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

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

I'm good. What are you doing?

Well, I just got back from Albuquerque. I was hanging out with my family and then, uh, I just got home and there's like back-to-back meetings before we go to the Trail of Lights tonight in Austin.

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

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

Do you enjoy having a normal schedule now?

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

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

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

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

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

Um, but I just like, just like, you could be better. You could be better. Yeah. Like Jewish. Why are you doing this?

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

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

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

You're, uh, since I've known you now for, I think like 8 or 9 years and you've all, you're, you're, you're cagey with numbers. So I don't want to push you if you don't want to be pushed. Can you talk about how big you guys are now, given— I mean, in your YouTube video, I think you said $100 million in revenue.

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

I, I, well, Cage is weird. You, you said $80 in another video. What? I think we're gonna hit it.

Because someone doesn't wanna tell you how much they make is a cage?

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

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

Um, tens of millions of dollars.

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

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

Only?

Well, my stock is, is significant.

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

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

And frankly, I don't— Yeah, sorry.

I don't know. And I don't love exactly saying— What are we going to ask? Who's wealthier, you or Shawn? Oh dude, I don't know. Here, I'll tell you this. We did a podcast recently and I basically said my goal was to make at least $20 million by the age of 30. And I did that.

Dude, good for you.

And that was the goal. But I own assets now in some real estate and I own HubSpot stock and Airbnb stock, but like you own AppSumo, which is an $80 million a year business. Do you think you're worth $200 or $300 million?

Isn't that crazy?

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

Well, I mean, you guys would sell for— if you said that you're going to do in the range of $80 million in revenue, I mean, I don't know how I would value that 5 times profits or 5 times that number, I guess.

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

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

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

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

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

Yeah, I don't know. I mean, like, we have— you and I have this buddy. We remember that one time we were out to eat and You could say his name. I don't know. You're— he's your friend, so you could tell me if you want to say his name. But he was like, Noah, you're not growing at 3 times a year. What the fuck? You're leaving so much on the table. And you're like, dude, I just went mountain biking like on a Tuesday. And then on Wednesday I like did this. And then on Thursday I did this. We're going to make like $80 million in revenue this year and I own most of it. I'm so happy. And he was criticizing you as a friend. And, and I was like, No, is he, is he crazy? Like, you've got it. This is perfect. This is— don't change. This is perfect.

It's, um, I don't know. I guess how you want to live, do you think that— I guess that changes over the years, right? And I think what— what's that? No, no, how you want to live. I mean, I think in your 20s you're just like scrambling and wanting to— I know for me, I wanted to prove myself. I wanted to have status. I wanted to have it. And then as your 30s, you know, I'm still doing it. What, um, no, I'm just like, you know, you, you figure out more what really gives you fulfillment. I think everyone's got their own stuff. I think figuring it out for yourself is a really tough thing.

You, um, how many people work there? 100?

I think now we have 140.

Isn't that crazy?

It's— yeah, yeah, it is crazy. Do you like— it was just, it was just started as a side— oh, sorry, am I cutting you off too?

No, keep going. I want to hear—

Why $3,000 a month?

$1,000 was for living, $1,000 was for eating, and $1,000 was for saving.

That's funny. That's almost exactly what I did too. It was about that number. Um, did you— well, how big do you think it was going to get?

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

I keep interrupting you. I'm sorry.

Go ahead. That's all good, man. Well, like, there's a, there's a quote I read by Paul Graham and it was like, if you're so worried about what's going to— your company's going to be in 10 years, like, you're never going to make sure you can take care of your customers today and your business won't exist in 10 years. So don't worry about it. And I just kind of, I guess that's how that's, that's served me well. I think someone asked me, they're like, what did it take to become a millionaire? And I think one of the things for me was just like following the curiosity. And I was like curious about all this stuff that like that we, me and you get paid for.

Yeah. I mean, I'm in the same boat. I think when I having 140 employees would, I don't know if it would freak me out, but like, I remember, do you still look at your payroll when you pay it every 2 weeks?

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

Yeah.

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

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

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

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

I'm just trying to survive to next year, dude. I mean, you know, it's funny, we've had, as we've grown and it's been interesting because I have my YouTube channel, which is a very small team of like 5 people. And then we have AppSumo, which is a larger thing. I come back to the why, right? Like on AppSumo, it's very simple. We promote dope tools at great prices and we help people start and grow online businesses. appsumo.com. And, um, I think we have to come back to that because people are like, where are you going to be in 5 years? I'm like, probably helping people grow and start online businesses. No, I know you're going to be doing the same thing, but like, I mean, we were, yeah, we, we, we went to the spreadsheet and we tripled numbers, Silicon Valley, double, double, triple, triple. From In-N-Out. And, uh, we became a billion-dollar company revenue in like 5 years or something like that. I think right now, candidly, some of our mechanics in terms of the scalable business means as we add partners, do we get customers? And as the business grows, um, the, the, how do I say it more clearly? It's just not adding up. Like we added more partners this year and the proportional amount of customers did not come with that. And so we have to work a little bit more on that flywheel.

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

Why is your YouTube team so big?

5 people? I don't even think it's that big. MrBeast has like 100 people.

No way. You think he has 100 employees?

At least 50 full-time. At least 50 full-time, if not 100 contractors.

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

The MrBeast Jimmy?

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

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

Are you getting noticed on the street now?

No, not just really. You don't? It varies. In Austin, you know, it's kind of our hometown, so I think more people do it. Um, not, not actually, not even though the channel's gotten bigger. We doubled this year. I actually used to get noticed a lot at the gym. The guy, hey bro, I'm like, hey, I don't know. I'm always still excited when people came and come and say hi.

I just got, uh, did you get recognized? Yeah, weekly. I just— this, like, this morning, just walking down the street. And, uh, it makes me a little nervous sometimes because I'm like thinking I gotta like, uh, like, like, like, uh, I love smoking cigars and I'll just walk around smoking cigars and I'm like, I don't want people to see me smoking. It makes me a little nervous.

Don't you think it's flattering? I'm always so— I always feel honored that like I feel like I've worked on— yeah, something I've worked on has impacted this person and they're excited to say hi to me. Like, who have you seen that you've said hi to that you're a little nervous?

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

Was this here?

New York, when I was in, or I guess it wasn't the other day, about 2 or 3 months ago. I saw him, and I, and I respect it. I respect what he built, and he was a big old dude, and I I, I could have stopped and be like, hey, like, this is what I do for a living. Your brother was on my thing, and I probably— we probably got friends of friends. But I was honestly kind of nervous, and I just like just pounded it when I walked away.

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

Did you see my Twitter thread about when I met the Silk Road guy? No, you didn't see that? I posted it the other day. I was looking through old Dropbox pictures. And, um, or go to my Instagram or something. You'll see it. And, uh, I posted your— yeah, I want you to see it. It's me with Ross Ulbricht, the guy from Silk Road.

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

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

How much better is your life now being rich?

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

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

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

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

So I don't— I have no problems, anything that's health related, I'll buy.

I don't know, I'm still mindful of it. I think what's fascinating on the other side of it, Sam, is like, I mentioned it to you in text, but you didn't want me to talk about it, which is like crypto and NFT crap. Which all these, you know, former Shopify store owners now are crypto experts, which is funny. And, um, I like trade and I'll make, or I'll buy something and make like $100 or I'll lose like $1,000. And I'm like, not devastated, but like, same. And then like AppSumo, like we promote partners and, you know, we'll do like $1 million in a day and the partners make like $700,000 and our customers are happy. And I'm like, well, that's cool. Yeah. It's, it's funny.

The things that there's a phrase, it's called a, a penny poor, pound rich, I think. Right. Or, uh, yeah, something like that. Do, do, do you, uh, we were talking about crypto, but you don't actually buy crypto, right? You just bought a bunch at one time and you held on to it. No.

Well, two things. One thing I wanna highlight, this is a phrase that Chad said, my business partner at appsumo.com. You like how I plug it? Um, he actually had this phrase that was great. He's like, Noah, don't confuse the anthills for the mountains. And I was like, damn, that's good. And he is like, when we're doing work at AppSumo and you know, the different products we've built, or, you know, whatever it is, he's like, is this a macro thing or a micro thing? And let's do the macro thing. Let's get some fucking mountains, man. He's like, don't sweat this bullshit stuff. And I'm like, all right. But that, that's hard, man. Especially, I was telling someone recently where there's all these productivity tools and everyone's always, everyone's always like, what's the latest? I'm like, you're not even doing anything. Like, don't worry about the calendar or the productivity tool. Worry about just doing important things.

This is the best productivity tool. The back of an envelope. That's damn, it's a good, that gets the job done.

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

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

Well, okay. I mean, you can, I don't have to tell you it's fine. I, I, if I had a bet, can I, can I guess?

Oh yeah, I'll be cagey.

I would guess between $1 and $2 million.

Yeah, isn't that nuts?

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

Well, the NFTs I think are mostly fucking stupid.

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

Are you on board or not?

Dude, I just got scammed. I lost my— I'm like, I can't— I don't even know what happened for the past 2 weeks. I'm like, yesterday I woke up at 8:00 AM to buy apes. I just spent $1,600 on apes.

What of the, of the $4 million in crypto, how much did you— what's your, what's your basis there?

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

Isn't that amazing? Is, is that crazy?

Uh, yeah. Well, I think I've always just bel— it's interesting cuz I've, I've always, not always, when I started using it, I was like, oh, I can see why this is gonna be big. Um, but yeah, the return on it as an investment is pretty insane.

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

Yeah, but you gotta grind sometimes. Often.

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

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

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

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

Uh, do you think that— I mean, I have, I've had people quit for that reason. I do the same thing. You and I are very similar. You know that, right? And, uh, and I did the same thing where I'm like, why are you doing this? What's going on today? What are you doing right now today? Like, what actions can we take immediately to fix X, Y, and Z? And I think you need both. You need that urgency, but like, if you have a good, if you have a winner, you do gotta let 'em chill and get it done. Um, do you think that Aman, whenever I have hired people to run stuff, I always, I'm, I get, I freak out. I'm like, this guy's gonna, when he finds out that I'm like profiting off their work, like they're gonna bail. This is so unfair. And I hope they don't figure this out. Did you freak out about that?

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

Are you interested in any projects right now? You had SendFox. Did you shut down SendFox?

Uh, no, we're still running sendfox.com. It's a MailChimp alternative.

Um, what do you like? What type of projects? Are keeping you up?

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

Right. What use cases?

what's the city one called?

CityDAO.

Who's, who's organizing it?

CityDAO, I don't know, but it's all public for the most part, but there's just, there's so much stuff like that. Like, think about this, you can do housing. So like right now housing is like Noah owns a contract. Goes to the thing and all this. Well, it's like you can have a house that's shared by 1,000 people, or like Roblox or Minecraft in the game stuff is really interesting where it's like, there's not like Facebook and Twitter that get everything or Roblox. It's like the creators and the consumers own the whole thing. Same with AppSumo. Like, how can we create it so the whole customer base owns AppSumo? So they're incentivized even to start doing AppSumo more. I guess it's kind of like owning a share in Amazon, but kind of on a deeper level.

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

Not yet. I've always—

not yet. So there's this thing called, uh, what's it called? Friends with Benefits. Have you seen that?

I've heard of it.

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

It's so hard to figure out. I feel so old.

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

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

So there's a lot of different, dude, there's all these different, I fully don't understand every single one out there. Um, I'm not biology, but what they do is a few different things. So one, they could keep some of the assets. So when they, so they do a few different things. When you mint the tokens or the NFTs to give out, you, people buy into it. So when I create the baseball cards and I sell it to you, it's like 1 ETH each for you to buy. I, the, the CityDAO keeps all that. And then they could decide how much of that goes out to use to buy land. They could say 80% buys land or 50%. They can decide that. The second thing they do, which is really interesting, this is what's really clever about NFT stuff is a lot of times on the secondary sales, the original owner gets a cut. You know that?

Yeah. I didn't know how much though.

So it varies. So you can have a thing where if I create NFTs and it's ever resold, I get 5% of all sales forever. So there's just some, there's some really interesting things. And then you can have people contribute more. There's just a lot of variations. And look, in the end of the day, people have had partnerships, so this is not brand new. I think the medium of exchange through crypto and all this stuff is creating new opportunities.

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

Not familiar.

It's like basically the, the kind of explain like I'm 5 version is if you get a disease in your skin like goes away or something happens to your skin and it gets messed up. Gene editing, you can tinker with someone's genes and it will grow, they'll grow back new skin. Whereas before they probably wouldn't have. Um, the issue with gene editing is that it's highly regulated by the FDA. And so like the future of gene editing could be like, if you're an amputee, you can grow back a new leg or, or you could grow a new liver or kidney or whatever, you know, shit like that. And Peter Thiel has this city in like Bolivia, somewhere in Central or South America. And he basically is like the founder of this city. And this company that I invested in is based out of that city because there is no FDA in that city, which is like potentially horrible, but it's kind of interesting. He, he said that he's in, he's incredibly invested and interested in new cities. And, uh, I think so. I think that that's cool when I hear about all these new startup people like Mark Laurie, the founder of Jet, he has a new cities. I think these new cities are actually incredibly fascinating.

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

What did you think about meeting Peter Thiel?

You know, what was it? There's a lot of interesting things about him. Um, I think when I tweeted about this at No Kagan was that he just uses like an iPhone 7, right?

Like the guys— what are we on now? What— I've got the new one. What is that?

Yeah, 13 Pro .5, whatever.

And he's on a 7.

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

you think he was wearing regular jeans? Wrangler, just like, like Kmart jeans, just like normal.

And, you know, but he also had 3 security guards and, you know, cameras and they checked the building, all that kind of stuff. I think I admired that he is a thinker and it made me appreciate, you know, I met him when I worked at Facebook and I still remember this story. He like bought into our poker game and then he had to go meet with Zuck and then he lost and then he's like, hey, can I get my money back? And then Boz, who's now like the CTO, was like, fuck no.

He asked for his money back.

Yeah, Peter did. And I was like, I can't believe— and then also we would say no to the guy who's our only, you know, the main investor at the time.

Uh, I think the other thing that I appreciate about it is how much was the buy-in?

Like $10.

And he asked for it back?

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

He told— and he said that exactly like that. He said, fuck you.

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

What did you tell him that— do you remind him of that story when you're with him recently?

I don't think he remembers me. But yeah, I think the second thing about him is that he's a very— I have— I was just looking at my notes of him. I don't mind sharing. I think just like he's just a deep thinker. It just felt like this guy's like really like him. And this is another, you know, him and like Keith Raboi and all these guys, they're a lot of history readers. They're like deep ass, like reading boring fucking books about 1900 history that I just won't— I'm not—

won't—

I just don't do. And I think that gives— that's where a lot of their advantage comes from.

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

Dude, Keith's a legend. I love me Keith Raboi. Him, David Sachs. Oh, I don't listen to the All In Show. Um, I don't even listen to the hustle.

Is he, is he cool?

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

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

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

So you like Miami?

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

Would you stay? Do you intend to stay in Austin for a while?

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

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

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

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

So he doesn't spend anything on longevity?

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

Yeah, that was shocking. I was shocked that he had low willpower. He talked to— you know, because you kind of— you watch all these fuckin' videos and you listen to the podcast, it's like, I wake up at 5 and I have, you know, celery and I take a cold shower. He's like, nah, I like eating chocolate cake. And he's, you know, and he was drinking wine and like he eat carbs. And I was like, he's a fuckin' human, which made me have a lot of appreciation for him. And I, I mean, and I felt like he also was very generous, way more than I thought. He stayed and talked to us the whole time, like 4 hours without checking his phone, without tweeting any bullshit. And it was very present, which I really appreciated.

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

That's an interesting thought. Um, I think one of the things he had a lot of phrases. Do you want to hear a few of these? Like he just had these phrases. I'm like, man, these are great phrases. Look ahead function.

I thought that was good.

God, that's a baller one.

That's a really good one. Um, companies are mortal, cities are immortal.

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

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

Did he have an opinion about that?

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

Um, yeah. And, and I agree with that, but doesn't he live in LA? Yeah, that's kind of weird, right?

I admire that. I think I get annoyed with people like, I'm in Puerto Rico to save 4 nickels, and I'm like, well, yeah, but you have to— Puerto Rico is actually not horrible, but you have to live there.

Yeah, there's no fucking power for 2 weeks if there's a hurricane.

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

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

Do you want me to tell you or not tell you?

No Conspiracy or Conspiracy Theories or something.

Yeah, that's it.

Is that what it is? Conspiracy Theory.

Is that it?

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

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

Was it a black Mercedes?

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

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

That's really interesting.

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

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

What do you think you'd do?

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

Fucking boring.

It's fucking lame. Um, not too much. I think I would just do the things I'm doing at a higher level now. I would like not worry about buying houses. I'm not sure, dude. I don't know. The AppSumo stuff is hard. I don't think I would pay right away to get out of it, but I'd try to figure some—

something else.

It's tough. I got another like year or two in it for this role. Then probably buy houses and I'm just trying to figure out how to adjust the work to only do the area I want.

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

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

Well, I'm not giving it to the world, but I would like anything like— like, I felt bad. Remember that Tony Hsieh stuff? Tony Hsieh, the guy from Zappos, you know? That's sad. It was sad. And but when I saw that, I'm like, man, I wish it didn't go that way. But at the same time, like, he would travel with an entourage and I'm like, that is sick. As you know, the substance abuse thing was bad, but wherever I went, I would just say, crew, who's, who's coming with? And you and I have a friend, this guy who started Rent Jungle or not Rent Jungle, Jungle Scout, Greg Mercer. And he bought these fancy seats to F1.. And I don't know how much it costs, but I bet you this box costs $50,000 to $100,000. And he was like, um, hey, do you want, do you want to come? And I just had cheapo tickets. And he's like, we took care of everything. And I was like, what? I was like, well, how much is it? I'll pay you. He goes, no, no, no, it's cool, man. It's fun. I like sharing. And he brought me and it was awesome. And he's told me stories about how he takes people to Telluride. He just, if he's doing cool shit, he's like, hey, anyone who wants to come, come with me. And it sounds awesome. That's what I want to do.

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

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

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

It's not even yours.

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

Like, it's not your kid. I mean, it just feels like you love him, but you're not—

it's not your, your blood or your, you know, it is part some blood, I think, genetic.

Some.

Yeah, I think I'll have kids. I mean, I Maybe I'll go to sperm bank and just donate a ton, and then each of those kids gets like a mil. Maybe they get— each one of them gets a CryptoPunk.

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

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

So there's a few things. One, I will say I'm shocked anyone listens, but at this point we're at, we're at, we're, we're like over a million downloads a month now. Um, which is crazy. So some episodes like 50, 60, 70,000 downloads, which is pretty crazy. Um, two, shockingly, people find us funny. Like, that's what the comments say, which amazed me. And 3, I would say Sean's really good. I think Sean's good. I think a lot of people listen for him.

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

It's been so hard.

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

Well, is YouTube easier, you think?

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

it's so hard.

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

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

Oh, which one, the drinking one?

No, the, um, the real estate one about my project.

How many views? 2,400 views. 2,400, that's good, man.

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

Did you edit it yourself? Yeah, good for you.

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

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

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

Oh dude, love Nick Bare.

Nick Bare is the best YouTuber I've been seeing lately. The other day he put out basically a documentary and he's doing like 1 or 2 a week. Um, he did a documentary on the Leadville 100, this 100-mile race he did. Nick Bare is the most impressive YouTuber I've seen lately.

Do you agree? Have you had him on your show?

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

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

Did you meet him in person?

Yeah, it's awesome.

Is he just yoked?

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

Oh, you just kept up with him?

no, I think you and I are very punchable.

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

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

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

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

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

So well-rounded, man. Who on earth can weigh 195 pounds and, you know, squat 500 pounds and run a 3-hour marathon? It's so interesting.

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

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

Uh, let's look at my homepage. So obviously Noah Kagan, Colin and Samir are studs. I love Colin Smear. Oh, dude, you know who's the best? Andrew Callahan, Channel 5. He was the All Gas, No Brakes.

Wait, what?

Oh, he is— dude, watch the Chet Baker. So Channel 5 with Andrew Callahan. Uh, watch the, um, watch the Pickup Artist Boot Camp or Chet.

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

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

All gas, no brakes.

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

Same. Which ones?

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

I'm just writing all these down. Dave Canterbury.

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

Do you like Primitive Technologies?

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

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

Well, have you watched the show Alone?

No. Oh, oh, on Hulu? Yes. Were there any Hulu? Have you met like the— with the guy that looks like, uh, like he— like he's wearing like bearskin around? He looks like a Native American, the white dude, but he's like I actually don't know where he is. And there's another guy who was in the caves of Missouri.

There's a bunch of weird-ass people in there, but dude, it's epic. So I definitely would recommend Alone. So I like all the survival stuff from that. I watch a lot of— dude, this is the weirdest one. I watch a lot of squash videos. I probably watch like, like it's on right now. Watch this while you're talking to me, Sam. I have it on in the background, like hydraulic, hydraulic press. No squash, like the game, like the British game.

Why are you watching that?

I just leave it on. It's just like white noise I put on the background. So I watch a lot of that on YouTube. That's kind of a lot of— that's the main things, like outdoor survival, architecture, of course Neville, and, uh, yeah, that's about it.

All right, well, Ben, what do we think? What other— what are you gonna say?

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

Dude, I've been reading all crime books.

So like, like, like the real murder mystery?

Well, yeah, I like that. But like, I just like one on 9/11. Um, another one—

favorite book this year.

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

I heard that one.

What's the Comanche Indians? And they're, they're just nutty. Like, the Texans were evil and the Indians were evil to each other. The Indians and the Texans were just like— it's about how they just destroyed each other. And then finally, The Operator, which is basically the guy who killed bin Laden, and he like tells the story of finding bin Laden.

And that was good. Some of these military books were kind of weak.

No, no, that one was spectacular. Yeah, he talks about like finding— he goes in depth about hunting down bin Laden and shooting him in the head. Like it's intense.

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

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

How do they make money?

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

Okay, uh, but I bookmarked—

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

Ha! Is it amazing? Wow, what?

Yeah, so they start at the bottom of the UK in their underwear That's it. And they have to get to the top of UK on bike in 3 weeks.

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

I think the audiobook is good, dude. All right. I think I got it at the library for free.

Oh, and it's on Kindle Unlimited. It's free on Kindle, dude. Hell yeah. All right. I'm, I'm going to do that. Any other ones?

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

Yeah, dude, we're reading the same travel stuff, so I'll give you another one then. Um, Little Golden America. In the 1930s, two Russian journalists from the USSR were welcomed into America, and they just traveled for, uh, 4 months all over America. And they're like, you know, it's pretty crazy in America. And they just like, you just explain from their perspective what America is about. They're like, in America, everyone's so optimistic. For example, we met these guys It's cool, and it's— no one knows about it in America, but it's one of the most popular books in Russia.

In Russia, you book read you. Uh, uh, what else? Oh, there's some other good ones. Did you read about the— dude, you know Ryan Holiday's book list is really good?

Uh, his email list?

His email list, he just recommends books.

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

I don't know, dude. He's like audiobooks.

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

I know. I think he reads, he's probably like, it has to be paper. And if it's not this like certain density of organic paper, I won't read it.

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

I think that's true.

Yeah. But that's like a, I mean, I'm not going to take notes on like killing up bin Laden.

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

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

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

Everyone talks about that book.

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

It's that good.

Well, it's like David Goggins' book. I'm like, all right, David, you're gonna yell at me, you're really hardcore, I get it, you could do push-ups or pull-ups That's great. His book, if you haven't read David's, like everyone talked about it, it's honestly a phenom— one, it's very well written and two, it's just a great story.

It's just a fun audiobook. Is cool too.

Yeah. Him, the Wright Brothers. I got that.

Do you remember? Oh, I read that one recently. Amazing.

That was awesome.

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

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

No. What's that one?

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

Fuck you.

No, but it's a true story. That's the crazy part. So I really enjoyed that. These are just ones from this year.

All right. I'm going to read— wait, I think this guy James Frey, Million Little Pieces, didn't he— isn't he famous for a bunch of stuff?

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

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

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

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

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

That's how crazy it is.

Yeah.

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

Game over on this little golden America. They have an audiobook or it's just paperback.

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

Yeah. How did you hear about this?

Goodreads recommended it to me when I was reading the In Search of America, uh, the John Steinbeck book. I loved that. That was one of the best. Like, I— it was like I got addicted to that. It randomly popped up on things recommended and it had 5 out of 5 reviews. 5 out of 5 stars on, on Goodreads, and it had like 3,000 reviews. But when I Googled it, I couldn't find a thing about it. So I was like, this is kind of intriguing. Did you look at it on Goodreads?

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

It's badass. Uh, the guy who started it spoke at HustleCon. His name's Otis Chandler. And his grandpa started the LA Times, and Otis sold to Amazon for like a billion dollars, I think. Either— I think it was a billion or $100 million, but he sold it to him like 10 years ago or something like that. So he just knocked it out the park. Do you ever—

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

Yeah, and I've always thought I want to read all this, but then, you know, I started thinking One time I, I listened to like Think and Grow Rich on audiobook and I loved the narrator and I was like, I wanna remember this narrator's or the, the audio guy. I wanna remember his voice because he's so good. And I looked at what else he had done and he's read like 1,000 self-help books. And I'm like, wait a minute, you've read all these and you're still fucking making $50 an hour reading these damn books. What the hell, man? This is not effective. And so after that, I, I almost quit reading business book or self-development books in entirely.

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

The best, right?

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

So, well, Out of Thin Air, that's not— that's a different one. Wait, Out of Thin Air?

Oh, you're thinking of, um, the one about the guy in Alaska?

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

Yeah, this guy like goes and runs with Kenyans. I think you're going to get Into Thin Air, the Jon Krakauer one, which is also awesome.

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

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

All right, I'll read it.

All right, I got to rock.

This was good.