Brainstorming The Best Business Ideas To Start In 2022 with Noah Kagan

So last year we had our highest day. Black Friday was our highest day, almost $2 million in that one day.

Are we ready to roll? Can we roll, bro? You got to take that hat off, though. I can't see you.

All right. I was just trying to— I wanted to wear a costume of sort of— I can see, like, a little bit more spicy.

You're good like that. I couldn't see your eyes. Do, um, I, uh, do you have an ice bath?

Yeah, I have a cold— have you not jumped in our cold tub?

So is it called cold plunge?

Yeah, the cold plunge.

I have one too. And what is your opinion of it so far?

I like it. I like it. I use it about twice a week. I use it Monday morning for coffee. It's basically my wake-up thing. And then I'll use it Wednesdays after a workout. Uh, what's interesting though, there's a book I think called Endurance.

Yeah, I love that. And they basically— I love that book.

There's a book, and I think what they said was that scientifically it doesn't do anything.

Yes. And so that's why I have like a problem with Cold Plunge, which is the actual product is amazing. Like if you want to be cold, that it's a good one. It stays like 39 degrees all the time, but it doesn't— I'm almost certain that it doesn't do anything. And some people say it impacts your brain if it does anything, but like there's still even conflicting research on that.

I think the big thing that I like about it is that it makes me feel tough.

Yeah.

It makes me feel good. It makes me feel good about myself. I'm like, Noah, you're not tough, man.

You're weak.

And I don't know, I don't really have that self-talk in my head, but I go into this thing and I was like, do 10. And then when I'm about to get to 10, I'm like, you could do 15. And then I just feel proud of myself. How long do you sit in there? And then I get out and I'm like, um, it varies. Maybe like a minute, 2 minutes.

Dude, I did 5 minutes at 39 degrees and it was incredibly painful. That's what it said online to do. So I did it and I was just like, I was legitimately in pain, like, like, like more pain than I've ever felt just through exercise.

How'd you feel about yourself?

I felt tough. I felt, I felt tough. Yeah. So like, I understand why it works, but I'm still looking for like peer-reviewed research that shows that it works and I've not found it. And so that's why I was asking how you thought about your cold plunge. Cause I heard you had the same way. I got to jump in here because I'm, I'm a cold plunge spokesman. They're the one sponsor for my podcast. So I gotta like, oh wow, for their honor here. So the thing I was— dude, I'm telling you, the Cold Plunge product, we're, we're both supporting it. I have it too.

Here's the thing.

Here's where you're wrong though. The, the thing that you're right about is there's no research that shows that it is good for recovery. And that's what everyone says they use it for is recovery. And that's just like not accurate that it's, it's actually better to use heat therapy for recovery than cold. But like some of the brain stuff, there is like more. Research there, as well as like some of the other benefits around like mood and like, like, have you heard of this brown fat cell storage stuff like that? Yeah, but it— yeah, I hear you. I think it kind of works. I'm still— I still need to be convinced.

It's like, it's like a workout.

The way to think about it is like, it's a workout for your nervous system. Like it improves a lot of stuff that way, but it's just not good for recovery.

I guess I would actually pitch the opposite, Sam and Ben, where lately I've been really into baths. That's just like been my go-to. So like I have—

I throw—

I got these bath bombs, got a little CBD in it. I'll light a candle and then I'll either put on a podcast or I'll read. But that lately, I mean, men, especially men, because women have gotten— they knew about this. They just didn't want to tell us. But like, I literally just came from a pedicure. If men are not pampering themselves, look, if you're working hard, I'm saying if you're like putting in the work, you're working out, you're doing the stuff at the job, Like, take a little time for that R&R, man. Go jump in a bath.

I don't care about it. Not relaxing at all for me. Like, I don't want someone digging in my nails.

Gross. Can you see that?

Red, white, and blue. Oh my God.

I did the— I did the American flag.

That's awesome.

I don't know. It's— it's honestly, it's fun. We're living once on this planet. Have a good time. All right.

Let's talk about— you came on last time. I personally thought the episode was only going to do okay. I'm telling you, I got tons of people that DM'd me. Ben says that people thought it was pretty good. I thought people thought it was great. But for this one, awesome. You have a list of 1, 2, 3, like 8, 8 bullet points, but there's a ton of ideas here. Um, oh, and we, and also people criticize me because I didn't introduce you. So this is Noah Kagan. Noah runs this company. He founded it and is now the CEO of AppSumo. It's like Groupon for nerds. It's quite large. I think last time you said 80-ish million in revenue. Uh, and Mitchell just said you guys now have 165 employees. That's amazing. And you also do, uh, content. So you, you have this sick blog called Okay Dork, which I've read for like 10 years. And you have your YouTube, which now has 250,000 subscribers, I think, right?

Almost 300,000, man. It's, it's unbelievable. YouTube.com/OkDork. It's unbelievable.

It's unbelievable. That's sick. Uh, and I remember you doing it years ago, just like on your phone and it was kind of lame. It wasn't lame. It was just like, you aren't trying. And then like you started trying 2 years ago, I think, right?

Yeah, that was, it was an interesting journey. When COVID hit 2 years ago, I was just shirtless at home with my iPhone and I was like, I just felt good about what was going on and I felt like I could help. And so I just started recording on my phone and uploading it. And so, you know, in all the people that are listening to your show, a lot of them wanna start businesses. It's like, just do now, not how, you know, something Mitchell and I talk about, which is just get going. So I just uploaded that. And from there, now there's a team of, I don't know, maybe 6 people. We'll spend about half a million dollars on just the team this year. And, you know, from just me doing shirtless, uh, in my house, talking about how to get your business going, your confidence up.

Uh, the, and so the reason why you're able to spend, why you're able to lose money is because you are, you somehow it drives traffic and awareness to AppSumo, which is like your main thing. But does the ad, does the AdSense or the YouTube ad at all cover the cost?

I think that's really good.

Which ones?

Isn't that kind of crazy? One, that's sad. Either A, we suck at making videos, or B, you know, a lot of businesses, you keep going, keep going, keep going, keep going.

Don't Aren't all the channels like that though?

I think it's a lot of business, like a power law distribution. It's like a few things do a lot of the significance. So the 3 videos that made all of the money, the first one was I went and knocked on doors in Austin.

We just released that, right?

Asking millionaires. We just released it, but that came out towards the end of the year, uh, and drove a lot of our money, uh, asking crypto millionaires how to invest $5,000 and then asking NFT millionaires how to invest $1,000. More or less those 3 videos, uh, made us the year. But, and that was after 150 videos.

That's crazy. Do you, um, do you, so do you think you'll surpass your $500,000? Do you think you'll break even on AdSense this year?

Yeah. Our goal is not that our goal is around a subscriber growth, but this year I think we'll lose the budget-wise. It looks like we'll lose around $200,000. Just depends how ads do, but I'm, I'm basically not, not really optimizing around that.

That's crazy. I, uh, I did a call with this lady who has a bunch of YouTube channels and she was telling me it's, um, her and a 6-person team. I can't say her name, but she said that they're doing $1 million a month in profit from YouTube. Just YouTube. Yeah, it's crazy. Just YouTube.

Are you guys— I think the thing with YouTube, YouTube is slept on. Same. I mean, TikTok is another one. It's a different type of audience. Uh, but you guys have upped your, your YouTube game yourselves. I feel like almost every business out there, or if you were broke, and you're in any country in the world and you have nothing to do, this is the easiest, freest business anyone can start.

So I just signed up to monthly.com, has this course with Casey Neistat. Uh, did you see that? So Casey Neistat has a course where every day he gives you a lesson on YouTube videos and I bought it for like $300 and I'm loving it. It is really, really cool.

What is, what are some of the takeaways?

Well, so it's only 3 days in and so, but like in the first or second lesson, he just walked around his office. He goes, I'm going to show you how I find cool stories. And he's just walking around and he goes, oh, that's a cool idea. You guys hear that beeping? That's a truck backing up. And that ruins, like, it makes it really hard for me to record throughout the day. I'm just gonna make a video on that. Or he'll walk by, um, a guy selling fake Louis Vuitton purses and he goes, oh, that's a cool idea. Let's create a video on how to buy a fake purse in New York City. And so he's just like walking down the street, coming up with ideas and you're like, look, I'm gonna create, these are just small, silly ideas, but I'm gonna execute them really well. So in the next series, he's gonna show us how he is actually gonna execute these small ideas. That is awesome. Kind of cool, right?

I love that you're still learning. Well, no, I mean, I, I think people assume that once you get to certain sizes like you, I would assume you don't, but I love that you're still curious and you're exploring how to improve your craft.

Yeah. I, well, I don't know anything about video. I've been making videos for my own YouTube just for fun, but I'm trying to learn. Um, so anyway, it's a cool cur— it's a cool course. It was only like $300.

Yeah. I mean, it, it is kind of crazy when you think about the things we spend on and the potential value upside you can get out of it. Like the downside, you lost $300, the upside, I mean, how much could this make you? Or, you know, also from an enjoyment level.

And I was like, I can use the stuff that I'm learning just in the podcast. I think.

How much, like, what have you noticed or observed in your own YouTube channel? I know for My First Million, you definitely, you guys have been looking to grow it. It seems like a few things are—

I think what I've learned is that like things that like don't seem like big ideas, but that can be kind of boring, uh, can do really well. So for example, I bought the house, the lot next to me, and I just like film a video. I'm like, here's, just a, here's a video of the house and I'm just walking around my iPhone. Here's why I think it's, it could be a good investment. Here's why it might be a bad investment. And I just posted that on my personal channel and I didn't have any subscribers. Oh, I sent you that video. Uh, and it, uh, it got like 3, 4, 5,000 views, but like a lot of comments. And I was just amazed that people cared. It was my first video. I was amazed that people care about little things that are small, that are part of your daily life that you don't really think about. And so I think what I'm learning with Casey, what I'm learning with my stuff is that small stuff that you think about throughout the day, more likely than not, a lot of other people think about that and they'll find it interesting enough to, to watch. You know what I mean?

Yeah. Yeah. I've always, I always think about that with restaurants where they sell their cookbooks. Like people want to see what happens in the kitchen and you'd be surprised what people want to learn.

Yeah. So anyway, it's a cool course. Uh, you want to talk about, Mudwater.

I do in a second. One other thing I'm curious is what have you noticed? Cause I think, I dunno, this is what I'm curious about as well. What have you noticed about the YouTube channel versus your TikTok channel in terms of the audience and the growth and the experience?

Sounds too easy.

Go on. So these kids, it's mostly like these like 19 and 20-year-olds, like one kid in college at, at Michigan. He, um, he's one of the guys. I just started talking to him and they create— he created a handle called like MFM Minis and he started posting our videos and he like would animate them. And he has gotten multiple videos over a million views. And you know FatFire? Yeah. I made a podcast where I talked about how much I love FatFire, the subreddit, which I found through you. And he, uh, made a video about that and it got so many views. That FatFire made an announcement on their subreddit that said, we've been overwhelmed with new applicant or new subreddit people, and we got 30,000 people in one day, all from the TikTok video where me, Sam Parr, is talking about FatFire.

All right, that's wild, man. So do you think most businesses should try to do this TikTok stuff?

No, I don't. I— not most, but definitely some right now. Of everything that I've seen, it's the fastest way to grow an audience. For sure. Without a doubt.

Yeah, I guess I've always, I've been hesitant because the quality of the audience in terms of their young engagement. Yeah. Well, it's not even just the young, right? The young is the future to some extent, but it's like YouTube. I feel like the quality of the people that are like really into it and they're available to join your newsletter, they want to comment. And I feel like TikTok is just kind of consumption.

I think that YouTube is much higher quality. I, I think podcasts, like for a long time, even though we, like my whole life was podcasting. I was like, I would shit on it. I'm like, this is not that cool. And, uh, now I've changed because I'll see— I get recognized now like 3 or 4 times a week. And it's because they like listen to my voice for 45 minutes. They like think that they know you. And so they built— they— people get kind of intimate with you. So it's— do you get recognized from YouTube?

I got recognized. Uh, yeah, it was cool. Yeah. Sometimes I love it, man. I mean, the whole part of the journey is that like, uh, I was, This weekend I went to a squash tournament, the Houston Squash Open. That's hilarious. And, uh, it was because this guy watches, he knows appsumo.com, he's watched some of the videos. And, and I was, I was during the pedicure day, I was one of the guys from our company and I was like, man, that's why I do social media to some extent. Like it really provides a cool magnet and window. I don't know if it's a window, but a way to just like connect with really interesting people.

Yeah. I think it's awesome.

Like even if it's that, not money, like it's a great thing.

Yeah. I think it's badass. So I'm gonna continue to do it. Can I, um, so basically Noah has this sheet that he sent me and it's got a list of a ton of things. Can I just read off and ask questions? I actually want to ask you about Chrome extensions because they're like, I'm like nerding out on Chrome extensions right now. Have you ever even made one?

I've bought one. So we have one, right?

You have one. So on here. So I tweeted out, so this is a mutual friend of ours, by the way, but I can't say who it is. They were considering buying a company and it was a Chrome extension and it was two people who are doing $25 million a year in sales with their Chrome extension. Um, it's pretty crazy. And then Grammarly, you know, Grammarly. Yeah. Grammarly, I think is like a $20 billion company at this point. Grammarly does like $800 million in revenue.

That is what I like, these sleeper ones that people kind of just like don't really—

Grammarly is the best, man. It started by this guy named Max, who's— I think he's from like the Ukraine and he's a— lives in Canada. And he's a hardcore engineer. And I asked him at HustleCon in the backstage, like, they bootstrapped it and they raised funding. They raised $100 million at a billion-dollar valuation. And I was with them backstage and I was like, dude, that's amazing. So you're like almost a billionaire now. He goes, yeah, it's pretty cool. Like, the business is way bigger than— than— than— no, and he like, he like smirked, but he was real low-key. He's like, yeah, it's cool. The business is way bigger than most people realize. Like, it's going to be huge. Uh, and it was awesome. So Grammarly's a good business. What, what's your Chrome extension?

Leo.io.

What's it do?

So it's kind of similar to that Momentum one, which I think is pretty popular. It's the main one. When you open up a tab, it has like a nice background. I think that taking a step back on these Chrome extensions, I think what's interesting, um, about your tweet, which was like this Chrome extension to make $25 million, or these is what are things that not everyone else is, is paying attention to that you can acquire for not a market rate? Like, I think ultimately that's how you can have a lot of success in business, but that's specifically for, for marketing, a lot of what I look for. Um, so when we launched sumo.com, I actually bought probably about 5 million installs, I think, give or take 500 installs of WordPress plugins. So I bought like some of the most popular WordPress plugins around.

No way. Which ones?

Uh, I mean, I have to pull up our list now, but the biggest one was Google Analytics. So it was like a million person install. Yeah. So it was Google Analyticator. Uh, we bought WP Fonts, we bought, uh, Construction Page. So basically what I did is—

Dude, I used WP Fonts. I used a bunch of those.

Did you even pay more than 6 figures for any of them?

Wow. That's crazy.

Isn't it? That was the most expensive one. I, I, I could pull up my price.

Could that, could that Google, so for the The people listening, WordPress, if you don't use Word— I mean, WordPress is used by like 3/4 of the internet or half of, half of like the top 10,000 websites. And they have this like crazy, um, database of all types of apps that you could plug, use for plugins. It's amazing. And Sumo was an email capture plugin.

Yeah. I found our list. We had a lot of, I bought All-in-One Favicon, just a bunch of random ones. Um, and then we would rebrand them and then cross-promote to sumo.com within WordPress. Um, and I was thinking I would do the same. And the thing was, is there, there's not like, um, these websites where people are buying and selling them. And a lot of these guys weren't monetizing, it was just hobbies. And so I think in marketing and business, you gotta look for something that's a problem that other people haven't identified. And that's also why I bought the Chrome extension. I bought it for, I think 20, I bought it for $25,000 for 40,000 installs., active installs on Chrome. But with that one, we could not monetize it at all. We tried like paid features, we tried ads to it, we tried to grow it, uh, and we were not as successful. So I pretty much lost almost all the money on that one.

How much, what's the CPM on ads for Chrome plugin? Do you know?

I don't remember what it was, but it was abysmal and it wasn't something that we were able to grow dramatically. Like I thought we could, like the WordPress stuff was really cheap. Like we were getting that stuff super cheap back in the day.

That's crazy. There's this guy, like I think there's this guy who I bet you know, who you definitely know. I think his name's Sy. What's his name? His last name starts with a B. Uh, and he owns this thing called Awesome— what's it called? It's called Awesome Corp or something.

He owns WPBeginner. He's like the WordPress underground mafia. He owns a lot of WordPress blogs.

I, I wouldn't be surprised. I mean, I love these industries that like everyone's sleeping on. Like I think the, that WordPress stuff is really interesting. It probably is still a decent category. What's fascinating though is the other side of this, Sam. So I actually tried to do the same strategy in Shopify apps. So I went over to Shopify and we were launching sumo.com on Shopify and I was like, man, I'll just go buy all these people over there. Uh, what was interesting was that a lot of the people on Shopify were a little bit more savvy and they had recurring revenue. So they were like, we want 10x the price where like 10x the price of their revenue where the WordPress plugins, they weren't really making money. So I was like, hey, I'll pay 1 cent for every active install you have. So I was getting them for very, very cheap, but the Shopify ones, like I couldn't, I literally couldn't buy almost any.

So our friend Andrew Wilkinson bought a couple of them and he rolled them up and eventually took it public. And it currently, it's in, it's public on the Canadian Stock Exchange right now, probably for $600 million market cap. It's called WeCommerce. And they do like, I think $30 million a year in revenue just off Shopify apps.

The Shopify ecosystem was interesting. I mean, it's interesting if you can create something really easily and other people can copy you really easily. Um, and then you don't control the payments. It's like, it was a whole wild experience in there. Cause Shopify controls all the money. You don't. You have to wait for your, your grandpa to give you your nickels. Uh, and they control the whole, the whole thing. So we were like, let's get the hell out of this world. But yeah, WeCommerce looks like, uh, $535 Canadian, which is what, like $100 million American?

No, not that bad. Yeah. Like, what's the conversion of Monopoly money to USD? No, I think it's, I think it's almost 1 to 1. Um, what, uh, so are you bullish on, you're into Chrome shit, Chrome plugins?

what did you use to get clicks for on Facebook? Oh man, let me pull it up. Pennies or—

yeah, I mean, I wouldn't say it's pennies, but it's definitely like dollar email subscribers and then like low 10 figures for paying customers. And now I think AppSumo would have to pull up our dashboard, but I mean, I think we're paying like $60 for a paying customer now.

It's so expensive. When we start— so we got to like 200,000 subscribers just through blogging. And then we started doing paid marketing and I think we paid $1.50. Uh, when we sold, it might've been like $4. Uh, and if I had to guess now, I wouldn't be surprised if it's $6 to $8.

Let me ask you about Mint. So Mint, you were like the one of the first hires there, right? Yeah, it was number 4. And Mint eventually, at the time, it sold for like $120 million or $200 million, something like that, right?

Yeah, 170.

And at the time, that was considered massive. It's still a lot of money, but like, particularly then, it was like, it might as well have been a billion. And I loved Mint. It sucks now though. Like, I don't like Mint. Totally. Why? What would you do differently if you were running the show now?

Oh wow. I mean, Aaron was running the show to be clear, and he was really impressive. I gotta give him props when he started it. And I want to talk about this cuz I think your audience, I don't know, I've been thinking about this a lot. I think it resonates with your audience. Aaron worked alone in his room by himself for 6 months building a prototype and then came out and convinced the world to come check out this product. And I just have a lot of admiration and respect for people like him. Like we have an intern, George.

He's living in my— I know, I met him.

He works. Didn't he?

Yeah, he's working from Miami or—

sorry, he moved from Hawaii to live in— he was living in another room. His desk was an Amazon box. Right now his desk is my washer and dryer.

That's awesome.

Right. And he's like, I mean, the point is, I think with Aaron Patzer as well as, you know, these people as well as myself, I was living on floors, lived in my aunt's basement. There's something to be said for like the sacrifice and the dream. And I have a lot of respect for Aaron and George and, you know, even back in the day with where I was at, uh, getting all this stuff started, uh, with Mint. I think, I mean, look at how big some of these, these finance— look at Plaid, right? So we used another company before Plaid was ever a thing. And Plaid is now $10 billion. I think some of the stupidest companies that are big that I don't get is like Brex or Ramp. They're like credit card branded companies that are like $10 billion.

Why don't you understand that? It's pretty simple. They just convince you to sign up for their credit card and they split the 1% fee with MasterCard on all your spending.

I know, but the fact that that's a $10 billion industry, I mean, it just kind of, it doesn't seem like there's a lot of value add, but it's almost similar to the Mint thing, which is they took a product that existed, which was this bank information and they, they printed it up. Um, so I think Mint could have been a much larger role. The VCs were definitely disappointed when Mint sold out. Um, I thought Mint was going to sell for that price. That's why I left early.

Why, why did you think it was going to sell for that price?

Did, uh, that's, that's kind of interesting because I don't, I don't think that I think that big. I mean, I would say like most people would think $500 million is a pretty big exit. What would, what could he have done differently to think bigger? I mean, what would a bigger example be?

And so let me, let me be clear. I don't care. Like, I don't care what people's visions are per se, and everyone should have whatever dream they want. Like, if your dream is to make $5,000 a month or $500 a month, or I'm not hating on anybody's dream. Um, it was just, I think there's, look at how many, how big fintech space is today. Right? Like Plaid alone just almost got bought by Visa for $7 billion. Uh, you have Robinhood, which is whatever, $15 billion. So what Mint did, which was really interesting, was it acquired a lot of customers really cheap. I think if they didn't sell out to Intuit as early, there would have been a lot of different avenues that they could have parlayed, uh, this audience of young people who are interested in personal finance into a lot of different avenues. Um, at the same time though, dude, if someone came to you and you're, you know, you did take that, you did take it, which is a good thing too.

Like, was he wealthy?

You can make—

no. How old was he?

I mean, he was definitely educated. But he had a chance to cash out. I think he cashed out $30 to $50 million. And I also, I think he like moved to some like remote area in New Zealand and he's just living there now.

Yeah. Well, he started like an ambulance company, like a software for ambulances or something like that.

But like Aaron, he's a creative guy. He actually tried to start a, uh, a sky subway system. That's crazy. So like in the cities, like in Austin, instead of like having an underground subway, it would be an air-based Subway. And I was like, yeah, he's just crazy creative. Like, but look, I think everyone's got to figure out what it is they want their own life to be like. There's no bad or worse selling out stuff. Uh, I guess lately I've been just thinking about like with this one period of time we have here on earth, like how interesting do we each want to make it?

Yes. But I will, to play devil's advocate, it's also how hard do you want to grind? So like, do you want to like, cause I think that in order to make In order to make cool shit, I can't decide how I feel at the moment, actually. For the longest time, I was like, dude, in order to make something huge and something amazing, you gotta just lock yourself in a room for like 3 years. Like, you just have to grind. Now my thinking is, I think you actually only need to do that early on and then you can somewhat let up. So where's your opinion on that? Do you have to grind like all the time in order to make something happen? Or do you think that you can, you could have a little bit more balance? Because if you have to grind all the time, that shit's exhausting. I only have that so many times a month. My life.

Yeah. I mean, I don't know. I guess I'm just trying to think of different examples. Like for me, if you would've told me when I started AppSumo, like, hey, no, you'll be a millionaire, but it's gonna take 10 years. I probably wouldn't have started.

Sure.

And most of the people that I've seen, like one of my buddies is now making 8 figures as an investor. Um, it took him probably about 10 to 15 years to get to that place. And so the reality I was thinking about today, like there's one of our guys who I, we got pedicures today. He's, he's on the sales team. And I was like, look, you can be as big of a life and a career as you want it to be. It's just like, what path do you want to take that on? And are you willing to put in the work? But I honestly, I think, I kind of think the opposite, Sam. I don't, I think of like what I'm doing with AppSumo and YouTube. It doesn't feel like a grind. Like I'm actually like your podcast, what you're doing now. Does this feel like a grind?

Most of the time? No, but it doesn't feel great all the time. Like some days I'm like, oh, I don't feel like being happy. Like I'm in a pit, like Here's an example. Sean, my co-host who's out with COVID he's late every single time. He's 5 minutes late every single time. Every once in a while it'll put me in such a bad mood that I don't want to record. And on those days I'm like, I fucking hate this. I don't want to do this. I got to like snap out of this mood and be in a good— so anyway, it's not always fun.

I mean, I think about my buddy Adam Gilbert. It's like the times that you don't want to show up is when it counts. Like, I think about that a lot of times when I'm like, it's the things you're doing when no one else is watching that matters. And that's like going to the gym when no one wants to do it. Or like last night at 7:30, I didn't feel like doing a podcast. Um, but I'm gonna, you know, it was like, okay, it needed to get done. And I think that, you know, that'll help you separate whether you wanna get some of the things in life you want or not. Like, are you willing to sacrifice and for how long? And I, I think there, I, I don't know. I was thinking about this equation. Like, I wonder if there's a time time sacrifice equals success equation, plus a little bit of unhappiness. And if you could do that for some period of time, you'll get success.

I think, um, it's, it's the way that I, the question I ask myself is what am I willing to pay in order to achieve blank? So like, to me, that, that's like, what am I, what am I, what's, what price am I going to pay in order to get to, to this particular goal? And I asked myself, am I willing to pay that price? And sometimes I am, sometimes I'm not. So like at the current, at my current stage in life, it's, do I wanna grind for a long time on a software company in order to achieve X amount of money? And I'm like, no, I don't wanna pay that price at the moment. Maybe like in the future I would, and for sure when I was younger I would, but not at the current point in my life.

I think with all this stuff, it's better to be na— to be naive and just get going. Well, just find the things that you're curious about. Like if it's, you know, your, your, your audio editor Benji and be like, look, I like making these audio shows. I'm just gonna go for it. Or lately, you know, like I've been really enjoying AppSumo work, um, or doing the YouTube stuff and it's better to just not almost not think about it. Cause I think you'll psych yourself out. Like one of the stories we were talking about on the sheet was like this Mudwater guy.

Yeah.

What, what is that? And this guy just had like a, dude, this coffee, a crazy, yeah. I mean, it's just a stupid, it's basically Indian chai tea. You ever heard of Indian chai? Dude, it's delicious.

I love it.

Yeah.

You have a really good video of, I watched the video of you testing it out and I bought it because of that.

How's it going?

$60 million is so much money. It makes $60 million. It does $60 million in sales. That's crazy.

I wouldn't be surprised if it's more. I think what, you know, when you're thinking about business ideas, number one, what's problems that we have ourselves? That's always just like the easiest way that I try to solve it for me. Like one problem I had recently was like, I'm trying to be a doomsday prepper. Same. And I want like a doomsday, I want a doomsday prepper in a box.

Same.

Like, I just do.

Well, we had a total episode on that. Clearly you read Tucker Max's article. We had a talk.

I did see his— I did see his article.

This is—

this is a little bit before because we had our snowpocalypse.

Same. And I'm looking at generators already because I know it's— I'm afraid.

Yeah, I just got mine.

What did— how much did you spend? Like $1,000 generator?

It was $1,000.

I'm thinking about getting to— dude, those generators are not that strong. They only charge like 4 things. Like they can only be used on like 4 things at a time.

I'm just going to basically have a generator to a tent. And then when the doomsday comes, just like, come knock on my tent door.

Dude, I would love a doomsday in a box. I'm so on board. The problem is, is that a lot of the doomsday stuff, they assume that you live in like the country. And I'm like, no, I need like the urban version of this. So like, tell me, like, how do I store water? How do I, uh, like, like, should I have a gun or should I not have a gun? What type of generator? What do you use the generator for? All that type of stuff.

Yeah. I mean, I think coming back to what we're talking about, it's like with Mud Water and, you know, business ideas, it's just like one, just go to the things that you need help with. Right. And then just start thinking, all right, well, how, you know, how do I do that today? Right. So you, if for this doomsday idea to go hit up you, I hit up Neville, I hit up other friends in Austin and say, hey, I'm starting to put together a thing. Do you want something like this? And see if I can get anyone to buy into it before I start. And then from there, if that works, then maybe launch a Shopify site. Uh, or just start doing YouTube content around that.

Yeah. You just Wirecutter for the end of the world.

Honestly, that it's a huge category, especially like nowadays, like all the stores are out. I think people are a little bit more aware that that can happen.

We have this friend named Ryan Dice and Ryan Dice started Digital Marketer, which is like a pretty sizable business that does all types of stuff. And then he owned a conference that he sold for a lot of money, but pre-pandemic, like 2 years before the pandemic, he owned a website called like Survival something. Oh yeah, it was— I forget what it was called. And had he— who would have known— but had he held on to it towards like COVID times, it would have been sold for so much more because now it's so much more popular. But he had this website and it, it talked all about, uh, like article— it was basically articles and affiliates on like which flashlight to buy like for the end of the world. And I'm almost positive that he sold it for around the 8-figure range. That's— remember that site?

What was it called? I guess I don't remember the exact thing. Survival something. So I remember seeing it. I'm like, ah, that's shady.

Me too. I thought that too.

It wasn't—

now I want it.

What's the best-selling product ever for AppSumo?

Oh, on the digital side? Dude, I'll also tell you another business idea I would love for someone to start. Um, I'm gonna pull up our forever list. Hold on. I'm literally just, I'm pulling up our backend. The top product of all time, and this is a shocker.

Probably fonts.

Yes.

Fonts or stickers.

Okay. Ben, do you have a thought?

I have no guess. No, nothing. Maybe font or something involved with photos. Photos or fonts, maybe.

What I'm just looking up the stats. What are some other interesting trends? Like, oh wow. Have you guys, do you ever invest in companies just because you're able to look at the AppSumo stats?

So that's something we've gone back and forth. Here's another, well, taking a step back, I know a lot of your people want, you know, to make their first million and beyond. Here's another product category. Tools for agencies. But if you think about what, what that really is, so the, I can't say the product cuz I, it's his private numbers, but basically stuff to help agencies manage their project management. Um, but the real thing here to think about, uh, what's a tangential bit?

What's a, another example that you, so like, um, so like, like basically Asana for agencies. Yeah.

Like ClickUp, like something like a ClickUp, like a ClickUp alternative. We have a lot of that on AppSumo. But anyways, the point that's interesting about that is, and this is, this actually surprised me when I came back to work at AppSumo, is what are things that you can sell that help people make money?

Well, our friend Neville, uh, has, says it slightly different. He says, well, cuz Neville has a course and he is like, well, I sell this course and people like it, but like really what I'm learning is like when someone gives me money for a course, I'm just putting them to work. And if you really wanted to make a lot of money, I would just do the work for them and charge them.

Mm-hmm.

And that's how he explained it, which is similar. But, uh, so what are some of the other top ones on AppSumo?

Yeah, I'm an investor in copy.ai.

So we promoted Rytr, HappyScribe. Um, I'm looking up the other major ones around that. Those are just some of the ones that I'm just like shocked at how well they've done. But I mean, I think cool part about Sumo and like people should check it out is like there's a lot of new products that you honestly, you can just check out what's getting popular and then make some type of alternative or make training around those types.

Would you ever invest in stuff based off the AppSumo data?

Oh, um, you know, I've actually invested differently. So we've talked about this over the 11 years of the company, like, hey, they're doing well, instead of us taking a split of the sales, what if we took equity instead? Um, and I would have liked— I mean, dude, think about this, we've promoted Hoppin, they're $8 billion, we've promoted Udemy, Mixpanel, Optimizely, Mailchimp, Fresh— I mean, if we took some splits, it would have, uh, It'd be a different trajectory for our company, but it's just not something we've done. Uh, I do it differently. I invest in the companies, uh, that we use in our company.

Sure. Like, uh, so like, uh, like, like what?

Sure. Yeah. I, how many products have you guys promoted on AppSumo? Like hundreds or thousands?

Thousands. I mean, we've been doing 11 years. I think right now on AppSumo we have 11,000 products.

Oh, fuck.

Um, yeah, it's definitely gone a little wild, uh, as we become a software marketplace.

That's crazy.

But, uh, 10,493 products.

So when we, um, like years ago or a couple years ago, we had Zoom was one of our advertisers and this was before they went public and the ad crushed it. It was so good. And we were like, damn dude, people love this product. They love Zoom. And we, I ended up buying stock right before or right at IPO and it like knocked it out the park. I think there is like interesting stuff where you can, where you can see like in You, you could see interesting information because you're like WPBeginner, because you're like AppSumo, because you're like The Hustle, and you could see inside of this stuff.

Yeah. It's like, and for everyone out there, it's like, where do you have an advantage? Like, where are you? Maybe you're in Discord all day, so you know what the NFTs are gonna be popping. Maybe it's gonna be out there on Twitter world. So, you know, like the different stocks or different people that are talking about different things. I think it's just finding some advantage or like area that you can get, uh, you know, an unfair competitive advantage.

What other ideas interest you?

I'm trying to think of just like, uh, the stuff lately. I mean, that's interesting to me is basically like 3 or 4 areas. One, I mean, I still think software is gigantic.

What specifically?

There's just so many.

What specifically?

Um, I mean, for me, content creation is definitely the area that I've spent a lot of time in. So like, I would love software on like, how do you figure out which topics are going to be popular? Like we spend, I don't know how many people hours, probably like 10 hours a week. Just to figure out which video to make each week. And so there's gotta be a more, uh, optimized way to do that. I think with AppSumo, it's the same kind of idea. Like we have a team of, I think around 4 people that full-time just try software all across the internet. What their only job. Yeah. They're, they're called like LDRs. Like, I don't even know what their titles are anymore. They don't tell me. Uh, but their little job is to like, go to Product Hunt, go to Google, go to Twitter, go to all these like beta lists, go to all these different sites. Try the different software all across the internet and then see which ones are worthy to get, you know, blasted on appsumo.com. And so that, that, that feels like that should actually be a software solution. So I think a lot of it is just like, what are the things we're doing manually that we could automate? So for me, topics is big. Finding products for AppSumo is big. Um, I'm super excited about, you know, I think a lot of people are crypto space. So, uh, one of the things I'm looking for is like, how do you scrape Twitter and Reddit and find the new next thing before everyone else. So kind of like a Google Trends or like a discovery thing for these crypto NFTs.

How do you do that now? I don't.

Got it. I mean, it's just too hard manually right now. What I do is that I text my friend who basically just spends 16 hours a day doing NFTs. I'm like, which one are you buying? So like a few days ago I bought a hippo.

Did it work?

Did I tell you about— I bought, I bought a $5,000— was it— how much was it? How much did I spend on that? I think I— no, it was only almost $2,000 hippo, but it's part of a casino. So if you, as the casino makes money, if you own one of the NFTs, you get a cut of the casino rake.

So Sean, it feels like a scam to me. Sean created an email list the other day and he called it the Milk Road. And I don't know, I don't know if it's daily or if it's weekly, but Sarah's been getting it and loves it. And it's all about crypto. And he tries to talk about like the latest and greatest from a trustworthy point of view. And it's, It's pretty great. The Milk Road is awesome. That's a great idea.

The Milk Road. What is he recommending?

I haven't read it yet because I don't like crypto, but Sarah's been reading it and like, he'll just say like, people are tweeting out like— so the weird thing about crypto and NFTs is like, it's on Twitter. It's like in, uh, groups that like you have to be like on the inside to know what's legit. And so there's like these like stupid discourse groups, just, uh, Discord groups and, uh, like these weird tweet Twitter folks where you gotta like know who to follow. And he'll be like, blank is tweeting about blank. That's interesting because of, and then he'll explain. And so it's kind of interesting.

I think what I think was interesting about a lot of these side hustle ideas, and we put together like top ones around crypto, if you're poor, meaning like if you want to be in crypto, but you have no money, like there are a lot of ways to do it. Uh, and one of them is just documenting a lot of this stuff. Right? Like, you could start a newsletter just like researching and putting out like, hey, here's things that are interesting that I'm seeing about it. And eventually that's how you do become an expert in these different areas.

How many—

the other—

go ahead. No, no. How many coaches do you have in your life?

Oh, right now, uh, not as much. So I have a CEO coach. So there's a guy I've been working with named Ken Coleman out of the Bay Area.

Uh, what's the—

what does that—

what firm is that? Torch?

Or is it He's just an independent. So Ken's like old school, like he's not tweeting, he's not on YouTube. Uh, he's just been around Silicon Valley in a lot of these different kinds of companies. Um, and a lot of his stuff is very like, um, it's like really obvious euphemisms, like leaders, Noah, leaders lead.

He's basically like a dad.

I'm like, yeah, he's great, man. He's great. Uh, who are the coaches that we do? And then I have like a CEO advisor. So this guy named Raj who works at Indeed, he's phenomenal. He's a little bit more operational. So I go to him with different people that were, um, I'm like, yo, here's things that I'm seeing today. What do you think I should be doing about it? And so him, I have a Hebrew coach right now. I'm looking for a squash coach. I've been really getting into squash. It's actually, that's kind of been a harder coach to find.

So I, uh, um, you like, you've always been into coaches and you've always done less. I love coaching lessons. And so like you've always, you've always had like flight lessons or like Oh yeah, I think you used to do boxing. And so after we started—

boxing's on Friday, still do it.

So after I talked to you, I started hiring coaches, and coaches are pretty sick. So I've got a bunch of them now, and they are badass. It is absolutely upped all my— most all my coaches are fitness related, but like, if I do want to learn something, I always hire a coach now. It's 100% the way to go, dude.

I'm glad. That's cool to hear that, man. Hold on, so you have your fitness coach?

Well, for your box, I have like a boxing— yeah, and like, we like And so he's— because I'm like trying to fight and like prepare for a real match. And so he's like helping me. And then I have a fitness coach as well. And then for a little while I did My Body Tutor, but I have a different nutritionist now. So yeah, I like— I'm all about coaches.

I think we're— for people, especially if you don't have money to do something like that, it's more also like, how do you just get someone to hold you accountable, right? At the end of the day, like one of the things I found really was just having an accountability buddy. So if you're trying to start a hustle, if you're trying to be healthy, um, if you can't afford a coach, like that's an easy way to find someone who'll just help you make sure that you, you're going on your path.

What do you use?

Like maybe it's in your, the Hustle Facebook group.

What do you use to track all your, all your stuff that you have going on? Like, like you have 2 or 3 or 4 coaches at any point. You've got your work, you've always got shit going on. Do you have some weird way that you track all this?

I don't know. I track all of it. I think the, I mean, I just have, most of my stuff is just automatic, so I don't really have to track it. Meaning that like every Friday, like my calendar is, is pretty much as automatic as possible. And I think I've talked about this in the past, like it's color coded, right? So every Friday at 10:00 AM is boxing. So that's just automatic. And then generally flying is gonna be every other week and that's yellow. So that's one of my learning. And then Hebrew's on Thursdays, therapy's Wednesday, every other Wednesday at 11, that's yellow. So yellow's my learning category. I do squashy steamy where we play squash and go to the steam room. Uh, that's not really with a coach, but I think if you can have more things on autopilot, so you don't have to think about it, then you don't have to track it. The only thing I think I actively aggressive, not aggressively, but I've tracked for 15 years is my personal finance. What do you, what do you use for that? Every single, I use a spreadsheet. Everyone does. So if you go to, I think on, yeah. Okay. dork.com. Where's my money? Uh, it's literally just like, what's my assets? What's my liabilities? Uh, and then what are some action items I want to take in the next 30 days?

Do you, when, when you're tracking any of that, do you count privately held stock as anything?

Um, and then we can talk about AppSumo KPIs, cause there's some interesting stuff, how we track there and then the YouTube tracking. So more business-related stuff. Um, in my net worth sheet, I only track the cost basis.

Well, but so I don't track like, how do you have a valuation?

No, no. So I literally just track how much I invested in it. So I invested in like Circle, invested in Buffer, invested in Elementy, Huckberry. I only invest in companies I use. I don't invest in anything I don't use. And so I just track that, like I put $10,000 in, and that's just what it is. I don't track like the appreciation on that at all.

Buffer is an interesting company. So Buffer, when I was— when— so a lot of people who listen to this show are young. When I was like younger, when I was younger, when I was 24, 25, Buffer was the most badass company because they did this thing where they revealed all of their revenue. And at the time that was like revolutionary. Um, like some small-time bloggers were doing it, but Buffer started doing it, but their company has totally stalled, hasn't it? Like their revenue—

that's a tough one.

Like $25 million every single year for like the last 3 years.

Yeah, I invested in 'em because I, I love Leo. I love Joel. They're, I mean, they're very innovative at the time. I think what people don't give like Zuckerberg and some of these people credit for is how do you stay relevant and consistent? Same with Tim Ferriss. Like how do you stay relevant for 15 years? It's very easy to come out hot, but to actually kind of have that stuff, um, how does Zuck do it? You know, for anyone out there, well, I think for anyone it's just like you have to stay consistent with it and you have to kind of keep staying on that edge of where you're a little bit uncomfortable. Um, I think with Buffer, there's, they basically, my, my guess is that they hit a market saturation of how valuable that is for people to pay for their tweets.

Yeah. I'm looking at the revenue.

It's not as valuable to have.

It's gone down since 2019.

Yeah. I mean, I think they haven't, well, here's the interesting thing. They've gone down, but Canva's a $40 billion company and it's pretty much the exact same thing. Canva?

What's the difference? Canva is the same thing as Buffer. Are you on drugs? What are you talking about? Canva's amazing.

Canva, it's the same thing. It's how do I create content that I can then share or post in other places? But I think where they evolved past Buffer, which Buffer was like, I'm gonna help you make your content for Twitter, Twitter or Facebook, which really didn't make a difference. And then Canva was like, well, what if we can help you make these templates that you can just use in social media, but as well through a lot of other categories. And so I think that's kind of like market size is where they, I think iterated better than, but not iterated, but picked a better market. Same as AppSumo. We got lucky with this market.

Canva is gonna be like software just got— Canva's gonna be one of the most most valuable publicly traded companies, I think, in the world when they go public. Dude, have you seen their numbers? They've just crossed a billion in revenue and it's like doubling. Really? Canva is killing it, man. They've raised money at a $40 billion valuation because they grew their revenue from $500 million to a billion in a year. And it's on a tear, man. Canva is amazing.

That is bonkers, man.

Wow. Crazy. What's crazy is the founders are husband and wives. And they bootstrapped it for a long time. And so the husband and wife trio or a couple is worth like $15 or $20 billion right now.

Good for them.

It's nuts. Good for them. Canva is a crazy story. We're going to have to cover Canva sometime because they're growing like a weed. I have no idea how they grew so fast.

One thing I do want to come back on, Sam, I was talking to Mitchell on the back end. Um, one thing that I do in tracking that when I've told people, they always find it pretty interesting is like I do monthly life and reviews.

I told you about this every month.

So what I'll, what I'll do, reveal in that email. I'm gonna copy that. So you, you have photos.

Yeah. So I'll just tell you, so let me, so I don't share my photos, but basically what I'll do is I'll pull up my photos, uh, from December, look through December to the end, and I'm like, damn, a lot of hap— a lot of stuff happened versus what I think happened. Um, I'll start the— so let me just start the December one. I put December was a fucking month, uh, 6 out of 10. Um, it may not be my greatest, but maybe it was actually better than I think. And then I'll start the email with what are the things I said I was gonna do December and how did I do against them? So a few of 'em was like at peace with my drinking. Uh, and my— I was not at peace with my drinking. I said I'd go to a Niners game, which I did. Um, lock in my 2022 bucket list, which I did. And then I'll just try to do like a little bit more of a stream of consciousness reviewing of how the month actually went about themes, work, travel, family. I've tried it with categories and I've tried also just free flowing. There's not— whatever works for you. I think the important thing here is having like a group of people that you can send it to that don't even have to give you feedback. Like they don't, you don't need their opinion, but it's just like, here's my life. How's your life? And if you want opinions, you can ask for them.

Would you ever make that public?

And then also This is way too raw to make public.

It's like, um, such good content. I would love to like to read this.

Oh, this, I mean, I'll send you, I'll send you the December one. Just don't share it.

But it's just like, well, I'm just saying like, I'm, I'm thinking like, would I do that as a blog? It's pretty cool. The end of year reviews for a lot of people. The reason why I started thinking about Syed recently, that guy, the WPBeginner guy, is because he has this end of year review and I always love reading his end of year review.

I didn't really look him up. Um, some of this stuff has like— we did this like wild therapy out in Mexico on the beach, which was just like psychedelics.

And that is—

some of the stuff is just really sensitive. Yeah, but I don't know if I'd want to make it public.

I'll send— let me ask about that really quick and then we'll wrap up. But did that stuff make a difference? Just don't— doing psychedelic therapy, which I told a story about how I almost did it one time, but I got kicked out of the group.

Did it get kicked out?

This lady used to work at Lehman Brothers. She was like, worked at the banks that like helped destroy America at one point. And she got mad at us for talking about money too much. And like she was saying how like her medicine needs to be free for the world but was making me pay $2,000. And I was like, lady, you realize how like, or how like hypocritical you are? Like you're talking about like how capitalism ruins everything, but You're like, you worked at Lehman Brothers and like you're making me pay you $2,000 to do drugs with you. Like, come on, like don't act like your shit don't stink. And she kicked me out of the group, so I didn't get to— I didn't get to actually do it with her.

You couldn't have your self-improvement.

Yeah, I didn't— she didn't let me do drugs with her.

I do want to end— Mitchell is— Mitchell is messaging me. He's like, yo, you got to do your favorite purchases or website.

But tell me really quick, did the therapy work?

So I've done a lot of different therapy. Like I've done ayahuasca, which I put— I put that article out that went viral. And have you read that?

Yeah, I— if I remember correctly, the takeaway was like, it was cool. Like it made somewhat of a difference, but like it wasn't that great.

Um, no, it's definitely impactful. It's just intense. I mean, I think what, you know, there's a lot of different ways to eat a Reese's Peanut Butter Cup. I always think, um, the, it was LSD therapy. And, um, I think the main theme that I took away from that specific experience, well, a theme in general for me is like, how much should we have life be super predetermined? Like I want to go make this much money or I want to go on this vacation versus how much should we just let the day like unfold? And, uh, I think that's where that was definitely a theme I was trying to just understand. I think the big theme from that specific experience was like, how do I let more joy in my life? Right? Like my word of the year is smile. Like I think it's good to have an intent.

Yeah.

Like to have an intent or something in the year. And for me, smile, just like, yo, just enjoy it. Right. We're all gonna die someday. Just like enjoy the grind. Enjoy getting to chat with you today, which, you know, I was like, this is probably the highlight of my day. I have a buddy coming at 6:30, but I was like, I really want to talk to Sam today. Like, I'm looking forward to it. Um, so that was the main theme from that experience. I think there's a lot of ways to learn about ourselves. I think, you know, MDMA or LSD therapy, regular therapy, journaling. There's a lot of different ways, you know, whatever is calling people at the right time.

What are your, uh, all right. Mitchell was telling, telling, he also told me this, or he wrote it in the thing about best stuff to buy for under $100. You and I are the same in that we buy Lots of crap just because like we're, we're both obsessed with gadgets. Um, by the way, you sent me over, so I told Noah I was going to go camping and he sent me over this massive Tupperware container with like all these gadgets. There was candy in there that expired in like 2012. Like I went camping.

Any of the gadgets in there?

Yeah, I went camping and I used your lantern and I used like one of the flashlights and a headlamp. And, uh, I saw, I found some Swedish Fish or something like that, but it like expired like years ago.

I'm more of a Sour Patch Kid guy now.

That's what it was. Sorry, it was Sour Patch Kids. It was, it was like, it was, it was that type of candy. Yeah.

Huh. Um, different purchase. I don't know, I was trying to pull up some of the different things that I've bought that I'm like, man, I like these and I use them a lot.

Um, let's start with the plunge though. The Cold Plunge. I didn't buy it, I was gifted it. It was expensive as shit. It was like 5 grand. Um, but in my opinion, if you want to be cold, it, it's a pretty cool gadget.

That's good.

Um, I like it, but I don't know, is it worth $3K? Probably not. I like my, I've been using the bathtub and the hot tub a lot more often.

You have a hot tub? I didn't know you had a hot tub.

Come over. Yeah, come over. We'll do a little workout. Oh, uh, dude, here's the thing that I think people are sleeping on, but some people are using it. Have you used Apple AirTags?

I just got one. They're pretty great, dude.

They're like secretly amazing. Like I throw it in my luggage and in my backpack. So if it ever gets lost in like travel or someone ever jacks my backpack, There's like a little secret tag in there, dude.

I've been using Tiles for years, but the Tiles are only okay. The AirTags are way—

what's the difference? I never use those.

Just the interface and how loud the beep is. Oh, that's it.

Yeah.

I just, the, just those two things.

They're pretty dude. You can actually, uh, I haven't messed with 3D printers too much, but Tynan, he puts out a dude, Tynan's gear list. If you don't check out tynan.com's gear list. Definitely one of the top gear lists ever.

Like in terms of like the T-Y-N-A-N.com.

So his gear list is awesome. He has like a lot of USB stuff and like what's the smallest charger to be using. Um, but he, what you can do, which is crazy on Etsy, this is a really neat hack. You can buy a 3D printed thing where you can put an Apple AirTag and then secretly attach it to any of your bikes. So if you're a biker for like $15, you can buy a secret thing that attaches to your water bottle and no one will ever know it's there. So you have a tracker on any of your expensive bikes.

Oh, that's sick. But does the AirTag— so the AirTag only works though if it's hidden within Bluetooth of an iPhone?

Of any iPhone. That— I think that's where there's a little bit of like controversy, but it's any Apple device that has internet connection. All right. I think it is internet connection or Bluetooth mesh connection.

I thought it was Bluetooth, which is kind of like fucked up if you think about it. Bonkers, right?

Dude. Well, I mean, there's these stories where like someone put it on someone's car and then they're tracking them home. I think that's obviously like, that's messed up. Um, but I think just the technically, like, it's just a fun tool to start playing with and just start experimenting with.

All right. So what else have you gotten?

Dude, you know what I've gotten really into?

Tea.

Why? I'm like, I don't know, man. I've been into like Chinese tea. So I bought, um, a Snow Peak bottle. It's called Snow Peak is the brand. It's like super, uh, good for like travel and stuff. And then I buy, um, it's called a gaiwan. I can't believe I'm talking about this publicly. I don't know. It's just so nerdy. It's like what creepy white dudes do.

Um, I mean, you are—

these gaiwans, you have like a little Chinese tea ceremony and it's really inexpensive. You can go to AliExpress, buy it for like $10. Um, and I bought a travel one actually. So I have one for home, which you can buy on AliExpress for like literally $10. Or from Keith Titanium, you can buy a guy one that's for camping. That's like $200. Uh, so when I travel, I'll bring tea around and I get it from this place in the Bay Area called Old Ways Tea. Is it? Well, yeah. OldwaysTea.com. That has definitely been something I'm, uh, way more hyped on. And I, I've definitely been drinking a crap ton more tea this year.

Um, a, a good thing that I bought recently, which I'm almost positive you have as well. What brand chair do you have?

I think this is an Autonomous.

Same, we have the exact same one. So, uh, so basically these chairs that I was looking at, they're like $1,500, like a fancy chair, like a— are they really an Aeron? I think it's called, uh, it's like $1,200 to $2,000. They're really expensive. And so Autonomous is a new startup that's making chairs and desk supplies, and it's basically as good, I think, as the really fancy one, but for like $350.

Yeah, these are definitely affordable. One thing I'm thinking, one thought I've had, Sam, is like, what have you bought in your life that you're like, man, this is luxurious? I was trying to think of things that I'm like, like, I bought this Levi's jacket because it's getting cold in Austin. It's got the little fur. It was $89, and I probably looked for a coupon. And I'm like, yo, this is like, I look like a cowboy, like a real cowboy. This is obviously kind of a joke. Um, and so I was just trying to think like, what are other items in my life where I'm like, man, I can't believe how rich I am, even though it's not that expensive. And definitely that jacket is an example, dude. Amazon— oh, you have these Amazon Basic moccasins. I got those because of you, actually.

Yeah, they're sick, dude.

Those are $20. I'm like, I walk around my house, I'm like, who's the king?

Who's the king? I love that. Um, one thing that we do at my house is we do Costco socks, and we'll buy like 50 pairs and just never match socks again. And then at the end of a, at the end of like half the year or so, we just throw away all the socks and get new ones because like if they wear out or if, cause I, I hate matching socks. And so really I hate, you know, like it's just stupid. Why do I gotta like spend all this time like putting them in a ball together? Like just gimme like a huge bin where they're all the same and I'll just grab two. It's stupid. Matching socks is stupid. I'm, I, I, I take a stand against that. And so anyway, I just don't match socks anymore. And so that's my splurge is I, I spend like $200 a year and I just get fancy new socks. Also, another thing that I do that's pretty amazing is I do the same, that same thing, but with X-Afficionado underwear. So like, you know, like when you like, dude, you know, when you put underwear on and there's like a pair that's always like the last to be used because like the band is all stretched out or you just like don't like it or it's like stained or it looks ugly, like you're just not about it. So I just threw all those away and I only bought one style, one color, but like 30 pairs. And I spent like $500 to do it because Ex Officinado underwear is like $20 to $25 a piece.

Dude, I only wear Sax underwear. I think it's the same kind of, same kind of thing, but it's got the whole little ball holder stuff.

I like those too. I like Sax. They're a good brand and they don't stretch out as fast, but they still do wear out a little bit.

I definitely feel pretty luxurious in them. Do you ever mess with Lululemon socks?

Yeah, I'm all about anything Lululemon, dude.

Lululemon socks, like these no-show socks, cuz they always— all the other no-shows always get holes in them and I'm always just like frustrated about that. But the Lululemon ones, um, what other stuff you bought that you're like, yo, this is rad. And I do wanna spend at least 5 minutes. I know we're gonna end here. Um, I wanna spend 5 minutes, like how do we grow your podcast? Let's like brainstorm. Like I know that's something you're, you're aiming to do, so let's do one or two more of these items and like, I don't know, send, let me, all right, let's do that now.

Let me tell you the numbers now. So in December we did, uh, right about 2 million views, um, I think, or 2 million downloads, uh, of which like I think 600,000 was on YouTube and the rest, so 1.4 million, was just people going on to iTunes or Spotify. Okay, so what's your—

those are— what's your current goal?

Do you have a goal this year around the, the audience or podcast Yeah, I think 3 million, uh, consistently getting at least 3 million downloads a month would put us in like the top like 5 business podcasts in the country.

What's been the biggest thing that's helped you grow it? This is like the way I'm just kind of brainstorming with you here. What's helped you get the biggest delta in new subscribers?

Hmm. Okay. Um, you should sponsor OK My Podcast, or I'll just put you, I mean, you're coming on next week for free.

Well, here's a question.

Yeah.

I mean, how many downloads and episodes do you get?

No, I think it's about 10,000 an episode, dude.

So like, We're a little bit bigger than that now, but like just getting to 10,000 is really hard. Podcasts, do you agree? Are podcasts the hardest thing you've ever tried to grow?

I, that's why I backed out of it. That's why I went to YouTube, dude.

It's so hard, but it's super sticky. Like every podcast that we launch is gonna get at least 50 thou— every episode will get at least 50,000 views, I think.

All right. Here's like a one simple thing that I'm, I don't know why you don't do on your— I, I think one of the ways to think about it, one, it's always easy to get people to come from medium to medium. So podcast sponsoring means they come from one show to the other. Yeah. Super easier. How come you don't promote your podcast or newsletter on YouTube?

Well, not so like I want you to talk about the newsletter, but what do you mean the podcast?

Well, no, no, no, no, no, no. So think about it as like a gateway drug. So someone on another podcast is highly likely to go to a different podcast cuz you already know that they're behavior-wise down there. So sponsoring podcasts is a great one. Getting on other people's shows is a great one. But you're getting like, you had a video recently where you got, uh, how I retired over $20 million by age 31. Had a— has 140,000 views, but in the description there's nothing that says check out my newsletter or my podcast.

Yeah, that's stupid. We should do— you're right. That's low-hanging fruit that we should have solved for.

I would think that's a pretty easy one. And then, um, on your about page on YouTube, you don't link to the podcast.

Really? Are you sure?

Yeah. It says website. Well, it says website. Where does that go? Yeah. I mean, I guess that's okay. It says website, Twitter, Instagram, Facebook. I might wanna actually just put the link for podcast. Uh, I would also consider, I mean, this might be more of a stretch, but I would consider, do you strategically try to really intentionally grow YouTube and/or TikTok? Pick one of those, probably YouTube, and then really think of that as a way to get people into your newsletter, which is like the first step to getting them onto your podcast.

No, it's been the other way around. Uh, like lately we've been go for it. My First Million has become like almost its own brand, I think.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So they did a licensing deal for $60 million over 3 years. And I think there's a world where we would do that, uh, with like Spotify or, uh, one of the other big public, uh, platforms. And I think that's—

I like that as a creative. Hold on, why did you say getting people to, come onto your, to, to like grow the YouTube channel or TikTok is not worth it, or not as important. You were like, yeah, it's not good. Like, what do you mean there?

Um, I, well, what we have found is that I think it's better to grow, to send people straight to the podcast because if they cl— if they click subscribe, then they're notified whenever there's a, uh, 4 minutes, they're, they're notified whenever there's a new episode. You know what I mean?

No. Yeah, but don't you think like, like the amount of people available on the YouTube that are like, hey, I want to hear more about this, then come on. I mean, think about how much like Joe Rogan got found because of YouTube.

Well, and the second answer to that is, I mean, we're trying. It's fucking hard. If we're trying, I'm like, the efforts— if you look at our YouTube page, look at our videos, like the efforts there, like they just don't get that many views all the time. It just is taking a long time. How, I mean, how many views? Look at our YouTube. How do you think it's going?

In my opinion, I would say— do you want recommendations?

Yeah. I would say it's going okay. At best.

So like, would you say 3 to 5 is decent?

I mean, 3 is decent. I think you want to get to 5. You want to be like hitting a really high number. So like our recent, like, uh, awesome videos are hitting 5. Um, so I would aim, I would basically just start tracking your CTR, your click-through rate on these things. And the second thing you wanna be, this is just the, the start with this stuff is that I think this is a way of expanding the pie that people find out about you. And then they're like, oh, in your description, about page, go to the newsletter, go to the podcast, which I would just update your top 10 videos here. You don't need to do all of 'em, but do 'em moving forward. The second thing is your, your average view duration. So the, the Hasan Minhaj one had, it's a 2-hour video. There's a reason it got 26,000 views. It's because it's long as hell, and I'm guessing your average view duration was like 20 minutes.

How many does that have? 20,000?

26,000. Wow. Where, you know, the serial killer got busted through 23— I mean, one, I don't know how that's relevant to people making a million.

It's not.

Put that on your own channel, bro.

Come on, don't blame me for all this stuff.

I've— you're— who's in charge?

I don't know anymore.

Well, anyways, I think the second thing is just look at your average view duration. Do the same thing, just look at a line graph. So like How are we trending? And, and don't worry about super optimizing. Just worry like each month or so, can we try to get both those numbers moving in an upward direction?

Any other things?

I think you were able to do that.

What's that? Anything else we should do?

I mean, your, your thumbnails aren't really—

how much? Dude, I'm pretty sure we're using your thumbnail guy.

Yeah, it might be the thumbnail guy, but you're like, how much are you actually spending to make a great thumbnail? So like every one of our thumbnails now, we go and do custom photos. So at 4:30. I'm literally— it's the third time going out with a photographer to take a thumbnail for the same video.

Dude, that's so much work, isn't it? Isn't that crazy? There's so much work to make it like a YouTube video. I just dismiss it as like, oh, you're just fucking around. It's so much more work than I thought. Yeah, to be good.

I mean, I don't know, I'm not gonna say some cliché shit. Anything great is worth working.

Do you feel like an idiot though on the side of the street doing this face where you're like hands on your head and you're like freaking out about the 2022 to stock market and how it's going to go down.

Well, I think, I mean, the other thing with, no, it's honestly enjoyable. And I find it kind of like a science. It's like a game where like, it's a game more even than a science. Like, how do I win this game? And doing that, it gives me an advantage. So hell yeah, I want to do it. And I find it enjoyable. I think, you know, topics, you should also just kind of consider the topics you're putting out on YouTube. Like, how much do authors make? It's not something that I think people are really like going to immediately stop and drop everything to watch. But like Solana billionaires right now, crypto and NFT and stuff like that, how to get rich is always popular on YouTube.

But dude, we're not making specific content. We're just like, whenever we talk, we're just going to chop— we just chop shit up. So like, it— what we could do is like have pre-planned topics that we think would go get popular on YouTube. It's just a little bit harder to do that naturally in a conversation, but I think we can do it. But Yeah, our goal, like, I'm predicting the future, we're gonna get to like the $3 million range by the end of the year. And once there, um, I think we're gonna be end up being like one of the big— I think we'll be like in the Dave Ramsey, Tim Ferriss category inside the next year and a half.

Here's it. Oh yeah, we can end it. But one thing I find fascinating is there's people who are huge on YouTube that no one knows, but a lot of people know who Tim Ferriss is. Kind of something I've just been reflecting on. What does that mean?

Well, he's been in the game forever. And he also entered the game when the world was smaller. So like in the niche of like tech and startups there and, and this whole like make money online thing, there weren't that many people on it and there weren't that many people who were famous for it. And he was definitely one of the first that was famous for it. Do you know what I mean?

Yeah. I mean, yeah, that's a, it's interesting. As the world gets bigger, it's also getting known in your niche. Like I have a friend who's popular in the spearfishing category. How popular? I think what's that? He's got like a few hundred thousand followers on TikTok. He's got a full-time business now. It's called, uh, Sick Cast. Cast.

It's called Cast and Spear. Groupon for nerds. I want to be a spearfish influencer.

Cause he can be like, no, they didn't need to do this procedure. They need to do this. And now he's ex— so I think one of the things is what do you have in your day job that you can make a business out of? And so he's exploring how to help individuals optimize the, well, not optimize, but reduce their medical bills. So if you got a medical bill, And it's like $5,000 or $1,000 or $10,000. He'll review it for free and then maybe take a cut if he's able to reduce the amount of money that, uh, that's actually a great idea.

There's this company called Buyer.co and, uh, my friend started it and it was called Negotiating as a Service. And they would negotiate anything on your behalf and take a percentage of the savings. And the company sold to Ramp. So if you go to Buyer.co, it redirects to that web— the company you said you don't like, Ramp.

And, uh, it's not that I hate him, it's something to do.

And Byer, the guy who started it, he's like, I sold out too early, but I didn't have any money and it was like a cool way to make money. But, um, he was like, I, this could actually be great. I would do like a negotiating, negotiating as a service and have, um, my health bill be one of the big ones. Uh, another great company is called Do Not Pay and they're doing this, but for, uh, a variety of different things.

Oh yeah.

So then I like Do Not Pay.

Yeah. Do not pay the, the robo lawyer. There's also like vendor.com. Vendor's like a similar one. You give them your bills, they negotiate, and they just take a cut of whatever they say.

Dude, I love those services. I love no-brainer services.

Win-win, no one's down.

Like QuickBooks or, uh, not QuickBooks, uh, TurboTax.

Mint. Yeah, TurboTax a little. It's like, oh, it's free, it's free, it's free. Guess what? If you really want it, it's paid.

But they don't take money from you, they just take a percentage of your refund.

Yes.

Which I like.

Yeah, that's fair. So I, I did wanna say though, dude, honestly for your show, cuz other people out there that are trying to do it, I think obviously you said go on other people's shows, podcasts. I think optimize these low other, these other platforms.

Um, we're going hard on the TikTok thing. The TikTok thing definitely has worked, but has it driven people?

I think ultimately you have to see, is it helping me with my goal? Is it driving people to the podcast?

Unfortunately, I have no idea. That's another shitty part about podcasts is it's hard to know what works because I can look at my charts and see how many downloads we have. It won't tell me how they heard about us. It's not like Google Analytics where I can see like the person who bought this came from Google cuz they searched blank on this type of phone.

Have you done, uh, URL Genius?

No, we've done Chartable. Is that the same thing?

Well, URL Genius is, I think we use this on our show sometimes. It's, uh, app.urlgen.us. It's deep linking, so it'll link deeply into the podcast on Spotify. I don't know if it does iTunes as well. And then you could track, I think. How those clicks are actually looking. So you can put that on TikTok or put that out on the YouTube world.

Hmm. I didn't know about that. All right, I'll look into that.

All right, Samuel, we're going to wrap up.

Love seeing you, dude. Thanks for doing this. You look good, dude.

Thanks for having me.

Did— how many people reached out from the last one? It got— Ben messaged me. He said it got 65,000 or 70,000 views.

Really? Yeah, dude. You guys are— man, I told you the first time I ever came on your show, I had like an ex. This girl I went on a date with was like, I can't believe you're on the show.

Yeah, he messaged me. He said he got 65,000 views or downloads.

I think this one— thank you for having me, man.

This is excellent. All right, we'll talk in a little bit. Talk soon.