm not even being, like, a conspiracy theorist. I've just always assumed this both from what I've heard and what I've seen and what I've guessed. I assume nothing that we read in the news about the government is actually true, and that everything is, like, layers and layers deeper. And and by the way, I'm assuming this about people who are really stupid in general. Like, I think people who are the government are not the brightest people. So I used to agree with that until I met this girl in who worked as a civil servant. She didn't say she worked in government. And she was actually really smart, and I was like, why would you ever work in government if you're smart? And she was like, I just really care, and I do think there's a lot of stuff that does happen that people don't see. And I was like, yeah. Maybe not not all of them are dumb. No. Well, like, here's an example. Like and I can neither confirm nor deny anything. But, like, when, a few years ago, the US government historically would pay off, like, the Afghanistan warlords to stay on our side. And that that could be 100 of 1,000,000 of dollars in cash, and then so they would lift off in 747. It's just filled with $100 bills and until the rise of crypto. Like, everyone's always worried about, oh, is the US gonna ban crypto? Of course not. They're the biggest users of crypto. That's how they pay off everyone all around the world. That's how we got a $100,000,000 to Ukraine this week is through crypto. And a lot of that happens also through the dark web. I would be president just to find out that stuff. Yeah. And you would think, like, why hasn't any president, like, told us, hey. This is what happens. Like like, Trump was was you know, he he's so anti government. Why doesn't he just, like, tell everybody what's going on? Like, he knows that there's aliens. 100%. Yeah. He knows. And or or he he knows that there's, like, visitors from the future who who give advice to everybody, and I don't know. He knows everything. So He does know a lot of the secrets. Like, I could see Obama, Clinton. Yeah. I don't wanna tell anybody. They're kind of in the crew. But, you know, Trump hates everyone, so he should just, just out of sheer hate, just share everything. Would you have rather had lunch with Obama or Trump? I think I think definitely Trump because Trump is gonna just say s**t and look. You do you know, I do a podcast. Right? So I talk to, like, well known famous people all the time. The more famous they are, the less they can say. So if you have on, like, the the you know, Elon Musk is almost an exception. But let's say you have on, like, Richard Branson or Jeff Bezos or Michael Dell, whoever. They can only say so much because they've got shareholders. They've got their reputations. They've got lawsuits all the time. Got the government all over them. So they can't really like like, Eric Schmidt, he's been on the podcast a bunch of times. He's not gonna tell me, oh, yeah. We talk to the CIA every day and give them everything they want. He's not gonna tell me that. And I've even asked. And he's like, oh, no. Occasionally, we get requests, and then we decide what to do with them. You know, they have their way of speaking, which doesn't say anything. And Eric's a good guy. It's just that they can't say anything. So but, like, so Obama's like that. But Trump, I have a feeling he'll just say whatever. Like, if you ask him the questions directly, he'll he'll just tell you. I feel you. How's James Altucher? It's good to see you, man. I know we we came in hot. It's been a while. And, I always read your stuff, and it's always it's always very inspiring. Like, you have you are like an idea machine. You come up with ideas that are life changing constantly. I mean, I can't even tell you how many times I both used and told people the very first idea you told me 8 years ago, which is go to a Starbucks and ask for a 10% off. Oh, the coffee challenge. Yes. I've used that. And by the way, that works really well on if you're on a date as well, I might add. Like, telling them this challenge and then kind of helping your date through the process of doing the challenge. Because it's very scary at first, but then when you realize, oh, you can get 10% off at at least half the places you go to, it gets very exciting. I'm working on a book, and that's, like, one of the main things in the book is this coffee challenge part where you you go to this place, you ask for 10% off, and you kinda learn about yourself. Yeah. You learn about yourself. You refine your ability to ask for things. You realize your comfort zone was too close. And then, actually, if you expand it out further, a lot of a lot of life opens up to you. This is a very direct way of expanding that comfort zone. And the wider the comfort zone is, the more things can fit in it. So including 10% discounts and including knowledge of yourself and and better sales techniques and maybe better dates, whatever. 100%. What else is in the book? What have you been working on? It's been interesting, man. But writing a book is hard writing a book is easy. Writing a great book is hard. Tell me about it. I've I've written now 25 books, and I would say Oh. I would say 2 of them are good. Maybe 3. Oh, really? Yeah. Maybe 4 out of 25. Not counting ones I wrote and didn't publish. Damn, dude. That's a lot. Probably, like, 35. That's a lot of books, man. It's a lot of work. Yeah. Things in the book, the now, not how habit. Just like you know, I think a lot of these things in business, we just start negotiating with ourselves. Like, you know, I wanna do the no. Now. Like, instead of just, like, how do we do it? It's just like, what can you do right now? So that's something we talk about. We talk about a thing called the number. And the number, a lot of people are like, I wanna be a millionaire. I wanna it's like, well, what's your actual number? And most people's numbers, they just need to figure out their number. And so for me, the numbers are only, like, 3 sections. It's like how much to live, like, how much for savings, and then how much for for, like, entertainment entertainment. So living is your housing, savings, entertainment. And so my number for, like, pretty much 10 years was $3,000. And then I finally did that. I quit my job, and I was like, oh, this is cool. And so we we talk about helping people figure out their number. A lot of it is the power of asking, so mastering the fear of asking. So we we kinda figure some of them we're still dialing in. So coffee challenge is 1. The dollar challenge is a great one. What's the dollar challenge? Get your first dollar. Just get a dollar right now. So use PayPal. Use Venmo. Get it in cash. Just ask anyone because it's it's it's insane. Idea. I'm gonna do this. I'm gonna do the dollar. And and a lot of times with the dollar, it's just realizing that you're worth it. You're like, oh, There's something happening with that. Like, I can do a business. I can have a side hustle. I can put myself out there content. And it's a dollar. It's stupid. All your friends will give you a dollar. What else we got in the book so far? We have I'm we're still working on the branding of this, but there's one thing called, like, the 3 second rule. So everyone knows that about dating. Like, in dating, we all know it. Right? It's like, if you see someone you like, you have 3 seconds to kinda go talk to them. And I I'm gonna I've been doing that, but I do it for business. Right? So what is the thing that we're like, hey. I should go ask my boss for a raise, or I should go ask this person for a discount, or I should go not should, but I I wanna go do that. And then how do you not give yourself the chance to be afraid? And so I do think it's around it's about 3 seconds, but it's noticing negotiation, breathing through it, going into it, and then being proud of yourself. You know, it's that's really interesting that I mean, it's probably even you know you know, there's this whole idea that the body knows what you're gonna do before you even think of doing it. Like like, if I'm gonna move my arm to pick up a cup of coffee, the body already knows that I'm about to think that thought and is ready to move the arm. And it's weird how that works that that that there's some deeper thing than thoughts that are compelling our mo our our emotions and our actions. And so the 3 second rule is probably that's probably the upper limit of where the fear starts to kick in. Yeah. It's like how do you and then I think being aware of it, you're like, alright. Well, I got 3 seconds to do something about it. And just kinda you know, we're calling them sparks. So, like, how do you just make the spark happen? Like, just get it going. And a lot of times, one of the themes I'm playing with is just, like, how do you are you a sideliner or are you a player? Right? And a sideliner is someone who listens to all the things. It's like they're, like, observing all the things. They're consuming all the things, and the player's in the game. And so with business, with content creation, like me and you are doing and a lot of people are doing, it's you know, you have to be in the ocean to catch a wave. So if you want something in life, specifically around the business stuff, like, go play, go start, get the sparks. And then from there, like, things will happen. It leads to other stuff. But you can't do that sitting on the sideline. You know, it's so important, like, in in business, for instance. Like, I I was just having this conversation with someone. Let's say you wanna sell a company and and get rich. It doesn't really matter what company you have. The company is just an excuse for someone else to give you a lot of money. Usually, they wanna give you a lot of money for reasons that have nothing to do with your company. Like, they want you to work at their company so they could hang out with you. Or they wanna say to their boss or their shareholders, we're buying companies that do x, y, and z. And it doesn't matter what your your company could be a laundromat, but you could say it also does these x, y, and z. And it's a it's a press release. Everyone will believe it. But in order to get sold, you do have to have a company that does something. People can't just give you a lot of money with nothing. So so starting a company and making it semi decent is, you know, catching a wave, or you have to dive into the ocean of entrepreneurship to do that. But the reasons why people buy a company are never the reasons people think, oh, they're buying my company because the company is so great. No. You most acquisitions don't work out. Yeah. But if you're not in the ocean, you can't get bought. Well, I think with all this stuff, with life, it should be fun. And so it's like, well, what's fun? What do I really want in my life? What's the number I need for that? What are some of the behaviors and mindsets? Then, you know, some of the tactics to if it's a business that you know, honestly, I was telling somebody yesterday. I was like, dude, it's so much better to be an employee these days. Like, you make a half a mil with your equity and options or let's just say 300. You don't have to live in, like, a high priced area nowadays, and you're gonna, like you know, that lot less responsibility. You check out at 5 or 6. Yeah. Entrepreneurship kind of sucks. So all this is related to I saw this newsletter you wrote a couple months ago, getting rich for dummies, something like that. Let me let me bring it up. Yeah. And I thought it was fun. And then you have a post that it links to how to become a millionaire and all these myths related to it. And you say the secret to getting rich is there are no secrets. It's it's pretty and and by the way, you you kind of say something that's a little funny, but it's actually the probably the easiest way, which is to marry rich. I think marrying I I've said that as a joke so many times, but it's like it's pretty, it's pretty accurate. Like, go find someone rich. Go to Silicon Valley, guy or girl or New York. Pick someone out. Give it 2 years. Cut it off. Call it a day. People are working too hard. I've also well, can I do the more one this this never goes out right, but and it's mostly a joke? But, like, there's a lot of rich people that are on social media talk how rich they are. I was like, couldn't you just find out where they live? That's probably not safe. I don't want to. Well well, just just if you go out and, like, I if you live in a place like New York City or Silicon Valley, you're gonna meet someone eventually who you know, if if you're on these dating apps or whatever. A A 100 well, I think that, you know, I'm joking about the the divorce one. I don't I hope people don't do that or rob. That's f**king crazy. But I think what's actually more interesting that I I've thought about, especially now and back then, is that, like, it's your net worth is the average of the net worth of the people you hang out with. And so, you know, people talk about your network. It's like, if you have a poor network, it doesn't really help you. And so I have been mindful. It's not that I go out there and ask people, like, how rich you are at their jobs and things like that, but it's like, Who do I if I need money, if I'm starting business, if I'm on the street, like, who is in my network that I actually can count on? And then if I don't have that, how much am I cure you know, start I think if you're in your twenties, really, like, how much are you curating that? Like, if you really needed money, if you call me up, I'd give you 10 k. No problem. 100 k would be a little weird. But that's also I've known you now. Like, we've known each other 5 years. You've really been nice to me with ping pong. And and so I I think for everyone out there, if you're you know, like, a lot of business is really, like, who do you know that also can support you in that? And that that's definitely been helpful for me in my career. Yeah. No. That's that's really important. And, you know, there there's there's the the the you're there's that cliche that you're the average of the 5 people you hang out with, but it's strip very true about net worth. Like, if you're around a bunch of losers who fail at every business activity they try and by the way, that's not what makes them a loser. There's other things. But you're not gonna succeed suddenly, when you do a deal with them, it's not gonna be like, this is the first deal they've ever done. That's great. Like, they're gonna lose at that deal too. So it's very important to be around good good people who who who get things accomplished. We we interviewed a guy I interviewed this guy 2 weeks ago, and all the companies he had had layoffs. And I was like, bro, you are bad luck. At this point, it's you. Like, I just I can't bring you on AppSumo. I can't take that risk. See. And and how did he respond to that? I didn't tell it to him. I was do we do this thing, cornerstone interviews, where after he's gone through all the different teams, like, there's a final interview with either me or Alona, who's our, number 2. And it's just like double checking, and I double checked it, and I didn't like it. And it's just such such, you know, how do we keep how do we improve our calibration of our recruiting process? Do you ever say no to someone that the rest of your company liked? Actually, yeah. And I thought about it today because they made the right choice that that they they did hire her. And then, you know, it's it's challenging a leader because you do wanna empower people, and then you wanna let them fail so they learn from their mistakes. But I will say within our company, I it's shocking how much people disagree with me, and I and I enjoy that. I think one of my talents or abilities, is that I at least I'm mostly open to feedback, and I ask for it. So even today, I had 2 meetings that were kinda hard, and I was like, I don't think I'm doing a good job being a leader with you. Like, where do you want me to improve? Like, where can I just one of the guys said that I'm not trusting him to actually make the decision? Like, I I make him bring the decision to the team, and I make him get input from everybody in the team versus, like, hey. Just go own it. You don't need me to approve it. And so that was a little bit challenging. And then, the second one was yeah. I'm I'm kinda micromanaging too much, and so I'm not actually delegating some of the responsibilities out. So I was the the second person today. Why don't you delegate more? I think I haven't done a good job. I I don't think I've clarified where we're going and and, like you know, I think a CEO kinda does 3 things. It's like, you set the destination, you set the boundaries, and you pick the players. And I don't think I really set the destination well, and so I'm I'm dialing that in so that then they know the rules of behavior that then they can do whatever the f**k they want within it. But, otherwise, it's kinda like it's like getting a speeding ticket, and you never saw the sign. And, like, that's frustrating, and I think there's there's definitely some of that experience at the company. So now what's going on with you and parties? Why are you going to all these parties where you're you're mouthing off too much? It's not mouthing off too much. I went to 2 it's South by Southwest in Austin, so it's kind of a s**t show out here. Friday night, I went to a dinner for with the oh, dude. This guy, you should chat with this kid, man. He's so impressive. His name is Reid. I don't even know his last name. He works he runs a thing called Knight Media. So he is the agent of all the most popular YouTubers. So k n I g h t or No. N I g h t Media. What's his name? I don't know. Damn. Sorry. Read read Night Media. So he hosted a dinner with, like, you know, popular YouTubers. Reducer. Reducer. Yeah, dude. He is he's a stud, and he's just, like, a good dude. He's, like, super on it, and he's definitely the the future, like, Michael Ovitz of of sorts. So I went to this dinner, and it was just, like, a lot of interesting people. And I'm I don't know. I'm just like my energy can be a lot. It was like, I I do ask a lot of questions. I think I'm a relatively good listener, but I think I do my best to add to a conversation. But then I I wondered afterwards. For some reason, I guess, that that week and, and then a dinner 2 nights ago. And I did text, and I asked for feedback. And they're like, no. You were great. I was like, okay. Let's keep doing it. Why do you think you worry so much how you're doing? I don't know. Well, I do know. I wanna get invited back. I care about the people that were there. I'm curious what it's like to feel me, and I'm not trying to make people feel uncomfortable or not. You know, maybe some self worth stuff. Like, I want I want them to I I think I'm adding and enjoyable to be around and just kinda double checking it. You ever there's just a lot of people I I mean, I'm like, ugh. I I mean, I guess I wonder that a lot, but it's usually because I feel down on myself when I'm when I'm doing that. Yeah. I I think I think that. No. I felt good at both of those events. I had a little bit to drink, not tremendously, so I'm also wondering, like, am I behaving inappropriate with that? And then my my friend was like, no. You're good. I was like, okay. Awesome. If you were starting out from scratch right now, you're 22 years old. You're just you're like, I wanna start a company and make a lot of money. What would you do right now? And I know that's kind of like a cliche question. Yeah. No. It's all good. It's all good. It's a fun I think it's a fun experiment. Yeah. I I think about this all the time, like what I would do right now. I think it's different. So what do I do right now if I was 40 year old Noah that went broke, or I'm 20 year old Noah, and I'm just starting out again? Right? Yeah. 20 year old Noah and just starting out. First off, I I I always do very well with specific goal setting. So I would pick more of a target. Like, hey. I wanna have a $1,000,000 by x date. And and it makes it a little bit more quantifiable so you see if you have something to work back from. Otherwise, it's just like, you wanna make money. It's like, how much? You know, we talked about it in the book. What's your number? Because it's probably less than people think. But let's just say they're like, no. I wanna be stupid rich. I think there's a few components the way that I like to approach these problems. So, one, I keep my cost of living extremely low, like, insanely low. And I've I was talking about this earlier. Like, I slept on couches for a year. Like, I was making 6 figures at mint.com, director of marketing. I slept on people's couches for free for a year just because I was like, it's cheaper. It was just so it was dumb, but I was like, yo. So if you keep your cost of living low, you don't have to work for anyone. So what what you're really saying is you you value your freedom. Your your freedom has a higher price than, let's say, an expensive apartment. Well, if you think about a job, right, well, I'm trying to well, I'm trying to set up the foundation to get super rich. So if you have to have a job because you have a nice apartment or a car or expensive lifestyle or that stuff, then you're not able to actually do the things that are a little riskier to potentially make you higher upside. It just makes it harder because you don't have that time because you're like, well, I gotta cover these bills. If you don't really have bills, you can do what the f**k you want. Right. So and and by the way, this is a truism for business and investing. If you can mitigate your risks, you have a lot more opportunities to succeed. Yeah. So first off, I call it cool, cost of living low. So just keep it cool. Right? Number 1. And, I mean, I'm dude, I'm talking family plan on your Netflix. Don't even use Netflix. Go use, like, Amazon Prime for free Amazon I use I still do. I'm a 40 year old, multimillionaire. I go to the library. Like, I still check out my books in the library. And people are like, oh, you should support authors. I'm like, I know. But I love the library, plus I pay taxes. So, anyways, I'm just saying, like, you could share do a family plan for your cell phone. Like, get your cost down low. Number 2, get guaranteed income. A lot of people are like, I'm like, go drive for Uber. They're always hiring. Go do DoorDash. Go do Uber Eats. And I think why that's good is that it gives you money so you have flexibility. You have a little bit of freedom. It gets momentum. A lot of people I I think it just gives you that oxygen where, like, okay. I'm at least covered. And I'm talking dead broke. I'm like, I would guarantee my income. Right? Because a lot of things are not guaranteed. So number 1, do whatever's guaranteed in making money. Number, I'm gonna keep going through other thing like, the exact things I do. I would then start putting out consistent content. Right? Right? Because that's not gonna pay the bills right away, but that, for me, has helped me do really well financially. Or meeting people like yourself or meeting and meeting other well known people helps improve my about it. We we all like, I could think of, like, a whole community of people like you and me where we all basically met because we reach out of our house with content. Yeah. And we've been consistent about it. Yeah. It's really fun. I love it. Like, I I don't make a lot of money on the content directly, but the meeting you, meeting all these interesting people. Like, I interviewed the the squash player, number 1 squash player in the world last week. I'm like, dude, it was excellent. And I've been doing this 20 years. It's an interesting point because you even say in that post, do things you love, But it's not the things you love that will necessarily make you money, but it's kind of like the ancillary benefits of doing the things you love that lead to you making money. I mean, I will tell you. I met Tim Ferris before his book came out in 2007. That relationship has been helpful. Right? Like, Tim has gone on to be a superstar. He has helped promote a lot of AppSumo. He's helped put me on the map. Meeting You is helping put me on the map. And that's, you know, helping each other. We're not gonna we can get to that in a second, but it, like, put yourself out there to be a magnet. And and whatever medium makes you feel comfortable. It could be poetry. It could be video. It could be podcast. It could be writing. Like, you know, I love I found you through your writing online. So but you have to point some of these things are if you think about it, they're different time frames of returns just like investing. Right? So your your Uber Eats, like, you know, it's guaranteed money. It's not high return, but it's guaranteed. Then you have this long investment of your content, your brand, your, audience. And then I'd say 3rd, then I would start exploring business ideas that are kinda like alright. And and let me just go through an example. Last week, I wanted to show people how to start a business. So easy way to there's basically a few easy ways to start a business. Number 1 is think about literally everything in your day that's a problem. So 2 problems that I'm having in my life, I'm having a lot of problems. But 2, were my ergonomic setup of this desk. Like, this desk I'm on. Like, my chair is like I don't know if it's back too far. I don't know if my arms are high. My I'm getting tired during the day. And, like, when I worked at Intel, they actually had someone come in, and they're like, well, your desk is too low. Your arms are not in enough. Your monitor needs to be moved up. And I was like, oh, that's cool. So that was one problem too. Like, when you when you made those chairs? Well, I I'll I started the business, so I can tell you about that in just a second. So think about a bunch of business ideas, problems you have, or look at your credit card statement and see where you're spending money or where you're not spending money and be like or where you wanna save money. Sorry. Where am I spending money? Am I spending a lot of money at the gym? Am I spending money on food? Is there any money I wanna is there a business there, or is there a way I could save money? And lastly, you can always look at, like, what you're buying. So go to your Amazon history page, and you can see, hey. I'm spending a lot of money on, like like, I just found a a product, guchanda berries. It's supposed to help you go to sleep by Goli. I don't f**king know. I I'd try it out. So, anyways, then combine those ideas. You can go look at it's on Tim Ferris. It's also what my book's gonna be about, but you kinda wanna do a little bit of research to say, like, how big is this opportunity, and is it gonna be growing or declining ultimately? And because, you know, for me, I've been very I think one of the best things I've done in my career is pick big industries. Like, I picked social networking Facebook. I put personal finance with Mint. I did social games, which got big. I did payments, Stripe. These got big. I did e daily deals. Groupon did big. I did SaaS with sumo.com. That got big. And now AppSumo has evolved to be kind of an ecommerce store, which has done really well. And so I it's not that I'm not that great. I think I'm above average in terms of intellect and and, like, excellent in aggressiveness, but I just pick really good industries. I pick really excellent industries, and I've just been in the right place. What about what about, like like, let's say you're 20 years old. Like, the biggest industry right now is seems to be crypto, and I'm only saying that because 100 of 1,000,000,000 of dollars haven't been invested in VC funds that have not yet been spent, that are focused on crypto. There's 3 areas that I'm particularly if I was starting again today, there's 3 areas that I think are actually crypto, so crypto web 3, or crypto NFTs, content creation, and software. There's a lot of ways to make a lot of money doing those things over the next decade, I would guess if not longer. I think YouTube is seriously and then I think YouTube is literally probably one of the best job creators in the world. It's free hosting. You don't pay anything. It's free advertising money. You don't have to even go get an advertiser, and they bring you the audience. You don't have to go and find the audience. They have them there for you. I'm like, it's literally the dumbest business that everyone should be doing if they wanna start a business. So it is pick your business ideas. I would try to find, and we've talked about in the article, pick an industry that's growing and pick something you're interested in. Like, I did a lot of issues I didn't like doing, and then finally AppSumo, after 10 years, was like, I love software. I love deals. I love marketing. Let's put it all together and call it a day. And then the last thing I would say on the 20 year old piece so, yeah, starting a business. So we can go deeper in that business I started last week. And then the last component of this, the last component is more of, like, how do you build up your your network? Right? And so in my twenties, I'll just tell you exactly what I did. I did a few things very specifically. Like, one, I I put myself out there through content. So I was logging okay dork.com since 2000. Secondly, I hosted events. So I brought together, like, the founder of Firefox, the founder of Meebo, the founder of, I don't know, PayPal, Hot or Not, Suicide Girls. Like, I put on a lot of events. I didn't have a network. Zero network. There wasn't an email list. There wasn't Twitter. There was not Facebook. There was not Craigslist. It was, like, manually emailing people and being like, do you know any people that wanna come to this event? Do you know any people that wanna come to this conference? And the conferences and events hosting, like, ping pong tournaments, dodgeball tournaments with VCs. Like, that is what's given me the ability to very easily connect with anyone I want within that sphere of tech. But it also built up a network where as I was getting businesses going, like, today, I needed some tax information. So this guy, Vivek Sodra, recommended someone. Or, like, Ankar Nagpal, I met him through doing Oh, he's a teachable guy. Yeah. Teachable. I knew him because I was building games in Silicon Valley, and I ended up having Naval Ravikant invest in my company. And he was just, like, the some kid who went to Berkeley with me. That's funny. Did you did you I invested a little on Teachable. Did you invest in Teachable? Did invest in Teachable. He did dude, it was a good 6 x return. Not too bad. Yeah. Yeah. I invested as well now because it was through a VC fund. But Yeah. He was well, I think my point that I'm trying to make is that I do think geographical matters. Being I was just in SF. That made a big difference. I did put myself out there. I did facilitate, events that had a lot of serendipity. Like, a lot of my like, think about this. I created a conference called Community Next. Didn't have an audience. I just cold emailed a bunch of people, and I've put this article on okay dork about how I made, like, 100 of thousands doing this. But what's crazy is that conference connected me to Andrew Warner, who's a mutual friend. Yeah. Andrew Warner connected me to Chad Boyda, who was my first customer at one of my companies, who is now my one of my best friends, business partner, and and CTO at AppSumo dot com. And so those are the different steps and things I would consider in my twenties where a lot of the relationships, like Ramit Sethi, Chad Boyda, like, all these other, Tim, a lot of these other people, at the time, they were not, like, a big deal. And the who big deal is all relative. Maybe they don't think they're a big deal. I don't know. But in terms of notoriety but they were interesting, and I think that's something I still literally do to this day, which is who is doing something. And then I would say a part of the networking is who's doing interesting things that you should be connecting with. Not the major stars because those are already, like if you're trying to get a hold of me and you, like, we're, you know, whatever, and it depends on who you're how you measure. It's a little hard to get a hold of us. But some of the stars You are very hard to schedule. I took a couple of schedules and reschedules, but It's getting well, running absolutely running a company is hard, dude. I I have a lot of respect for anyone running any company with more with, like, more than a few people. Like, it is tough. I thought it was a lot easier because Eamon used to run it, the former CEO. I was like, yeah, man. You don't do anything all day, and you make all this money. No, dude. It's anyhoo. So what I'm what I'm seeing here, though, is that I am still active. Like, there's this guy Chris h on Twitter or this guy Gross Student on Twitter, or this guy Stans Pham. He's a fisherman on YouTube. I am looking for stars, and not stars in the sense that they're, like, super famous or super popular, but just people that are doing something that I find interesting, and I'm I enjoy connecting with that. And so I would I would consider that as well, how you're doing it. So, like, I met Ramit through work. I asked a friend. I said, there's this one girl at work I thought was really smart. I said, who's the smartest person you know in the Bay Area? She's like, oh, I should meet this Ramit guy. And that's led to a friendship over 20 years now. Yeah. Yeah. Ramit, I met him. He does a similar approach as you. Like, I met him, I think, in 2011 or 2012. He reached out to me because of my writing, and he he gave me the advice. You should start an email list. So that's advice. I hope to heart, and and that has created a lot of, money for me. Email is where it's at. I mean, email has definitely made me rich. It's definitely made AppSumo successful. Yeah. I mean, if you think about it, all the things that have tried to essentially replace email from, you know, SMS to Twitter to Facebook post, whatever, email is still the strongest the strongest social network. I know. It's just kinda funny to think, when I grow up, I'm gonna help I'm gonna make money through email marketing or email list. No. I mean, it's it's interesting. I actually find myself checking my email less often as I've gotten older, which is a whole separate thing. We can talk about this. Yeah. I I kinda I kind of don't check anything during the day. And people if if you don't respond to people, like, within an hour, they are you mad at me? Like, what's going on? But sometimes I won't check stuff till the next day even, so so life's a lot easier that way. Amen. Dude, I would well, I'll tell you a few other secrets of being rich, I would say. I don't there's no secret. Let's just start with that. But I think 2 other habits or character traits that I admired and I think is what I've noticed from successful are rich people. And I don't like seeing successful because that's all relative, but rich people, one is follow-up. Like, people like, you said, hey. People emailed me, and I didn't respond. Like, most people don't follow-up. Like, I've been trying to get to do I wanted to interview this guy named Mattress Mac. You heard of Mattress Mac? No. Dude, Mattress Mac is the best. This is like he's like I gotta write it down. Oh, dude. Mattress Mac is a legend. He he runs a mattress store. How many mattress stores do you know stay around? And his his store has been around 40 years. He bets, like, $10,000,000 on the Super Bowl this year. He lost all of it. Oh my god. He he's generated that much money from selling mattresses? Yeah. Well, that well, what he does is he says, I'm gonna do a $10,000,000 thing. I'm gonna bet $10,000,000 on the Super Bowl. If I win, then every mattress you get is free. Now whatever you bought during the Super Bowl is free, but he lost it, but he I think he broke even or close to it, from the bet. That's so funny. Anybody who buy the mattress gets it free if he wins the money. And so but point being the point I was making here is that I spent I called his store every day for 2 weeks, multiple times a day, to finally get an interview with him. And so what I've observed is a lot of people it's it's not true to just give myself props. I don't it's not about that. I'm just saying, like, if you want like, find what you want and then go you have to follow-up on it. And then the second thing I would say you know, one of my favorite quotes is persistence beats resistance. And so, yeah, I would have f**king persisted on that. And I think with AppSumo, like, I think the one reason we've done well is we just haven't quit. Yeah. You've guys how when did you you've been doing AppSumo for as long as I've known you, I think. 2010, man. It's been a it's been a it's been an amazing journey. You know, I talked about business, like, did you ever think we'd do this this long? He's like, hell no. But I'm lucky that it's still in desire. I'm lucky there's software out there that we can promote. And, you know, I it's also coming back to what, you know, what excites you. And I didn't start up soon to be a millionaire. I always wanted to be rich, but but I was like I just started AppSumo because I was like, can I just promote cool stuff? And that's what I even today, I love my the newsletter or YouTube or AppSumo. It's like, I'm just here to promote people. I mean, I I mean, I've used AppSumo stuff. Like, KingSumo is a lifesaver for Oh, yeah. Anybody into building an email list. Like, would you use King let's say you you're starting a new platform where you were creating content. Would you use KingSumo to build up a platform, like, let's say, a new Twitter or whatever? Let's say you were building, like, a social network of some sort. You had some twist on the traditional social network. What would you do? Jay mentioned you're building something. You showed it to me. It looks awesome. I actually sent it to the team. Yeah. No. It's fun. Well, I was just like, yo. This is great. I love where you're going with it. I think what you're doing is part of the future. Well and, also, wait till you see. Next week, we're adding AI to it. So Yep. And this this AI is brilliant. It comes up with better ideas than you would think. It came up with we asked it the other day, come up with 10 ideas to topple Russia. It was actually very creative how to do it. How would I grow a social network? So, I I mean, I think if you look at historically in social networks, like, when I worked at Facebook and so forth, it's generally just a very narrow audience. Right? So it you know? Yeah. I don't know if yours is in writing. It's what it seems like. But But I would just try to be very specific about, like, who are the individual people that I wanna target. And then I I think the biggest challenge is how do you make it a habit that they're excited to come back each day to check it? So what's missing in in social networks is really just how do you optimize your retention percentage. So I think if you can just focus on when someone comes to my site, I know they come back once a week. So, you know, one, you know, weekly active user. So I would probably try to figure out what can I do to get my retention higher, and then the marketing and getting people to it, is pretty much trivial because, like, you know, I know when they when they come, they're gonna stick? Yeah. No. It's it's interesting because I built one social network before that I started this company, Stockpicker, in 2,000 Oh, yeah. 6, 2007. It was, like, kind of a social network for investors. And a lot of it was about not how much content they create, but how much content is on the site that they consume. Because you you you want people to basically use your site in when they're sitting in the bathroom. And they're not gonna create content in the bathroom probably, but they're gonna they're gonna read. Yeah. I mean, I think it's interesting consume content. Like, I think communities I think the newest marketing channel is community. Right? And then people are talking about it, but what what really is happening is how do you create your your business or your play your company as a destination that people are actively thinking about? Because right now, you need permission from email or permission from Twitter or permission from Facebook or IG or WhatsApp to actually communicate with the the audience that you want. And even Gmail, you need Gmail's blessing to talk to your audience. So how do you make it so you have a more direct relationship? How how's your chess playing doing? Dude, I kind of man, I I go through these weird phases, which I think is pretty human like, where I go hardcore into some activity for about 18 months, and then I just, like, like, I just what happened, I was I was at my family we were having a family holiday about 2 years ago or a year ago, and I didn't hang out with my family because I was playing chess the whole time. Yeah. And I just like I don't know. Then after that, I was like, this is too much right now, and I haven't really looked at a board in a year. And then I I think to be clear, I just wanna be clear about it. And this is a Jewish thing for sure, is, like, how do you not guilt yourself about this stuff? And I think with some things, we should guilt guilt ourself, but something that's like and the first time I stopped playing chess, I had a lot of guilt. And then this time, it's like, no. You always quit. You're a quitter. Why couldn't you do it? And this time, I'm like, dude, do you wanna play chess? No, man. That's okay. Let's you're you're enjoying other activities. Yeah. No. I think I think that I mean, look. You're talking to someone who's played chess. And then for 6 years before that, I was I was in the past 6 years, I've been doing nothing but stand up comedy almost every night. And you can't justify that if your goal is, for instance, to make a company that's gonna change the world because I'm just you go till midnight going on stage in front of 12 drunk people making jokes. So you're not really doing anything functional to society. But I always try to ascribe deeper meaning to it. So for instance, let's say now I haven't played in I've only just started playing in tournaments again after a 25 year break, and I'm sort of saying there's a higher meaning to it, which is that I'm I'm proving that you can improve as a 50 50 year old or over 50 year old. You people say, oh, adults can't improve. It's only the kids now. And I am doing a serious effort to prove everybody wrong that it's not you're never too old for the things you love doing. So I I give greater meaning to it, which is how I justify doing it. I like that. Can I ask And I have to make sure it's not bulls**t? Like, I have to make sure I'm not just rationalizing. That's what I talk about in therapy. It's like you're lying to yourself, Noah. I'm like, shut up, man. Just let me lie to myself. Let me, James, can I just turned 40? What it what do you recommend to have a to enjoy your forties or to live a to live a great forties? I think you have to reduce workload. Really? Yeah. You have to find more things that you love doing, and you have to make sure you never hang out with anybody that's not good for you. Like, that you have to eliminate all of that, and you have to have time to rest. But by the way, the forties is gonna be maybe the most creative decade of your life. Like, you say you like making content. You should amp up the content and be super honest about it because you don't owe anybody anything anymore. You're not in your twenties where you're trying to prove yourself. You should amp up everything you're worried about every day. You should you should write about the party you went to last night, what conversation you had that you feel awkward about. Call up the person on YouTube and say, you're on YouTube now. Did I make you feel awkward when I said this? Just really go for it on the content side and and strip take off all the Band Aids. And that was for me my entire forties. Was it good? And it changed my life doing that. Are are you are you single? Dating? Married again? No. I'm married. I'm married. How's that going? It's going good. My wife's right over there. It's always hard to talk about it when they're right there. Yeah. We're gonna we're gonna be heading to Austin sometime in the next, month or 2. We'll we'll stop by. We'll play ping pong and chess or whatever. God. I'd love also, I'd love to host you. I have a a it's called Tynan's crypto casita in my backyard. My buddy Tynan lives back there. What what is it? What's the I have a casita in my in my backyard, but I I call it Tynan's crypto casita. He's a he he put he made a plaque, and I was like, well, you made a plaque. It's yours. Excellent. Well, if if he's not there, we'll stay there. Dude, you're no. No. Seriously. You're more I'd love for you guys to be hosted here. Excellent. Well, Noah, head to therapy. Thanks so much for coming on the podcast. You're always a welcome guest anytime. If you ever have anything you wanna say to anybody, say it here on this podcast. And, sharpen up your chest a little bit before I head to Austin, and, we'll have a fun time. And I'll sharpen up my ping pong. I love you, man. My my daughter's playing in, the the do you know what the Maccabee games are? They're like the Jewish Olympics in Italy, And she's playing in for the US women's ping pong team. That's dope. Yeah. Till we meet again. Have a happy Purim. Yeah. You too. Eat a lot of hamantaschen. Good seeing you, man. See you later, Noah. Thanks.
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