From losing $1B to running a $100m per year business - Noah Kagan [AppSumo]

26:12That's the way that I've been able to take pride in following through the things I say I'm going to do and build my confidence in that. That's nice. And when you know, like, because you started talking about the early days of AppSumo, of iterating until you kind of find like, improve the business model. I think you grew AppSumo to around like two or three million a year, maybe four million a year before you you kind of like uh step down from uh the zero zero like what was the reasoning behind it and why did you decide to to come back after uh after a few years yeah it's been it's been an adventure so appsumo is over 15 years old when we got to around four or five million i ran i was running the business for about four or five years and at that point i was a little frustrated of personally just doing deals i was like okay we go we find a deal we prone to deal like it just wasn't and this is the tough part you know i think there's times where people like persevere through it but by the way if you don't persevere for it find someone who will you know like you found charles to run them less like it's not that you're not persevering but find someone who's hungry that's qualified to to do it at that time and so at that time my belief was and it's still to this day like absolutely most problem is that we're still having to go find the next deal all the time whereas like airbnb but the inventory is always there on the marketplace.

27:33And so I went to Aemon or we went to Anton and then we had a big application and ultimately Aemon, we just said like, make a hundred thousand dollars a month and keep the business afloat and just do that for two years with training and stuff. And then I went off to build monthly 1K, which is a course. And then we went off to build a sumo.com. And so it was an interesting experience. Aemon, which we kind of left him for dead. Honestly, we left that business for dead. You know, just really focused on the basics. I think that's, you know, my superpower is like this product market fit, rapid iteration, zero to one.

28:08And Eamon was really good at doubling down, slow and steady, compounding. And so he like improved the marketing, improved the affiliate, improved the sales team, improved the deal type. Actually, Eamon and his team, Jeff and Ullman, they invented the lifetime deal. Like I didn't start with lifetime deal. um i think they saw that as a potential they tested it and then that's part of our values test and invest and so they they launched the lifetime deal it crushed and that's how everything eventually over probably seven eight years then now became lifetime deals um amen quit in 2020 i was on i was biking across america and then he calls me when i was on my bike and he's like hey i'm quitting i was like can you just wait till i finish my bike ride he said sure and then i called one of my, two of my advisors and my advisor was like, you need to, if he wants to quit, it's like you have someone at a sleep at the, at the steering wheel.

29:02They don't want to be there. I think that's true for people at your company. Like someone quit at Abasumo last week. Was it Monday or last week or Friday? And it's like, well, they don't want to be there. Great. You know, you want to help them find a place they want to be. And that opens a spot for someone who wants to be there. And so I flew back in 2020 and it was, it was been a rocky four years, four or five years since then. Eamon's still an advisor and then I took a paternity leave in 2024. I took another year off and we've had a lot of problems again in AppSumo. And so I came back in September to work through things.

29:35What's like, I feel right now you have like this, the Airbnb example, I think you really like it with the marketplace and the fact that there is availability and demand that's still there and you don't have to chase deals. Is that like how you're thinking about the business right now and what's like uh keeping you up at night you know taking a step back you said the title of your show is billions which is i mean i guess today's economy you have to say trillions you know that's your next show in a few years small yeah i'm thinking too small sorry yeah yeah you know i know i going back to where we started the conversation mark thought gigantic and there's something there where it really is and i hear people say this shit i don't believe it but now I believe it.

30:19It's that it's the same amount of work either way. So at least work on the thing with the bigger opportunity that really, it's a cliche thing, but it really is true. And, you know, with AppSumo, what we, what the bet that I identified early on was that software was going to get big and it did. So, you know, I bet on the right thing and that worked out. Um, the, the thing that keeps me up at night, I was literally up to 1am is more that the, the model that we evolved to isn't as aligned for everything. everyone today right so this lifetime deal model that we do which is for people i don't know we go and find a product like lemless which is an early when they're early stage and we say hey you're super early let's do a lifetime deal normally you're 20 bucks a month let's do a hundred dollars or five hundred dollars for life and we'll split it 50 50 and so that was working a lot better when there wasn't AI costs.

31:12Yeah. And that AI costs really only came out three years ago. And the AI stuff has done two parts, which is one, you can't know your costs for the next forever in life. But when you have like a email outreach tool that doesn't cost anything to run, you're like, sure for life. So that's one part that we don't, we have, that's a huge problem. And then the second problem is a company like yours even, which is you have these customers and it was nice to get the money. It was nice to get the feedback. It was nice to get the exposure. You know, a lot of people have a lot of amazing experience on AppSumo, but five, 10 years later, you have these customers that maybe aren't paying you anymore, but are still using the product and you develop the product more.

31:53So you as a partners, even you guys, you're not as incentivized to give them all the new features you're not and so of course you know every business has competition right ideally you want a monopoly right i like what peter teal says you want a monopoly like you want to be a utility company or like airbnb or you know stripe a little bit um and so then you have no competition but there's there's always competition and there's always you know generally you have to evolve and so that's what we're working through today and it's stressful as hell and it's thinking about you know we have this business and it's good but like it's not just a girl i don't want to grow for growth sake.

32:29I want to help partners win. I want to help the customers win. I want to help our business win. And I want to work on these projects where I think I can see a potential where it can get to beyond a hundred million dollars. Uh, the, the money doesn't actually really motivate me as much. Like now that once you get to some amount of money you have that you can live your lifestyle, it's like, okay, I make a little more, a little less. I'm not as excited. Like I want to do work that I'm proud of that. I'm like, wow, that was like, we put Hostinger, Emergent, and Pika. And it was like awesome. It was a lot of work.

33:03And I was like, I'm so proud of that. And I think with AppSoup, I am, I'm really proud of it. It was a great bundle. It sold well. And what I'm working towards and what's keeping me up a lot at night and working through with partners, and I was on the call with two customers today, is how are we, you know, I don't want to blow up what's working because it's been working for a decade, but also is this going to work for the next decade and how do we transition productively? right like think about google like google you know they still have search that's still like i don't know what percent of the business still a majority but they also have these other bets that have like gmail and waymo that have gone on to be pretty significant for them and so it's just trying to balance that with all companies right like all companies have a core business that that works and so do you keep evolving that is there unlimited evolution there or is it you know totally new areas i think our core business is still the answer which is gdm like distributing products is still the most valuable thing.

33:56Your company, number one thing is, all right, we want to grow. So how do we help more of these companies continually grow? And that's what we're solving. And something I was thinking, you know, when you reach out to me like a few days ago or last week, like to discuss potential partnership, et cetera, I was curious because I think like one of your strengths really at AppSumo is the affiliation parts where you actually have like a lot of partners that can help with affiliation and i think for sas companies it's always like a tricky you know like to set up real affiliate program i know for us it took us like quite some time you know to get the partner etc and i feel like for your business you have basically like in in a similar way as yc way combinator get like a lot of like startups eventually you know they only invest in the best and from the best that's how they get like such a high return you know down the line versus like other VC funds or whatever on your end I feel it's it's pretty similar like you have you make a lot of bets on company you always believe you know that they're going to be successful and that's what you try to help them do however you know only a few will succeed you know it's a human law of nature like I don't know how we want to call it like Darwinism or whatever, but eventually, like for Zeus 1, don't you feel like that you could leverage what made AppSumo the success it is to find ways, you know, to partner at like a larger scale and on a different scale, actually?

35:31Yeah, I mean, I reached out to you guys about that. I think what companies have to understand is where can you win? So for instance, like a lot of companies, let's say you guys, you have an affiliate program and you use probably PartnerStack or Rewardful or, you know, Tolt or one of these guys. It's really interesting to, you can, you know, especially if you're starting a business or running a business, you can be discouraged from everything. It's very easy to get discouraged. What do I mean by that? We go, I have been exploring, like, how do we help, you know, we launch companies. How do we help them launch better?

36:03And then once they launch, like you guys, years down the road, like, how can we continually help you grow? And so I've been going to companies and asking them about their affiliate program because we do have a very effective affiliate program where people get on the AppSumo platform. We have thousands of people that make videos and tweets and emails and consultants. And I go to people about their affiliate program. And the interesting thing is that it's never more than 10 % or 15 % of their revenue. And they're never excited or angry about it. They're always pretty neutral. And I will tell you, I have found it insanely hard to sell neutral.

36:39Okay. It's really hard to sell neutral. and so you want to find something that people are pissed about or like can't wait to give you that money and so we're testing you know we're testing uh some affiliate options for people we're testing different uh deal formats we're testing building some of our own products to help partners like yourselves grow further but before we start building a bunch of stuff that no one wants in a day where it's you can build anything now everyone can it's finding the things that people actually really need help with. And so coming back backwards, it's like, what's the problem?

37:15And the problem is people still want distribution. So it's working through, okay, well, what's the best way we can help the people we want to help? I think distribution is definitely like the place you're going to want to look at because especially with AI, as you mentioned, so many more like tools coming up and I think it's going to be key. Over the years, like, do you feel like the quality of your community or newsletter or subscribers? How do you maintain like a high quality? How do you maintain like your channels? Like what are kind of the tips you could share around that? It's interesting.

37:54Our community at AppSumo, I think there's three types of audiences. There's one audience, which is a lot of them, which is serious agencies, marketers, entrepreneurs, like very serious. Like they have businesses, they run, like I got off a call with a guy named Sean. He runs a design agency in Florida. He comes to get tools so he doesn't have to pay full price. And that's a lot of them. And then we have another category of people who are kind of playing around, like buy it and play around with it, which is, you know, that happens. You know, we call them entrepreneurs in the past. And then we also have this third category of like collectors.

38:31So they, it's kind of like a trading card. It's like a baseball card and they call it investment. So they buy a deal with the hope that the company does really well. And then they have this tool that they were able to get as a bet early on. And there's an interesting number of them. And so candidly, it's been a challenge to manage these because we have people who are requesting the most that are never even using the products. Like they'll be like, I want this and I'm going to rate it so badly. and whereas like I built AppSumo with the intent of finding a product that someone made that I really want to tell people about and give it to people at a special price for people that are going to use it or you know maybe potentially use it a little later and so it's been a struggle it's definitely in December where we're at like one of the key things I'm working on and so what have we done about it basically there's kind of two pieces that we've done one is moderation.

39:28So what are the standards that, you know, what are the standards that you want to encourage in your community and in your, in your business? And so we have community guidelines, and then we basically wrote bots to enforce our community guidelines. Okay. And so that's, it's been really effective actually, because it's like, here's our guidelines. And now the AI bot can actually, it's just a custom bot we built, can enforce it. And that's why you see on like Twitter and certain places, like people use their real names now. There's a non too, But like every company should say, what's the guidelines you want?

39:58And also when people are using our products, like you are leaving comments, you can see more about them. Right. How many reviews have they left? How long have they been buying this stuff? So it gives status. Yeah. In the community. And on the other side of that, what I'm spending time on in terms of the community and the channel is like, who do I want buying the products? And what's the accepted behavior and how do we objectively measure that? And so we're looking at data to understand what's acceptable refund rates. Like we have people that refund 88 % of products, 90 % of products. And we're doing an analysis about what's appropriate of that.

40:34Right. And ultimately it's like, yeah, there's revenue there, but what kind of behavior and customer are you really getting in your company? And so we have a goal of a certain refund rate we're targeting. I think it's around 28%, which is, I think, pretty high. It's good because people want to try the products, but also maybe they're just trying and buying everything. They're never serious. and so we're doing analysis then more objectively here to drive like okay these are the kind of categories of everyone now calls them icps everyone loves this icp you know ideal customer profile whatever i call a marketing agency matt i like real people i don't like acronyms and so who is that person and what what's their behavior and either you fit the customer we can serve really well and you're within that category and if you're not like maybe i assume is not the place for you to be buying things.

41:22And so it's kind of, it's rewarding and encouraging this behavior and setting parameters. I don't want to share all of them so otherwise they'll get abused. And then the people outside of those parameters, letting them know this is not the place for them anymore. And so we have to be willing to give up short-term revenue for a better long-term business. And right now, it feels like you are kind of at, I'm not going to say like a crossroad because obviously you have like a business, you know, that's very like successful. But at the same time, you know, like you're also looking for what's coming next, is there like anything that you're particularly excited about like for the coming months or like years or projects, you know, where you feel like you really have an edge because it seems that you spend a lot of time with your customers trying to understand, you know, like what's something like really painful that you can solve.

42:09I think for any business out there, if you are not texting your customers or Snapchatting or WhatsAppping your customers, you're losing. I text customers and partners almost every single day. I'm like, hey, we're working on this idea. What do you think? Hey, did you like this thing? Hey, tell me if you see anything ever. Every single day. And it's awesome. It's a cheat code. Like I just spent this morning talking to customers. Like they'll tell me what they want. Doesn't mean I'm going to just do everything they say. But, you know, I think some people, especially if you're in an internet business, you're so, it's so easy to abstract yourself and you want to abstract.

42:41The whole goal of an internet business is never to talk to anyone. But the, you know, that's really the goal, right? It's the goal. Don't do any work, get rich. That's what everyone, I think, is aiming for. I don't know if that's fully possible, but I think the rewarding one is actually talking to the person, seeing how you're benefiting them, and then improving things with a specific customer in mind. And so the things that I'm... Yeah, I'll be honest. I think AppSumo's at a very fragile point. I'd say Lendless, you have AR and these things, so it's a little better business model from that perspective.

43:15But the way AI is making things easy to create, the way things are moving so quickly, I think a lot of people just don't know. And so in a world of uncertainty, how do you create stability? And so for us, it's understanding like, what's the real problem that everyone's having, which is distribution. So that problem is still there for you, for Tabby, which is a finance tool we're promoting today, for Vercel, they're running ads, Bolt, we have a deal with Bolt in one of our bundles. And so what I'm excited about is that if distribution is still like the biggest problem, whether you're an indie hacker or you're VC funded, how can we help you in this really kind of fast changing world so i think with our core business of software via app sumo we're we're aggressively testing just new deal types so instead of lifetime deals which is 50 bucks forever can you do 50 off forever so it's a lifetime discount which is actually better aligned for everyone because you're generally going to pay your subscription if you use it.

44:13The companies want recurring revenue because they have recurring costs. And then for us, we get a better stable business model providing that distribution. So that's one we're testing out. And we're testing out other things there to help in this new environment. Like, can we sell credits? Everyone's got credits now and tokens. Can you sell those at a discount? All right, so that I'm at a special price and sell them ongoing for people. And so we're aggressively testing that to find out what will really have product market fit. Because I think sometimes people just, oh yeah, I know. like I had success.

44:43I'll just do it and it'll work. It's like, that's not, it's never been that way. And then our other bet that I'm excited about, which is kind of like a moonshot bet is we have this product. I told you tidy cow, that's doing about a million dollars a month in, in GMV and processing for helping people run their businesses. And so can we 10 X that next year if we actually focused on it? Cause right now we build a bunch of our different products, but what if we just took one and really try to help people grow their own businesses like that? That's the ultimate thing in a business. If you can make your business how people grow their businesses, like you have a very valuable asset.

45:15And so those are the kind of two high level bets. The main focus is AppSumo. And then there's a, you know, moonshot team called The Originals that's trying some of our more crazy bets. What I found also interesting when you were mentioning the 50 % of like lifetime is that it also like matches the kind of customer you want to work with. Because you were saying that you have these three kind of people, including the one who kind of see deals as baseball cards. They really want to collect them and they're going to ask for a lot even though they don't use it. With the 50 % off, it's also something that people will not want to lose long-term.

46:00They don't want to lose that discount. So if they cancel or if they churn, potentially the deal stops, which I think is great. You know, like you have a lot of private membership clubs where, let's say, they ask you to pay like an entrance fee that is like really high. Let's say like, I don't know, 10K to join the club. And then it's like a monthly fee. And eventually, if you decide to stop and you have to come back, you have to pay again that monthly fee, like that monthly setup fee. So, yeah, I think it's interesting. And, yeah. I don't know if it'll work, to be clear. We're testing it out without building anything.

46:33So we launched one this week, which is with Nas.io. And we're just giving out the coupon. So it's just like, here's a code. And then if that works, it was able to do that quickly. And so if it works, then we can then build out more functionality to make that easier. But yeah, I mean, candidly, this is the most scared I've ever been of AppSumo, of our existence. Granted, we have distribution, right? We have an audience that cares. We have a brand that's known. We still have a lot of things going for us. so we're in a very good place but i can this is where i could kind of see where companies fail which has been really interesting and they fail because they get scared and they get timid and then they and they have a legacy business that makes money and that's what we are it's not that and look there are some companies that lifetime deal totally makes sense and you see a lot of like wordpress plugins that have lifetime offerings totally makes sense there's almost no cost to them and maybe there's no more maintenance but you can understand it and so it's very hard to go to the next branch when you're holding on to the old branch and so we're trying to understand how that can look moving forward and then then be clear on the tests for it and then act decisively once we have a little better understanding in the next few months i'll be i'll be watching this uh i'm watching too yeah i mean i think it's at least i feel proud of myself for being in the arena for being on the court for taking risks yeah yeah it's a risk you know it's easier i mean it was pretty easy to sit out for a year and you know complain not complain but just comment and criticize and i call it the seagull theory i don't know if i even invent that someone did but seagulls fly in they complain and they fly away and uh the worst no it's no one likes a seagull and so you know at least i'm i'm I'm with the team trying to be in front and lead.

48:25I think about leadership a lot. I think about what is leadership? How do you lead? How do you be effective? How do you get people to go to a direction? How do you stay optimistic? How do you have clarity and get, you know, do these things that people are excited to move forward with you? And that's, you know, I guess I haven't, I don't know if I've ever, I haven't felt that in a long time with Absumo. I felt like I've, you know, kind of been riding in an autonomous car. Whereas like you have a team, we got deals that this guy, Jeff gets the deals and kind to do it and then i think we're seeing some of the writing on the wall which doesn't mean we have to blow up the what's working but understanding how do we evolve it and do that quickly and talking about the team and the the leadership a topic because i know we are like almost out of time the topic i wanted to uh talk to you about is like um you've seen like the the vc rocket ship with uh big fundings now you're like uh bootstrapping um i'm curious like uh what's your view on stock options or stocks or like how exactly is the company managed on on that side and how do you make sure like to incentivize people enough that you know they they stay in the long run for the company's success yeah i talked to one of our key people and i was like oh have you looked for jobs recently he's like yeah i checked out another company i was like it's like talking to your wife and she's like yeah i was texting this other guy i'm like what what are you, what are you doing?

49:45Um, and on one hand, who was I talking with? I was talking with YNAB. I don't know if you know YNAB. It's a budgeting software. Very cool guy, Jesse. And a lot of, I looked at the people on LinkedIn and it was so impressive. A lot of his people have been there 15 years and I was like, that's impressive. And on one hand you could think, okay, he's got a lot of people who don't do anything anymore and they've just been coasting or he's created such a company that they want to be there. And so everyone's got different motivations. I think in a world of today of AI, it's actually we're going in the opposite direction, which is more companies are bragging what they're doing with fewer people.

50:20Like it's actually the flex now is like we have 35 million ARR like you guys and we only have 30 people, right? Like that's the thing people are jealous of. And so I would say it's kind of two parts that I've I've worked on. I'm not probably doing a great part of it, which is just understanding and honestly, acknowledging the people you want that's part one which is just like like alona who's our cmo now i think you know i haven't had a one-on-one with her in a while i canceled all my one-on-ones because we're kind of in a war mode i was like i just need to do what's most important right now versus set meetings and i think she missed just being seen and missed like having a voice and you know with anybody who's key in your company i would talk to them often if you don't want them to not be there and understand where they're at and if they have families, what they want to be doing.

51:11And if it's not good for them to be there, then also help them leave. Like we had a guy who's been with me eight years. I've had two guys who've been with eight years that are leaving this year. And I'm like, yeah, I think it's time. Like I, it was probably two years ago it was time, but you know, we have loyalty and you want them to win. So I think that's one is just really connecting with your key people. I think the second thing is incentives is way under talked about incentives is probably for most people like the probably least underutilized thing in business incentives need to keep evolving so at opsuma with our leadership team we have a lot of incentives on net revenue growth but not on noi or net operating income and i'm like looking at noi all the fucking time i'm like how's our noi what's our noi like noi is shit what are we doing about it how are we making sure investments are good and so you know salaries like pricing in businesses should get evaluated regularly.

52:00And so our sales team has disincentives for companies to go out of business, but I don't think they're painful enough. On the other side of that, I don't think they get rewarded enough if a company sells well and stays in business. And so we're redoing our comp model to pay our sales team even more for products that are selling even better. So I'd say those are the two things around for the key people you have with you. And then how do you know you have a key person? It's very simple. without you asking, are they making things better? That's all you have to look for. Like, did they change something to make it better without permission, period?

52:36And then the second part is really understanding the incentives. Like, do they have kids? Do they want to try to retire? Are they trying, like, and, you know, equity is one way of doing it. I don't know if we'll ever go public. Maybe one day we'll sell. So I think, I don't know if that's the best thing to give to someone if it's not true. But understanding, you know, what incentives are going to motivate them productively to align to the things within your business. I think it's very, it's probably should be spent way more time on. Did you give equity already to the people in your company or? Yeah, we've gone, I've gone all over the place with equity in 15 years.

53:05I started it, I started it with just me and my partner and then Andrew Chen got 5%. And then it was mostly just the three of us. And then I gave a few other people just a little bit. And then at one point we had a phase where I was like, okay, we're going to go public. Everyone's going to get some equity. And it was just not a, it wasn't honest. I don't know if I really wanted to go public. Like I don't, I don't do well with the restrictions. And so there are people that have equity, but yeah, we haven't been hiring at all. Mostly we've been reducing, but moving forward, I don't think we'd be giving equity.

53:35It would be more cash compensation. We're also considering like phantom equity. So like, hey, if we ever sell, you'll get some percent of the sell. The rest is like, you know, equity is our marriage. They're on the cap table forever. So right now you're giving more like cash bonuses at the end of the year based on like specific objective and yeah just profit share normally we've had this year has been it's been a tough year and i'm not gonna fake it i'm like oh yeah we're crushing a trillion dollars like a lot of these other uh youtube influencers um yeah normally we have profit sharing we're pretty generous with you know flying people to mexico the team trip stuff that's on your page this year has been a tougher year for us to be able to do as much of that as we'd like but historically it's cash compensations plus team retreats plus you know swag like this is a it's my ab sumo jacket yeah I may have sumo jacket.

54:23You know, there's all this. In partnership with Patagonia. Yeah. And like, you know, cool gear that we do. We'll have a little bit of this stuff this year, but not as historical. And I think the team gets that. And I appreciate, I admire a lot of people that are at our company for how much they care. It's really hard to like, it's really hard to hire that. It's really hard to hire people that like, just really want, like really want it to win, even when it's tough. Like we've had a tougher year than a long time. And it's, you know, sometimes when people don't want to be there, it's great they're like oh cool i got an easy job or i'm not really noticed but the ones that are you want to be there and then they stick through this is uh have a lot of appreciation i do my best to try to acknowledge them either just verbally or seeing them publicly as well as you know if we can at the end of the year with some of the compensation and how do you find like uh such talent because i think you've had like uh you've been great at hiring to be honest like uh the team i think is uh is really smart and you kept like some key people for a really long time so like Like, do you have a specific process to find these great people?

55:24Or is it? I haven't found, honestly, I haven't hired anyone in a while. I'd say all of our best people are homegrown. Okay. All of our best people started as like junior salesperson, junior marketer, and have worked their ways up. I think that's been, every time I've hired someone that's like, we hired like a$400 ,000 person that was supposed to be a game changer. And it was like, after a month, I was like, fuck. And it was just, it was honestly. You knew? how much yeah it ended up costing us like half a million and the person and so i think the homegrown thing is one one way to do it second thing is trials just like try i think that one has been you could see them you could see their work and then third i would say like just look for people already doing things you know look for the people already you're like i like what this person's doing and i've found a lot of success with that and then And, you know, maybe lastly, look to your audience when you're hiring.

56:16So when we're trying to hire, can I email out to Noah Kagan, my email list at noakagan.com or AppSumo Social or AppSumo mailing list where find people who already kind of get you versus people you have to try to convince about you. It's very hard for you to try to out hire one of these like billion dollar overnight AI companies. It's very hard to try to get those people. And so you're trying to get them, you know, not all money ball people, but you're trying to get the people who are a little bit more on the come up because they're you're able to afford them. And I think they appreciate that and stick with it a little bit longer because of that too.

56:47So yeah, like with my social media team, when I was doing more YouTube, a lot of it was homegrown and it was people that followed me and I liked their stuff or they reached out and I gave them a trial. And over time, they were able to make six figure fat salaries making YouTube and social content with me. But it wasn't that way to start. It was trials and projects. No, that's all every, I think it's a lot of good advice. I know we're almost like running out of time. So the final question. That's a ton. Yeah, time flies. Do you sometimes like think of, you know, like 10 years from now, what is like the one thing I wish I had done that you're not doing right now?

57:30And what would that be? I mean, last night I did think, am I going to regret not spending more time with like my mom or with my, my family? Cause I'm working a lot. I'm working hard. And so I don't think I want every day to be this hard for the next 10 years. I would regret if it was like nine to five, so intense where like I kind of come downstairs with nothing left. I think that that's definitely what I would regret. Uh, I think the other thing that I noticed is not, it's not actually in 10 years. It's in, in one day is that I have noticed my own behavior. Maybe this is not for everyone, but for myself where I create a lot of anxiety around the problems I'm solving and eventually I solve them or people around me help solve them.

58:15It's not like only me, but I didn't need to make it so stressful to get there. But like right now I'm creating, and I think that's also my, kind of my, my superpower is like I pressure and I, I create force and energy to make shit happen, but it's not, it's not fun. It's not like, Oh, it's like I'm forcing this. And so more and more times I try to remind myself, like you're going to solve this. It's going to, you're going to get to the, the taco or the, you know, margarita at the end of the road or in France, like the baguette, the bet baguette's going to be there. Uh, um, you're going to get there.

58:50So can we do it? Can you just be, take a breath and be mindful of at least, you know, getting to the destination in a, in a relaxing way. So I definitely, I try to think back on that. Like you're going to get to this 10 years and like, did you want to make it hard to it here or are you gonna make it you know at least enjoy the journey around it more do you think about the the stories you're gonna be able to tell like uh when you make a decision because sometimes for me you know when when there's a like hard decision to take i look at things kind of like uh and i i look at the option and i'm like what's gonna be like a fun story to tell whether I choose A or B, you know what I mean?

59:31Yeah. What I was thinking about is fantasy football. It's like, I know there's, it's like, it's hard to believe there's so much advice in fantasy sports. And like, if you don't get fantasy sports, you think it's stupid. So I understand that. But in fantasy sports, you have each week play players. And what I've noticed regarding the future is that it's really hard to work on my next week's game if I don't feel stable and confident in this week's game. And so in all of our businesses, like I want to get to the 10-year view, but I'm still right now within the world, I assume I'm so focused on like the next month, next three months.

1:00:08And so it's very hard to kind of start planning and getting ahead for it. I would regret around that. I was thinking about this morning, like, you know, I think none of us want it to go away, but the reality is like all of us are going to go away in life. And if you look at companies from the year 1900, I think four companies that were the biggest then are still around, maybe two. Let's like chat GPT that for a sec. I want to see if I'm like full of shit. Hold on. No, let's like do it. Ask chat GPT for a source also because I think it's right now it's making up a lot of stuff also. Oh, really?

1:00:42That's even better. Yeah. All right. I asked how many companies that were top 100 companies in 1900 are still around today. I think it's going to be one or two. So Hans, so how many survived? Only nine of these companies remain today. That's actually better than I thought. 9%. Supposedly. Banks, railroads, energy, utility companies. Oh, that's kind of interesting. I didn't think I realized that either. It's kind of more utility-based businesses. But I guess my thought regarding that, to your telling the story, which I think is, mine maybe is a similar way of doing it, which is, am I doing it at least the way I want?

1:01:20so we could fail but at least did i am i honest with myself like this is what i want to do right like i want to try this thing and are you doing it because other people are you doing it because like you're scared or is it what you really truly think you want to do and if that doesn't work out you know se va but otherwise like at least i i i played the game i put in the players as we went to fantasy football i put in the players and did the thing the way i want you know the game i can't always control but at least i want to i want to do it my way and i think i'd regret if I didn't approach it from that way for the next 10 years.

1:01:49Love it. And maybe like one final word, one final advice for people listening to the show. I had a friend when I was 20. He's still a good friend. He wanted to be a billionaire. And I think he's worth 100 million now. So I think he's pretty happy at 100 million.

1:02:12and if you look at his career he had a big vision he had a big dream and he did work and he did work every year and he's you know the part that's interesting maybe good or bad is he's still working hard today you know 15 years later 20 years later so i i do think people think that the rich the nice houses and the fancy cars or private jets or whatever it is i think what people actually think is that like, oh, that's not for me. Not even that. They think I can't even get that. And I think the things I want to leave people with is like, you totally can. It's the thing that's awesome about business and success is that it doesn't discriminate.

1:02:50You don't have to be French. You don't have to be tall. You don't have to be good looking like Guillaume. You don't have to be that. And you can still succeed. He's got that and he's succeeding. God's blessed him. So I think that's part one is that it's available for everyone who was willing to do work. And then the second part that's interesting is I would say I was on a call with a guy today and he's on AppSumo customer and he's a designer, Sean, out in Florida. And I don't know how much he makes. I didn't get into that. But what I liked about him is that he seemed just content. And I've met a lot of really rich people and I see a lot of these YouTubers and I'm like, these people hate their lives.

1:03:27Hate. No amount of money is going to make them their lives actually satisfying. And so, and I've interviewed billionaires, I've worked for billionaires, you know, I've done pretty well financially. And I think there's something to find out about yourself, which is, you know, how can you find the level of peace and contentment regardless, you know, if you're making billions or you're making millions or hundreds of thousands. And I think that's, that's something to aim for in our lives. Just find some level of balance of our contentment. Wise words, Noah, like, thanks a lot for, uh, for your time and, uh, and sharing all of this with the audience.

1:04:00Where can people like follow you or follow your journey? I know you've been, yeah. Yeah. I mean, you have a great book also. Thanks. I got Million Dollar Weekend. It's in French for the French listeners. Nice. Grab the book on podcasts I put out once a month on Noah Kagan. And then, yeah, check out Apsuma.com. Number one site online for software deals. Maybe we'll get Lemless there. Maybe there'll be some little special thing with Lemless in the next month or so. Nice. Have an awesome day. thanks for having me man