498: He Lost Millions in Facebook Stock Then Built a $300M Tech Company | Noah Kagan

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2:42All right, we're recording now. I think I was an asshole to you a few years ago, so I do apologize. Were you? I was. It's good to, I think being able to change and notice where we can improve and call it out is powerful. yeah well look we'll do the intro we talk about it it'll be fun we've had some raw interviews i think i've only interviewed you once i've been yeah i think so yeah it must have been like five years ago long long time ago man long long long long time ago i met you early days in my entrepreneurial journey when you come to belvern we had a good chat about that uh but for those who are not familiar with you your work or haven't seen you on the internet or any of your products or brands uh the first question i ask everyone that comes on is how did you get your job aka how'd you find yourself doing the work you're doing today yeah how did i get my job i got my job because i kept getting fired like i just couldn't get a job so i had to create my own and and even beyond that that was my dream and everyone has that everyone has this kind of voice in their head saying about what they really want to be doing whether it's baking cookies or it's creating content and interviewing people like yourself.

3:57For me, it was like, I want to be an entrepreneur. I just don't know how to get there. And so I took jobs and did what I thought I was supposed to do, which I think is how most of us are, through getting fired and then through just kind of experimenting. I just kept experimenting. I knew I had this dream of entrepreneurship, and I noticed as I was doing my side hustles, which I was always doing with day jobs, that I kept promoting and marketing things. I was like, oh, I really like this marketing stuff. I like making things and putting it out there, whether it's on the YouTube channel or this book Million Dollar Weekend.

4:29And for me, I had a freedom number. This is something I recognized. My freedom number, it was$3 ,000. And I believed if I could get my freedom number, which was enough for living, enough for food, enough for expenses, that I could quit my job and do what I really want. And I encourage everyone to think about it and get their freedom number. So I was able to finally do that with AppSumo. I quit consulting and was making$3 ,000 a month. And, you know, I went to Europe and that's where now 13 years later, I'm able to run AppSumo. I put out this book, Million Dollar Weekend. I have a YouTube channel.

5:03I'd say my job today is to promote cool stuff and have fun while doing it. You know, it's amazing. I can't believe I get to do what I do and make as much as I make doing this stuff. It's awesome. And it's available for everybody else. Yeah, you've had a crazy journey, man. like you know we're both like you've been on doing the internet stuff long long much longer than me but um when i first heard of you was through pat flynn's podcast and a big a big part of like your kind of persona or identity or what i knew of you back then was you were an early stage facebook employee i think you invented the status update or you didn't invent you came up with that feature right or you suggested that feature or you rolled out that feature and then you were famously fired by mark and uh then you started absolutely no then you worked for mint or insure it yeah yeah and then yeah they got bought for a few hundred billion yeah yeah and then uh and then you eventually launched sumo or absolute room at the time yeah yeah i've started yeah i've been working for some pretty impressive people i worked directly for zuckerberg to help it i was number four built mint.com and then i tried a lot of businesses along the way i'll like i i picked some you know the Facebook games industry, payments games industry, and, you know, a lot of other businesses that didn't even make it.

6:23And it was finally getting to the point where I was like, okay, well, what's the, what's the thread? What's the stuff I really, you know, I think about what's my thread that has always been a part of all this. And it's just been promoting things. So I was like, what if I could do that? And I love a good deal and I love software. And I was like, let me experiment. And I did it in a weekend to be able to start AppSumo.com, which is crazy. Cause now this year it'll do almost 80 million, which is unbelievable. Cause I was like, can I just make 3 000 bucks and that 3 000 bucks has now turned into millions a year for myself which i i just find insane yeah that's awesome and like that's that like the business has gone like i remember you you've come in and out of that business right like tell us what's what's the latest there are you the ceo i remember i saw you were looking for a ceo at one point and eamon was the ceo and yeah yeah i think i was always afraid of facing myself and actually doing things I thought I could do.

7:17And I think this is true for all of us. Like all of us have an idea of something hard in our lives that we want, like being alone, which I have one of my best friends is now single and it's really hard for me to be alone. And that's hard for me too. And I always thought like I can get stuff started, but once I get it started, I get fired. That's what happened to Facebook. It kind of happened at Mint. And so with AppSumo, I was able to get it going. It was amazing. Software deals and people liked it. And a lot of people still to this day love it. but I was like I cannot be CEO I'm gonna ruin this thing just like my dad did with his business and so I hired another person and it was pretty good it's pretty great you know I got this thing going I think for anyone it's like all right well what's the problem how can you get quick validation over I got this business working and I was able to find someone to run it and I was like awesome and I was actually I was making like two or three million dollars a year which you should never feel sad for me about like not you are not that you are but it's just crazy it's making this money and I just felt so empty.

8:09I was just so, uh, pretty depressed across, across like so many areas of life, like relationship where I was living in this work. Um, and I don't know if it's God, I'm not really religious, but the CEO quit while I was biking across America. So this guy I hired quit and he was phenomenal, but he calls me up and he's like, I quit. I don't want to do this anymore. And it, I had to come back. So basically flew home the next day and I had to face myself. And I definitely have made a lot of mistakes as a CEO. And finally, I would say now three years later, since being CEO, it's been the best decision, just facing something hard, which was like, can I actually run this company?

8:48Can I be a leader? Can I take initiative and drive this company to help promote products, software products for solopreneurs? It's been tough. It's been tough. Definitely times I thought I was gonna quit. I'm like, today's definitely quitting day. This person over here at the company, Sean or a loner or someone else better than me. And, you know, you're taking it day by day, every day. And then the next day you kind of take a break, you go for a walk and you're like, I can do this. And lately I just feel very blessed that I get this experience in life. And I do think for anyone out there that wants to be an entrepreneur, I know a lot of your audiences either starting or they're getting going.

9:19It's been the best experience ever. Like being an entrepreneur is the best experience and everyone should do it. And the idea that I can create jobs and I can honestly create an amazing amount of income for myself, which is a blessing, it's just unreal. It's just really an unreal experience that everyone should go through and then decide how they actually want to live or not. Hey, FounderFam, I want to talk to you about something super exciting. We're officially partnered with OmniSend, the email marketing and SMS platform built specifically for e-commerce founders. We've been recommending OmniSend to founder students for a while now because it just works.

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11:41Yeah, agreed. And so all three of us in my previous startup, I started it and I hired them, but they were like, we're more important than you. And I was like, I just got to do this by myself and see if I can really do it. And so with AppSumo, I did start alone, but Chad Boyda joined me after about nine months. And this is a great story for anyone out there. He became my, he was a CTO, but really business partner and co-founder. And he worked for free for a year. That's crazy. For a year, which is just like, and a lot of people hey can i have it can i have something can you do something right away and the fact that he believed in what we're doing and promoting software and really committed to that um and now he you know i won't share his money but he's doing he's doing very well it's just a something i'm noticing where how do people just do a little bit more than everybody else and then you'll get a little bit more than everybody else but i guess where i was going yeah so is yes it is more lonely i think if you're a solo founder like i like that that's i reckon that's tough you obviously you get to you you know you get to keep all the dividends if you pay one out but yeah if you don't have shareholders but if you're the sole shareholder yeah i reckon it's tougher in some ways who did you i would agree as you started founder who did you go to when you say who did i go to like what did you you were didn't you start this by yourself yeah yeah yeah 100 yeah so who would you go to when you had problems or uncertainties well in the early days so founder grew pretty fast in the first couple years so i i joined eo so i had my eo forum are you familiar with eo entrepreneurs organization yeah yeah so so first was my forum and then just other buddies that have businesses and then your mentors people have met along the journey but even still you still you still carry that weight on your shoulders you know yeah i think it's adjusted i would say it's adjusted for me over the years early on i just wanted to be alone not not just to be alone i was like let me just try to do customer support marketing coding sales and all these things and so and i think it's great for every founder to understand it and realize like oh customer support don't like that programming don't like that yeah sales don't want to do that and then eventually i'm like can i just do the marketing and leadership yeah uh but what i've realized is is a few things one today at sumo we we pay about a thousand dollars an hour for just elite advisors.

14:00That's one of our cheat codes that we do for every single leader in the team. They have an elite advisor and you don't have to figure it all out. And I think a lot of companies, especially if you're small, you don't, you can't really afford a Google person. One, there may not be the very good and you want to get someone who's hungry and wants to be there and then just hire a 10 ,000 hour person. So an hour after this call, I'm meeting with Moody, who's the, our marketing advisor. So he was CMO of glass doors, CMO of Zapier. And so I get it. He just basically tells me what to do for marketing. And I disagree with him all the time, and then I end up doing it.

14:30Yeah. And then we have the CFO of MailChimp for our VP of Finance. And then the chief revenue officer from MindBodyOnline and Outdoorsy for our head of revenue. Yeah. The chief people officer of Duolingo for our people leader. Yeah. And so that's one way where if you're starting up, you can't afford them full time. But for 500 an hour, 250 an hour, 1 ,000 an hour, you're going to get 10 ,000 hours of value, which is insane. And I think early on, I used to want a mentor and I used to give out some equity for some advisors, but none of them really cared. And I never really could find a mentor that believed in me or cared in me.

15:04It's not to say boohoo. I just couldn't find someone that actually was a two-way street. So I tried to find peers that complemented my weaknesses. And I think that's very accessible. And then create a WhatsApp group or create even a quarterly board meeting. And so that was what I did. So Andrew Chen is one of my best friends. He's a pretty popular Twitter and VC. But he, I mean, I'm much more tactical and much more action oriented and he's much more strategic and theoretical. So I would go to him and he would make a spreadsheet and that transformed the business. This one spreadsheet he did, like 10X our business.

15:36And so it was like, oh, well, when I need that, I'll go to Andrew. Or if I want to do ads, I go to Simon, Simon brand speed date dot com. And so I was just trying to find these people that were more complimentary in these areas and then just be around them like Chad, my business partner. I needed someone technical. And then as we were working together, you don't have to get married. We worked together and saw if we liked each other. He's much more, I would say, stable at the time and much more consistent, like just consistency. Yeah, that's really clever. So you use like just clarity or use intro or one of those tools, right?

16:07I think you can use that. It's also just looking specifically which companies have done the things you want to do and see who exactly did it. And so a lot of times it's going on LinkedIn specifically and then getting a warm intro. I do think you can do the clarity or use intro, but personally, I think just a warm referral via anyone that knows them and almost everyone you can get a connection to. Or if you email them, you know, hey, I want to pay you$1 ,000 an hour, 500 for an hour of time. Almost everyone responds to that, even if it's a no, but you can follow up with them or ask for a referral, which is how we run, you know, pretty much every business.

16:42Like you ask for a sale or you get a referral. And that's how we've gotten all these advisors. Yeah, that's really clever. So, so tell me about this new book. What compelled you to write it? You got, you know, you got a pretty rocking YouTube channel these days. Thank you, man. And it's really just around starting, right? It's like a lot of your content really, really is helping people start a business. Yeah, the YouTube content. I mean, me and you, I would say are very similar. I'm assuming. I hate when people say that. And I'm like, you don't know me. Like, I don't know you. uh i like making content yeah right like my youtube channel specifically uh i've just been making content for 23 years it's what i like to do i like attention i told my girlfriend i was like baby i like attention i like promoting things i like getting people excited to take action for themselves uh and three years ago a little bit about three years ago during covid i just started recording myself shirtless in my house i was living i live in you know was living in a 800 square foot house.

17:46And I was like, man, this sucks. This COVID thing sucks, but I feel really good about my business stuff. Maybe I can make videos and help others. So just shirtless with my iPhone started like posting videos. And I think that's really a powerful message for anyone out there. Not to be shirtless like me, my body didn't look super good. But it was just you can get started right now. Right now you can. Whether you want to start an interview show, whether you're going to start like an AppSumo kind of business, whether you're going to be a service provider, you can start that right now and you don't need anything else and that is just phenomenal amazing and so the content over time has evolved it's funny because i run a almost 100 million dollar business like a year and i try to put out that content no one watches it yeah like they don't want to know about it man except alex and moses crack that like he he talks he's done pretty well yeah he talks really sophisticated content and there's a lot of people that follow him you know i mean he's got there are a lot yeah but it's hard yeah i i i think what's interesting though i don't know any of his businesses i've never seen one the only ones that i've never actually seen any business i i you know i tend to look at the people whose businesses i've i use and i can purchase and so from those kind of people i'm like wow you know at appseum.com we do this amazing you know a lot of partners millions of customers that buy these software tools especially for solopreneurs and it's been insane to try to put out that content and no one watch it yeah but that's also something we're gonna be working on because it's not no one it's just the the size of the audience isn't as large as making content that's to inspire people for entrepreneurship which is a lot of what we do it's like how do we inspire people we call them the underdogs so in all businesses like who's your customer and it's to inspire underdogs and so our content's either you know going and asking people how they got rich or talking to billionaires and asking what they regret and how they got to where they are so that others like myself and everyone out here can be inspired on our own business journey.

19:42So what compelled you to write this book, Million Dollar Weekend? Tell us about it. Man, it was a bike ride about 15 years ago in New York with my buddy Adam. Do you know Adam Gilbert from mybodytutor.com? You ever interviewed this guy? I think you'd love him. He was like an accountant. He's my best friend. He's my guardian angel. and he's why I never feel alone. And so we're in a bike ride in New York and I was just, so I'm like, one day I want to write a book because there's no book I can give to someone that, hey, if you want to start a business, you don't want to spend money, don't spend a lot of time, what's the book you would actually read or tell someone to read?

20:19And I was like, I know how to do it. I've done it a bunch of times. I'm still doing, I'm still running a big company, relatively big company. I think it's, I'm proud of what we've created. And it was time a few years ago where I was like, okay, I've done this enough times. I've helped enough people. I can put that book together. And so it's taken around three years and probably one of the best things I've ever done. Also one of the hardest for sure. And so, yeah, it's interesting because there's so many books out there about business. There's a lot of, you know, I'm sure you've talked to some of them, like YouTube fiction business gurus, as I call them.

20:50They're fiction writers. It's not nonfiction. They've never actually ran a real business, but they talk about it. And it's interesting though, if there's so much information out there, how is everyone not getting successful in business? how is that possible if there's so much free udemy courses or like tweets tweet threads yeah tiktoks and if it and so it was really diving deep and literally like tens of thousands of people as well as doing it a lot of times myself working for zuckerberg all these things that came together to help understand like what's holding people really back and then solving that it's really only two things and then giving them the the toolkit so that they can actually once they get the business going how do they then get it going in a weekend not spend money and then scale it beyond that which i've been able to do multiple times are you hesitating to take the next step in your e-commerce journey founder plus has you covered with proven frameworks tailored to your business needs for fast results a supportive community of over 30 000 like-minded entrepreneurs and weekly live mentorship sessions founder plus is your key to success try founder plus today for just$1 for seven days and start building your dream business with confidence.

21:58You can visit founder.com forward slash start dollar trial or click the link in the description to claim your trial. Let's unpack that more. So what are the two things that hold people back? What do you think it is? From my experience, I'd say being afraid to fail would be one.

22:23and what else yeah being afraid to fail and caring what other people think totally yeah and that those are that's definitely in the right direction you're exactly right yeah and uh and so what i've observed and no one's thinking this by the way i try it's not that anyone's afraid they don't think they're actually afraid there's other reasons it's like well i don't have money. I don't have a technical co-founder. I don't have time. But if you have a dream of being a millionaire or having even grocery money, you can actually change your life in a weekend, which is amazing. I just did it literally.

22:58A guy flew in last week, Jake, and he lived with me. He lived with me. And we spent 48 hours creating a million dollar business. And it was hard and fun. And it was it was completed. It didn't make a million dollars immediately by the end of 48 hours, but he's on the path to doing that. So the two things that everyone that helps everyone get to success in business and frankly in life it's the fear of starting starting it's the starting it's the i need to listen to another founder interview yeah you do get going and listen to it most people think no no the next one's going to teach me the thing i need to know and so what are ways that i can just get momentum like what are the what's the things that i can do right now yeah and so one of the the things that we've seen success like with this Jake guy, is this mentality of now, not how?

23:44So how do you overcome this fear of Jake is, he's got three kids. He lives in North Texas. And he said that he's had the same idea around golf. And I don't, the video is coming out in a few weeks, but he had this idea about a golf business for two years. And in 48 hours, we were able to get five customers and get the business going. And it was really, you know, there's different specific methods I talk about in the book that we support him on. And for anyone who reads Million Dollar Weekend, but it was like, Let's just get going right now on your phone via social media, via whatever it is. Let's just get going.

24:15We don't need to go buy a website. And then the second fear that was fascinating, and it's just been amazing. We have about a 1 ,500 people beta team around the book. And so they get the book. They go through it. I see where their fears are. I see where they're getting held back with customers and so forth. And the second one is asking. It's asking. It's how do you ask so you can get? because if you don't ask, you don't get. No ask, no get. And there's a few ways that people can improve on starting and continuing and asking. Coffee challenge is what I've been famous for, which I've seen Jake and I've seen this guy, Dieter, people who've read the book and they've read Million Dollar Week and they go and next time they get coffee and they ask for 10 % off and they get rejected.

25:00And I'm so happy for them. And it's not about getting this discount, but it's about realizing all businesses, is, whether you're asking, you know, someone to sponsor founder, whether you're selling a business, whether it's something like product service course, whatever it is, uh, it's asking someone for something and in exchange, they give you money ideally for what you're doing. And the more that you can actually practice that in small ways. So doing the coffee challenge, doing other challenges, the ability to get these things is amazing. And the upside is unlimited. yeah that's really cool so yeah definitely on the right path um so i'm curious you talk about like you got five customers for uh i think you said it was jacob was jacob jacob yeah jake yeah jake um and in the book you kind of really help people like with all the tactics to kind of change your trajectory and build momentum and get those quick wins.

26:01How do you know that it'll be a million dollar business? Yeah, that's the fun part. So the first part of the book, there's basically three sections of the book. It's like start it, build it, grow it. So before you even get going, like there's enough videos out there about how to grow businesses, whether the person actually has a real business or they have a dropshipping affiliate course, who knows. But once we can get them over the spheres, then they can use this process every single we can define the business idea that actually works. So let's just start with start it. Now, in terms of build it, there's a few different things.

26:30So number one, how big is the market? Do you have a million dollar market? So let's think about golf. Like that is a million dollar, trillion dollar, not trillion, but it's in the billions of dollar market. So specifically what you can do is how many people are in it and how much are they spending? And that's even very complicated. What you really want to see is how many people can I basically find on Google trends? Let's just use that as one thing. And there's other methods in here. But you want to understand, like, is there a million dollars worth of people that will spend money on this? And the reality is you're going to work either way.

27:00So let's find the market that is. And then the second part of that is looking at your one-minute business model. And, again, this book is focused on 48 hours. So if people want complicated college-level books on how to do profit analysis, it's not going to be in this book because it's not what they need. What they need is to understand, is there a million-dollar customers? And how does their business model actually able to help them get to a million dollars or not? And so when Jake came in with his original version of his golf business, running through the one-minute business model, it was like, you're not going to be able to do this.

27:29Maybe in 10 years, you'll get to a million dollars. But in this next year, can we actually get to a million or maybe in two years? And so being able to look at a one-minute business model around profit, loss, and revenue expenses to get to profit, and then what we need to tweak on is revenue dials. We're able to make some changes. and it seems pretty possible that he's going to be able to do this uh in the next depends on how he does one year two year so forth i mean absumo took we did 300 000 our first year and about three million dollars a second so and that's a business that started in a weekend it was me and one other person in a weekend a contractor yeah look it's a good headline dude it's a good headline it's a good headline i had to ask the question because that's what everyone's thinking like how can you build a million dollar business in a weekend like that doesn't make sense so i had to ask you it does i'm gonna do a live version of it uh coming up i don't know i don't know do you know i don't know if i'll get two million dollars in a weekend uh in legitimate ways and not to yeah yeah you've got advantage of other things but i think for someone like jake who's got a day job and three kids and he wants to get there it's how do i set myself up so i can stick with it you know one of the things i've talked about in the book is this concept of law of 100 it's why people quit too soon everyone quits right before like you i've got i have to give you a lot of respect for sticking with this how many people have started the podcast that didn't stick with it yeah most like almost of them right and so law of 100 is around how do people stick with things so they can get to the level of success and for jake it's like okay we have a business idea is there a market that's enough people that will spend money does a business model does a business model actually help you get there and now okay let's start validating that customers and a few different validation methods will actually pay you money.

29:11And now it's just repeating that model, which Jake is able to do this week, since he was able to see that people are excited to give him money. What most people do, if they have an idea for a business, and dude, you see this all the time. Like I have an idea for a business, let's just, this golf business, I'm going to get a Shopify site. Great. 20 bucks right there. I need to watch a video or two about ads, because I'm going to probably buy some ads and send them to this landing page. And then I need to use AI. So I have to understand some chat gpt i'll pay twenty dollars for chat gpt pro and all that could have been found out with a phone call with a text maybe even posting on your social media to see if anyone's interested in something you could post it on a marketplace like facebook marketplace and there's other ways of doing it so you're finding out as fast and cheap as possible is this actually a problem people want solved whereas most people have solutions and things they've solved and try to find problems yeah and most people fall in love with the idea they fantasize with the idea that's just from my experience um look yeah i do but to be clear i have done that too oh me too i've had so many businesses yeah i've had so many businesses i'm like this is where i'm gonna get really rich yeah and it's it almost never works out that way it's the things that i did pretty quickly to find out that people wanted it and then just stuck with it and then you iterate and improve on it over time just like these youtube videos as an example if you want to be a content creator post a video today you want to be a social media person post a thing today commit to the law of 100 do it 100 times and then now like i'm in a twenty thousand dollar studio in my house but that just started with an iphone 12 shirtless and the reality is that's how business it's that's how all businesses are most people never get to the million because they're not getting their one dollar yeah and so that's why the weekend is like let's get you the dollar let's post the content whatever it's content if you want to be a service business whatever it is let's focus on some of the basics to get going.

31:00And then as you get beyond, it's like, all right, you know, AppSumo is very complicated of a business. So how do we, how do you do your schedule? How do you do your marketing, which I've done a lot of times? And then we set that up towards the end of the book. But that's generally what people get excited about. And so how do we make it fun along the way to get them there? And so that's been, it's been an experience to see the psychology of a lot of people, because I do think most people dream of dream jobs. Most people dream of being an entrepreneur or having freedom and how they want to live.

31:27And so it's how do we help them get there in a achievable way? You talked about something that I find very interesting around this law of 100. Something I've always often thought about is, or I like to ask people is, how do you know when to move on to the next thing? How do you know when to give up? And you said you've started a lot of businesses. If you had followed that law of 100, would you still, yeah, like from your experience how do you gauge when you're onto a winner when you're not onto a winner you know what i mean because a lot of it is experience too it is i generally follow the law valid the rule not law that none of these are laws whether most laws are man-made so i was you know there's the laws there's the laws of gravity that one i would say is a law what i find to be true in terms of the law 100 is just having something to know that you have to stick with it so just for you know i I did a podcast and after around 30, 35 episodes, I quit because I was at 30 ,000 downloads an episode, not 100 ,000.

32:29And it wasn't the number I wanted. So I was like, well, this is a failure. And I gave up. I've come back on my show. I've been doing it now for years. But thinking about sustainability, thinking about sticking with something, just knowing that will help you be successful. Now, coming back to your original question, how do you know to even stick with something, right? Like how do you even choose that? Because what most people do is they dabble. They're like, well, I tried. I put my toe in. It didn't work. It's like, well, you didn't even get in the pool. How do you know you can swim or not? So I like to do it in 48 hours to see if there's going to be some response.