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

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.

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

I feel like I could rule the world. I know I could be what I want to.

I put my all in it like no days off.

On the road, let's travel. 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, uh, on the internet. One of my, uh, inspirations. You run this company called, uh, AppSumo that does like $80 million in revenue. Now you're a YouTuber. You have what, 1 point 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.

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

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

Should've asked me a while back.

All right. But, uh, 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.

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

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

That's true. I did say that.

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, uh, 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 the thing, which at the time, 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, uh, basically a sewing needle. Do you guys know what stick and poke is? Do you know what a stick and poke is, Sean?

Sounds like a jail cell tattoo.

Social media.

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

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.

Dude, some people, some people 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.

Dude, this is such an immigrant mentality. And this is why I love, or children of immigrants. I know you're, you've got immigrants, uh, 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 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 I ordered a pizza and you brought me like chicken Parmesan, I'd be like, ah, 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, uh, it totally changed my perspective on just being like ruthless about asking for things. And it, and it 100% worked.

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.

Yeah, but did he tattoo that on his ass?

No. 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?

On, uh, Craigslist, right? They, they, they, they had like a designer's conference was in town.

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, 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 want to just make profits now as opposed to, you know, waiting 12 years to sell business. And 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?

Uh, 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, 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% compounder or whatever. Uh, 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 God, can I play a game with a little bit higher odds of success? Because guess what? I don't actually need $3 trillion to be happy. Um, you know, I'd actually just like to be financially free 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. Uh, maybe buying companies that already work. And making them work better. And also, uh, 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.

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

Yeah, I think if you put— if I put 100, uh, of my friends from Silicon Valley in a room and I said, uh, you know, and what ended up happening is that let's say 5 to 7 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 5 to 7 of them did it. I don't think it's because those 5 to 7 were smarter or more talented or harder working than the other 100. Um, 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. Um, 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, a, a higher skill at picking. Um, 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 that where the bigger opportunity was. So I think that's one. Um, and the second is, you know, the, the, there are, you know, still like 12, you know, plinko bounces of the, of the puck as they go, right? Like we're talking to the Airbnb guy. My biggest takeaway was this company should have died like 7 times. And I actually give them credit 'cause 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 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.

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 light bulb 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?

I mean, at least 15, 20 projects that I've tried that did not work, right? Some are a day project and some were 2 years projects or 3 years.

Yeah. I mean, I've done many, many, many things and, uh, like 3 have taken off. This podcast being one of them. Yeah. So like, 30, 10% have worked.

I think we think that the people are smarter though, Sean. We're like, oh, these people must know something I don't know. And like, I, 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 we, that takes some time to recognize though. And then you, it does, maybe they have more experience, which is stuff we can learn over time.

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 were kind of in this world with Tim Ferriss and Ramit, 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 AppSumo? And then you find out that they're just quietly crushing it. Uh, wherever you are, you know, I don't know what you did in year one, but it's probably 10 years old. You're at $80 million in revenue. 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 old is it?

So it's 14 years, almost 14 years old. It's going through puberty.

So we've got some growing pains here, 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. I, uh, like one example, and I have no idea if this is true, is like, you know, you guys know hey.com and Superhuman, the email software companies?

Yeah, they do.

I think there's a bunch of companies that like they get a lot of hype and then they just get quiet for 5, 10, however long years, and they just are quietly killing it and building the business.

I'll give you an example of one, Card. Oh yeah. We talked about it. About 7 to 10 years ago, it was really popular to create like your, your personal website, right? You're about.me. And then there was like Wix and Weebly. And those are like hot YC startups that were, you know, that were doing the thing. Squarespace was like on every podcast advertising everywhere. Um, and then Carrd came out and it was just simple single page websites. I still use Carrd today. I love this, love this app for what? Anytime I need to make a site. It is for me still the fastest way to make a website. Like, I think Webflow is more popular, probably. Kard's easier to use.

It's really hard though.

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 Kard 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, then they kind of disappeared. Nobody really talking about them 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? And he goes, yeah, I know. He goes, actually, a really random thing happened. He's like, every like political movement started using cards. 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, became like a thing for causes. Um, he's like, yeah, that drove a ton of growth during that period. And now, yeah. And I think they just raised like a venture round 10 years later, like they bootstrapped for 10 years and then raised like a single round from investors because they kind of couldn't deny like, hey, this is now much bigger than a 2-person project. We should probably like, I don't know, hire an employee and see what we do with this.

Yeah, they had 2 people for 10 years, right?

Yeah, this guy AJ and I think one other guy, then that was it. And then now they raise 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 7 years, but that didn't mean it went away. It just meant like it's out of the, you know, TechCrunch or whatever.

I think there's something not talked about about longevity, 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? 100,000 plus and more coming. Uh, 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?

Did you bootstrap it or did you raise money?

Bootstrapped.

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

I can share the numbers. I'm happy to.

To talk about it. Okay, great. Let's do it.

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

And that's like gross revenue, meaning you give everything— you give a percentage to the software companies.

Oh no, but he said net, so that's after you paid out the software company, right?

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

Wait, what?

So what's confusing about that?

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

He included, he included his distribution and then he prepaid ads for the next year.

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

Yeah, but it's pretty hard to do that. I, we do that for our e-com business. It's pretty hard to pay $7 million ahead of time.

So what's the big chunk? No, we spend like, I think almost $2 million distributed back to the team just so that they have bonuses. Um, and for the first 5, just for what was interesting though, first 5 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. Uh, but after, I think, year 6, 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—

well, were you broke? I mean, because like, before this, you'd ran, um, what was it called? GameKick, uh, or Kickflip?

Kickflip was one of them, and then Gambit.

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

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 $100 million payday?

It was more of a few hundred million dollar payday.

Every year it gets worse.

I think it's also a good, it was a good, it was, thanks for rubbing it. Do you know this word schadenfreude?

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

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 with like me and Zuck and Moskovitz and Bosworth, who's now the CTO or Chris Cox. Um, Charlie Cheever, Adam D'Angelo. It was, it was, you know, Arrington from TechCrunch. It was a, it was a special time, man.

It was a really special time. So how did you get there? What were you doing? What was it like and what happened?

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

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. Like 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.

Did you just cold email Zuck or how, how, who'd you send it to?

No, no, no. I, so I was gonna quit Intel in December cuz 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 there. I didn't know anyone there.

And so you, 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, and what year was this for Facebook?

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 going to come party with you guys. Like, you realize like 90% of our day sitting on computer working. 10%. 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. 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, uh, I was really impressed about, you know, what he was able to do and how big he was thinking about this company would— could be.

What numbers was he throwing around?

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

I heard this crazy story where they're like, I think it was Yahoo that was offering to buy them where, uh, 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, let, 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.

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

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

The story is. They got the offer. Then there was the next board meeting. At the next board meeting, he was like, uh, which is like where Peter Thiel and others were, he was like, okay, bit of 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—

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

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 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 he took $1.2 billion, and then they came back and said, no, it's going to be like $900 million or something. There's another story like that. And so none of these are congruent because Peter Thiel tells the story, right? That was the source of that story where he was just trying to say how Zuck is this, he was this, like, visionary, um, 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, I think he wanted revenge because they negotiated him down. I was like, but wait, he said yes. 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, uh, brave or 100%.

I would, you know, someone asked me a few days ago, like, is that good or bad? And I think he's good. I think people might have a negative impression, but he was, he, he's, 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.

No. Can I ask about the environment? Because 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 going to 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. 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.

Is the company still around?

Yeah.

Yeah.

It's, it actually sold, uh, 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, um, did you feel that when you went into the Facebook office?

100%. 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 is walking out, which is a really strange, you know, I just left Intel, which, you know, I had, you know, 8 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 boss Doug, who ended up founding GoodRx. You guys know GoodRx?

Yep.

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

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 it would sell for, which I was accurate there. Facebook, I was like, I don't know the limit. Cause 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 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. Can you imagine showing up to work and he's connecting the entire world? And what he did, a lot of really clever things, which was how do I reduce all distractions? So like he paid for all of our parking tickets. Uh, 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 was focus on work.

And that wasn't normal back then, right? Like, uh, no, it was super abnormal to like pay your parking tickets and be like, hey, there's gonna just bring your laundry here. Shut, like, shut up about your life and just bring your laundry here and just work. Because, uh, yeah, when we were hanging out with MrBeast, Jack Smith said this the other day. He go, we were hanging out and he goes, I like how he just has no disregard for social norms. 'Cause 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 7 days a week. And then after 6 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, isn't there like California labor laws? Like, how does this work? And, um, and, and I, I think it was right. Like the absolute disregard 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.

I don't know if that— I think asking and doing things that you believe, I think you guys are very good at that. But there's also, I think, negatives. Like, I remember this guy Dan died in a bike— a tree fell on him during one of the workdays. He was biking and a tree killed him. And I'm like, okay, are we going to put a bike rack outside? Are we going to 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.

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

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 can 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.

And so why did they fire you?

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

Like you dipped out.

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'd let Arrington at TechCrunch know like, hey, Facebook's opening up to @Microsoft and 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 some of the other E-team and I let them 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. 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.

When did it become corporate?

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 that Zuck has done since 2005? 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.

Yeah, just gotten bigger. I mean, he, it, 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, is what he's done.

Yeah. And stuff like, you know, the part of thing is the bigger you get, the harder it is to move the needle. So it's like Marketplace, super successful, but, uh, kind of like, who cares? It's like, yeah, you built Craigslist inside Facebook. It's fine. Uh, you know, 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.

I think what, what was really interesting, but people can think about in their own businesses, is the core really great? Because like Facebook Marketplace or Facebook Events, I was really excited to, to grow and improve and monetize early on, and he was just against it completely. And I noticed that with AppSumo, where 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? Can 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?

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, or 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— tell me more about like what you've noticed about hanging out with some of these like uber, uber successful people.

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

So how are you changing this year?

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?

You definitely should go the book route. The problem with the book route, Noah, that you've seen, it seems so fucking hard. It seems so hard. Everyone I know 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 2 weeks after the race happens or the book goes live, they go, all right, I think I'm going to do this next book on this topic. And I'm like, man, I just heard you complain for 2 years. No, you've been talking about this freaking book for years. I think it's been way longer than 4 years, actually. I remember you talking about how you wanted to write a book forever, and it took 4 freaking years to do this thing. Is it— you think it's going to be worth it? What's the ROI going to be?

I like it. I'm proud of it. I think it's— first off, you know, coming back to— well, and 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, uh, your content is 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 5 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, that to me was really the ultimate aha in this book. Thinking, can I actually face myself and work on a book and help other people? And then can people do it for themselves?

Dude, when did you become so political?

What do you mean?

Where I like, I'm, it's called, you're like a politic, you're like a politician, my friend. Like, so old Noah, I got to tell a story about old Noah. I remember, uh, Sean, one time there's a coworker who I work with who Sean, you are friends with. And she, uh, we go into this meeting. And Noah shows up shirtless. He's got no shirt on. He's in his house. I think he's like on his couch and I'm like, Noah, what the fuck are you doing, dude? Like he was just 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're showing so much evolution. You're talking about changing people's lives. It's so funny to see you say this, this stuff.

Well, one, thank you.

I think we should all change people's lives back then too, just in a different way. One nip at a time.

Yeah, I've also— I, 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 want to 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 want to do? And I think that's fine. Uh, do the book. I think people have these, these like bullshit ROI things. Like, I want to help a million people. I don't give a shit about that. I don't, but I am happy if like 1 or 2 or 5 or 1,000 or 10,000 then read the book and do something for themselves.

Um, 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, something like that. So I bought a bunch of books. I'm trying to do my part to help you rank up 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. We appreciate you doing this. What do you want to— it's called Million Dollar Weekend. You're Noah Kagan on Twitter, appsumo.com, Noah Kagan on YouTube. Am I missing any other plug?

It's— 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. Uh, I was working on a startup, my very first startup. We were working on it for like 9 months trying to get everything right. We literally had a 300-page business plan. It was embarrassing. Let, 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 T's and crossing I's out here. And so, uh, we, I was like, all right, well, at a certain point I looked at my, my co-founder and I was like, my co-founder, he's 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 4-Hour Workweek and I was like, all right, this weekend we are going to make money. I don't care how— I was like, and we set a goal for $1,000. I said, We're going to try to make $1,000 in the next, you know, basically it was Friday. It was like, we're going to make it by Sunday night. And, uh, I don't care how, let's go. And instantly, just by having that intention, things started to fall together. We made this website, we found a product on Alibaba, we got it dropshipped, 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 Livestrong bands, um, to somebody whose, uh, their parents were having an anniversary and they needed like 200 of these. We charged them like, you know, $4 or $5 per. We made $1,000. $10,000 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, trying to sell a product, 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 am on board with what you're all about.

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

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

But I think the thing you called out, which is interesting and that's awesome, is like, because you said, hey, I'm gonna do something and I have this limited time and you have 52 of 'em, 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 on a weekend to do something and then look at what you did in a weekend, which you didn't do in months.

Right. Yeah, exactly that. Look what you did in the weekend that you didn't do in months. 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, yeah, am I just going to be like forgettably average? Because that's where this is going. And I was like, am I really going to get smarter than these people? Am I going to— I don't have any talent, like special talents that they have that nobody else has. But I realized that a lot of smart people are overthinkers. 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, you know, predestined to do great things. And that just became my motto.

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

We can, we can do it.

Let's pat it.

Let's tap it. But Sean, but most people who listen to your show want to make a million. They don't ever make a buck. They never make even make that $1. And that's where they have to get, you know, get off their ass.

What's that?

That was bars, dude. That was, that was It's great.

Like, like good lyrics. Nice, nice words. Thank you.

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

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 wanna improve, which is, you know, you saw it on your feet. I don't see my feet first thing in the morning, but I don't, 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 Million Dollar Weekend. Maybe it's something, but I love that idea.

I'm getting my whole legs done. You know, now, 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 because BFF, that's kind of what I live for when it comes to business. Um, I've got a pirate ship.

Is that, is that Bro, live, laugh, love is bullshit.

Yeah, I mean, that's true.

I moved to Austin and I found myself.

Yeah, I did the work, Sean. It's self-love.

You did the work, dude.

Congratulations, dude. Well, you know, the reason I like homemade tattoos is you do what you want. What 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 going to 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 impress Hector, my tattoo artist. 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.

I put my all in it like no days off. On the road, let's travel, never looking back.

Life.