How Anyone Can Develop The Mindset Of A Million Dollar Entrepreneur with Noah Kagan

0:01Boom! Shake the room, Fire Nation. JLD here and welcome to Entrepreneurs on Fire. brought to you by the HubSpot Podcast Network, the audio destination for business professionals with great shows like Content is Profit. Today, we'll be breaking down how anyone can develop the mindset of a million-dollar entrepreneur. To drop these value bombs, I have brought Noah Kagan into EO Fire Studios. Noah is a CEO at AppSumo, which is$80 million per year company. It's where solopreneurs start and SaaS businesses become sumo-sized. He is a YouTuber guiding 1 million-plus subscribers towards financial freedom and is a former employee, number 30, at Facebook and number four at mint.com.

0:43In today's foundation, we'll be talking about the two things that hold every entrepreneur back, what billionaires told Noah, and the mindset of a super successful entrepreneur, as well as scaling from zero to one million, then over one million and beyond. What do you need to do? What has to change? And so much more. And a big thank you for sponsoring today's episode goes to Noah and our sponsors. Marketing Made Simple, hosted by my friend, Dr. JJ Peterson, is brought to you by the HubSpot Podcast Network, the audio destination for business professionals. Marketing Made Simple brings you practical tips to make your marketing easy and, more importantly, make it work.

1:18A recent episode on whether vulnerability is a superpower in business is a must-listen. Listen to Marketing Made Simple wherever you get your podcasts. Many EO Fire listeners have launched non-food franchises and Franbridge Consulting has guided them. Franbridge's founder and frequent EO Fire guest, John Ostenson, has done more placements than any other in the country and his service is free. Sign up for a consultation with John or get a free copy of his book, Non-Food Franchising, at FranbridgeConsulting.com. Noah, say what's up to Fire Nation and share something that you believe about becoming successful that most people disagree with.

1:59bienvenidos fuego nation

2:04something that becoming successful that most people disagree with I'm gonna give it two I think one that most people don't realize is that anyone can do it you don't have to be good looking or ridiculously good good looking like me and you are I think that's something people don't realize like you don't have to be tall like in sports you have to have generally abilities that are physical and here universally worldwide available anyone can be successful in business. I think the other thing that people probably don't realize is that you can do it in a very short amount of time, maybe like Million Dollar Weekend in 48 hours.

2:37You can actually change your life in a very quick amount of time. People don't realize that as well. Which by the way, Fire Nation happens to be the book that Noah will be talking a little bit about today, Million Dollar Weekend. I actually have it right next to me as well. It's beautiful, bright fluorescent green. And something that may or may not be relevant to the conversation. But I think it's important for you to know, Fire Nation, neither Noah nor myself are wearing a shirt right now. Well, you went on cam, you took off your shirt. I did. And I'm like, is this not video? There's no video?

3:11Yeah, shirt's free. Yeah, to be clear, though, I didn't take off my shirt. I never, ever have a shirt on in Puerto Rico. I mean, my parents-in-law have been here for two months because we just had our boy, which I told you about, pre-interview, Beau. and literally by after a month, my mother-in-law pulled me aside. She's like, John, do you literally, not figuratively, do you literally never wear a shirt? Because she had not seen me in a shirt for 30 consecutive days. But anyways, we're talking today at Foundation about how anyone can develop the mindset of a million dollar entrepreneur. And Noah, there are two, and I want to count them two huge things that just hold every entrepreneur back from success.

3:52what are those two things and how the heck can we fix them god dude i love hearing your voice like how cool is it that you're a shirtless millionaire maybe that's that's your follow-on book where you can again you have to believe for the audience out there these are not even the two but you have to believe you can live these kinds of lives yes you can i don't think people realize that write it down like at the end of the year where would it be cool if i am and guess what what can i do right now today right now to start planting those seeds and making that change and i don't think people realize that, that, you know, even my own life, like I get to live half the year in Austin, half the year in Spain, I have a crazy house.

4:28I have an amazing partner. I never thought I deserved it. I never thought it was possible. But then through time, you're like, maybe that can come true. And that's true for everyone out there. Now, how, what are the two things that people can do? One is they got to start. And I know that sounds maybe obvious, but most people never become a millionaire because it never become a dollar in air. Think about it. How many people, you know, John, that listen to the show, they're like, Like, yeah, you know, I've been thinking about this idea. It's like, how many customers do you have? None. Okay, let's start.

4:55Let's find one today. And they're like, yeah, really? I'm like, yeah. You know how AppSumo, which we did$80 million last year, which is insane. Insane. It's insane. I can't believe it. But I started with a PayPal button and my Gmail account, where AppSumo.com is software deals for entrepreneurs. People bought it because I posted on Reddit, the software deal for a product, which I cold emailed the founder, said, hey, I want to do a deal on it. People bought it with a PayPal button. I email them the code and that is what set off one$12 sale$12 sale set off a company that today you know does pretty pretty well but you have to get started to get to that point and now how can everyone get started right now like maybe an example there's a woman named Mackenzie and I've been telling her story because it's so damn cool she had a day job probably like a lot of people out there but she didn't want a day job and she didn't want one person controlling her destiny me she's like i want to do something else so she just sent an email right away to some of her friends and co-workers and said hey i want to do a business in greeting cards does anyone want to buy a greeting card for me and i think she sold a few that day she got validation and what you're trying to do when you're starting is just get a dollar or just get a hundred dollars what i recommend a hundred dollars within 48 hours give yourself a time limit i've noticed when i said oh i'm gonna do a business you give yourself six months i've seen people talk about ideas for two years that in 48 hours they could have found out that business in 2023 john mary makery.com did fifty thousand dollars in greeting cards last greeting cards guess what hallmark big ass company american green cards big ass company mckenzie's company ideally gonna be a big ass company but it starts with one freaking dollar go get one right now second thing that people don't think about and this is what again these are the things like john there's so many podcasts there's so many books.

6:38There's even this place called Harvard where they try to teach entrepreneurship. All right. There's unlimited fake gurus on YouTube. How is it that people still aren't having success in business? And it's because these are the things holding them back from it. They never get started on it because they never feel ready. And the best day to be ready is right now. Now, the second thing they don't do is they don't ask. And they don't think that, again, what the reason I started the show, asking is a skill that can get better and better over time. It's not something you have to be perfect with. And the power of an ask is an unlimited return.

7:08And the rejection of an ask is a moment of discomfort and a learning opportunity. Now, there's a guy named Pat. I'll just to share some stories. Pat read Million Dollar Weekend. Pat is a customer success person in Poland, right? Like not in Silicon Valley, not in Puerto Rico, but in Poland. He had a day job in customer success at a company. And Pat's always dreamed of having his own business. And so he just started asking people and he loves YouTube and he's done YouTube videos in the past. He asked people via Instagram DMs, which is not what I recommend. You can do this, but he made it hard on himself.

7:41Hey, I'd love to do your YouTube videos. Can we get on the phone and talk about it? Pat quit his job two weeks ago and his YouTube consulting agency is now doing$24 ,000 a month in revenue and he quit his job. He's making more than he was his day job. And that's within five months. I don't promise you it'll come that quickly. You won't be a millionaire overnight, even though some one person next decade will do it in a weekend. but you have to start it and then you have to practice the skill of asking. And the one thing that everyone can do today with asking is do the coffee challenge. I don't know if you've heard me talk about it, John, but you go to a coffee shop.

8:11And again, the point is not to get this discount, but you go to a coffee shop, you ask for 10 % off and then they reject you. And I always ask people the same thing. What did you learn about yourself? They say two things. One, it was not as scary as I thought. And two, what else can I do in life that I didn't realize I could do? And so those are the two things that everyone can get started on and work on to improve themselves and have success in entrepreneurship. I've actually done the coffee challenge myself because I was just like, hey, why the heck not? I remember hearing an episode you did.

8:37I forget with who, maybe it was Tim. And I was traveling that day. So I was in the airport and I'm in the Starbucks line. And I asked for that 10 % discount. And the woman looked at me like I had 17 heads. It literally threw her into such disarray. Because again, I did something that is just outside of the norm. and they ended up coming back and they just said, hey, we can't give you the 10 % discount, but we're going to give you an extra, what do you want from the pastries? We'll give you one of these pastries. And I ended up taking a cookie and it was like, that was really interesting and I had fun doing it.

9:10I mean, it's one of those things. You just have to be bold sometimes. Now, side question, just out of the blue, where in Spain do you spend your off year? Near Sagrada Familia in Barcelona. Oh, nice. Beautiful. It's amazing. It's amazing. We're about to have a kid as well. Right, July. Which is amazing and super exciting. So we may end up staying here for the summer, but I like the mix of America and Europe. I like the vibes. Yeah, that's a great mix. Love that. Fire Nation, we're going to keep going because you have so much to learn from Noah because everybody complains about how they don't have time to do anything.

9:48Like, I don't have time to stay in shape, to spend time with my family, to travel, to run a successful business. They definitely don't have time to do all of those things. and most people don't even think they have time to do one of those things. But you run an$80 million plus a year business, a YouTube channel, a blog, you travel, you work out. I mean, I'm looking at you right now, no shirts, guns out. I mean, things are rocking and you still have fun, Noah. How the heck do you do it? I will say currently with the whole book tour thing, not well, but I'm also, this is gonna be probably maybe counterintuitive.

10:18I'm loving it. I'm working, I'm wealthier than I've ever been. I'm working harder than I've ever been, which I think most people think, Well, once you get wealthy, you can just stop working. But you can, and that's fine. But I'm also like, I'm literally doing the things I love. And that's available for everyone, whether it's a show like a podcast, whether maybe it's a book, maybe it's a restaurant, maybe it's a health coaching business, whatever it is. And that's, to me, very appealing. Now, a few ways that everyone can replicate this. One, just get one business working. Most people who are not millionaires are trying to do eight things okay.

10:47I just did AppSumo. That is the only way I've gotten rich. Just AppSumo. And I found something people really wanted and I stuck with it for a very, very long period of time with a lot of support. Now, here's some elements that other people can copy for themselves. One, pick one business to really get rich off of. You know, that is definitely, I found something with AppSumo with software deals for entrepreneurs that worked. And I've tried a lot of things that did not work. And that's also an important part of the story. Number two, have one singular goal. Not two, not four, one goal with a timeline.

11:21So for AppSumo.com this year in net revenue, not gross, our goal is$56.6 million. Everyone in the business knows that. Now that makes it very easy for everyone to know what is a priority. Does it help us get towards our goal or not? That's it. This is what I learned from Zuckerberg and what I've done in every single thing I've worked on that's had success. My YouTube channel, ideally this book, AppSumo.com, TidyCal.com, all these different projects that have had success. It's ultimately then had one singular goal with the timeline. Next up, I like hiring CEOs for each of these different projects.

11:54Like, you know, has the most CEOs in the world? Amazon. People don't realize that. And I know they're struggling. To me, they're struggling with a little bit of innovation since Jeff left. But they have so many different CEOs. And so how do you get a CEO in each of your businesses and then compensate them to whatever that they want? So absolutely. There's a woman named Alona who runs the day to day. She's a CEO with the YouTube channel. There's a guy named Jeremy who's been the CEO of the YouTube channel. And with this book, I had Tal Roz, who's one of the bestselling business writers, really be the CEO of the book writing process.

12:23And then this guy named Tommy now has been the CEO of the book marketing and the book launch process. And so have someone for each of these different businesses. And the last thing is now, OK, you have a CEO, you have a singular goal. Create a very simple scorecard with no more than three items that are objective measurements of the person's success. So let me just give you one as an example, because people are like, what do you mean? So Alona, who's the CEO of AppSumo, I would say day-to-day. I'm technically the CEO, but she's the day-to-day CEO. Her top three for Q1, I won't give the details because it's AppSumo stuff, but number one is around org optimization.

12:59Number two is around some of our experimental marketing. And number three is marketing support. Those are her top three things to help execute day-to-day as well as make sure the business is running. And if you have a very objective scorecard, it lets them know what the expectations are and it lets you know that you can leave and we're on the same page of what the outcomes are going to be. That's how I'm able to do these different things. Fire Nation, we're all standing upon the shoulders of giants. I mean, Noah learns this stuff from people that came before him. I've learned this stuff from my past guests.

13:30And Noah, by the way, you are officially guest 4 ,358 as of today. So I've learned some things over time. You've learned some things, Fire Nation, over time. And that's what we need to do is take these principles from people like Noah who are running successful businesses and having successful lives in general as well and apply them to your life. And we have a lot more to talk about around this topic when we get back from thanking our sponsors. Thank you, sponsors. Starting your year off strong and accomplishing goals like increasing revenue and faster growth starts with the right selling tools.

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15:55That's FranBridgeConsulting.com. Noah, we're back, and we had a very amazing taco break during those sponsor reads. It was so yummy. And one thing that I admire about you is you've been able to interview billionaires from literally all over the world that nobody else has access to, period, end of story. So what the heck did you learn from those conversations? Yeah. So I've really enjoyed, I love creating content, right? I've been blogging on noakagan.com or OKDork for 24 years this year. It's my anniversary. and part of creating content i like i ended up creating content where i interviewed older gentlemen or older people and asked them about their business regrets and then by getting started coming back to the beginning that content did really well and it was then noticing like wow if we go for these people let's go for more billionaires right a lot of things in app sumo's values is test and invest and then double down and i think people hear that kind of crap but they don't understand it so once i found that works like i'm now pretty much not exclusively but almost a lot of our content on YouTube, youtube.com slash OKDork, is around interviewing billionaires and learning about their lives.

17:02So a few things I would say that are in common. Number one is they did one thing to get rich. And people hear this, by the way, right? Everyone, most advice is not that groundbreaking. And there's no more groundbreaking advice really out there. But here's the thing you probably don't realize. They were early in a trend that became a billion dollar opportunity. Most people are working in thousand dollar opportunities. these entrepreneurs found something that was non-obvious, that became an obvious thing in a billion-dollar market over time. And so how do you copy that for yourself? Let's take John Paul DeGioia.

17:37Patron Tequila, there was no$30 bottle of tequila. There wasn't. But he found something he really, really liked. And I think that's an important part of entrepreneurship is find problems that you're excited to solve. Look in Google Trends. Look at ChatGPT. Look online to any indicators. And again, everything I do is quick and fast and cheap because a lot of people don't have a lot of time. You have a day job. You have a husband. You got things going on. Maybe you have kids. You don't have time to get this stuff going. But what you're looking for is some idea that this market could be bigger. I think Google Trends is one of my favorite places to do that.

18:11Look at it over time. Look at how it compares to other things. Because he started Petr tequila, which didn't get immediate success, but it had some success in the beginning. It took two years of, you know, people liked it. People liked it. Validation. and in year three then I think was his first like massive like holy people are going crazy for it so again what is something you're seeing that others aren't seeing same with hapsumo.com when I started it there was 10 software products I went to my mentor and I was like I just like software deals I like marketing people want customers I think the software world is going to get bigger he said it's never going to work the only person you should ever trust is a customer period and I got started 2010 and now 2000 whatever year we're in you know it's doing pretty well.

18:49There's a lot more software. And so just being a part of that wave, that non-obvious, obvious, and thinking about that. And you don't have to think 100 years down the line. Even think, hey, in six months, will this be bigger or smaller? Two other things just to share about, I'd say, non-obvious secrets. People don't give enough credit to anyone with longevity. You said something earlier in the show. You did 4 ,000 freaking chats. Most people do one and stop. And so I found that the law of 100 within business is one of the ways that I've helped sustain and keep things going, which is do 100 episodes.

19:21Do 100 calls. Do whatever you're starting. If you found some success with it, meaning someone wants it, do it 100 times, then you can quit. And these entrepreneurs that are all billionaires, and I've worked for them. I worked for Zuckerberg. I worked for Moskovitz. Charlie Cheever, Adam D 'Angelo, they're all billionaires, which is bonkers to me. You don't become a billionaire overnight. You become a billionaire over 20 years. So find a thing that you'll, if you can stick with it for some period of time, but this is what they have done. And I don't think people will give them enough credit for their consistency and sustainability.

19:49And now with AppSumo, now with my YouTube content, now with the book, I think about 10 years. I'm like, okay, am I doing actions that I can sustain? It's very easy to sprint a lap. It's very hard to sprint a marathon. Very hard to sprint 100 miles, but you can go slowly at 100. And I think the compounds of business really add up over time. So stick with it a long time. And here's the last part that's interesting. It made me realize I don't care to be a billionaire. I never really cared in the beginning, but I definitely don't care now because a lot of them seem like they never found that contentment and they felt like they spent more time focusing on the money than balancing and focusing on their family.

20:25Like, oh, if I only got the money, I'll finally be happy. And I don't think that all of them, you know, there's no measurement of necessarily happiness, but it didn't seem like they ever fully satisfied a lot. Some did and some didn't. But that was an interesting thing for myself where I left Silicon Valley because I don't want to talk about tech and startups and funding and companies all day. I want to live. Yeah. It's the same reason I go to Spain in the summer because I want to balance working all the time with living all the time. Fire Nation, I think that's a really important realization that Noah made by having conversations with billionaires.

20:54And it's something to think about, like, what are your goals? Is it to make a billion dollars or is it to live a happy, contented, fulfilling life? And there's going to be a couple of different paths that you go on to achieve those two different directives. And it's better to know earlier on which path you want to be on. And a lot of people, to bring it back to the beginning, Noah, they would love to scale a business from$0 to$1 ,000, from$0 to a million dollars, and then from a million dollars to beyond, whatever feels right for them, whatever makes sense. What do they need to do? What has to change?

21:31I'm going to talk about the non-obvious stuff, which is you have to make sure that it's something people want. So many times, John, people come to me, they're like, how do I market this better? How do I scale it? And I was like, no one wants what you're doing. It's not a marketing problem. It's a business problem. And so how do you know you have something people want? They are excited to give you that money. That when you ask them, which is exciting, if you think it really can help someone, you're not having to convince them. And I've done businesses. I try to start a business doing home ergonomics setup.

21:58When COVID was happening, I was like, I wanted to show people an example. So I called up people like, oh my God, I got my home office set up where my chair is all optimized. My desk is optimized. I thought it was a good business. I want to show it as an example. I had to beg people. I'm like, beg, oh, please, Lord, please do this. And they're like, fine, I'll do it. But they didn't want to. Now, fast forward to two weeks ago, I wanted to show people another example of, you know, let's find something people actually want. It's not about making something people want. It's finding something people want.

22:29You can make anything, but it doesn't mean they want it. And I noticed that I hated DocuSign. And so I was like, let me create a docusign alternative, but I didn't build anything and I pre-sold it. And you realize through Million Dollar Weekend and the process, everything in life is pre-sold almost. Plane tickets, events, concerts, your Teslas, everything is pre-sold. But we don't realize, even on Amazon, you're pre-buying it and then they ship it to you. Why not do that in your own business to see what people actually want? If they don't want it, great. Let's find something they do. So I did this docusign thing.

23:01I looked up everyone who ever emailed me a docusign, put them on a spreadsheet, and I just called them. I made$3 ,000 in about five hours. I don't have a domain. I don't have a website. I didn't really even have a programmer who was going to build it. But I had clear market validation. One, that people really wanted this. They hate DocuSign. You're going to get the product. It should be available in the next 30 days on Amazon, on AppSumo. And then two, DocuSign's an$11 billion business. That's a huge-ass market. And I think people signing things and going more digital is going to keep growing, probably not declining.