MI318: Million Dollar Weekend w/ Noah Kagan

21:41And he's like, look, I want to try a conference out. I'm going to just see how it goes. And if it doesn't work, that's okay. What am I going to learn? And if it does work, great. Then I have a business. But I think what happens, what I've observed in tons of people is they have all this pressure. And if it doesn't work, they're a failure. And so that leads us to the second most important point of the book, and not even just the book, of starting a business, which is the fear of asking. And it doesn't ever go away. It gets easier because people get better. And it's how do you practice your ask muscle?

22:10So that's where we talk about the coffee challenge, which is asking for 10 % off coffee whenever you buy it. And it's not about getting the discount. It's about practicing asking for things. Practicing asking a guy for his number or a girl for her number. Practicing asking for someone to buy your product. And what most people do is they just hope for it. They're like, okay, I put a tweet out, but no one bought it. So I'm just going to stay with this job that I'm not happy with, or I don't know what I'm going to do. And you start realizing the upside of asking is you can meet people on planes. I meet people on their houses and their yachts, different things that they invite me to now.

22:42And it's not that I have money or network that they know of. I just asked. And the more that people can practice that, and maybe one of the things that I found very powerful is this framework around rejection goals. So instead of just... The more you practice it, the more you're like, I'm just going to get rejected 10 times. Guess what? Within that 10, I promise you, you will find something about yourself and you'll learn about how to ask better. And you might actually get someone to say yes to you. It's insane. And I'm still doing it myself. The video you're talking about, the first class passengers and going up to them, it's definitely intimidating.

23:11And I do it and I have some goals about, all right, can I get 10 rejections? And out of 10 rejections, I actually got five people saying yes. And you see them on the video and that video is going to, by the time this comes out, have a million views. Let's take a quick break and hear from today's sponsors. Even Einstein had blind spots. That's why modern science is built on the idea of peer review. Investing may be more art than science, but that doesn't make peer feedback any less valuable. The tricky thing is finding qualified people who are interested and willing to help vet your investment ideas.

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26:13And for a limited time, you can use code stocks 15 for a 15 % discount at checkout. All right, back to the show. There's a lot of directions I could go in right now. I wanted to hear a little bit more about the freedom number. Say more about that. Are you suggesting that people like, let's say for, in your case, it was$3 ,000 a month. Did you have, I also want to get into the passive income stuff of real estate. Did you have$3 ,000 of income coming in at that point that then you were able to pursue your business and pursue something that you loved? Or talk to me a little bit about the freedom number and how people can utilize that.

26:50Yeah. And the freedom number doesn't have to be a million dollars a month, which is 83 ,000. It could be whatever number enables you to live the life you want to live, whatever number it is, but you need some goal. You need some destination so that, hey, if your freedom number is just like, I need some creativity, I want grocery money. There's a woman, Jennifer Jones, she's not trying to be a millionaire. She wants an extra thousand bucks a month for her family in Dallas. That's it. And she's able to do it through cookies. She just posts on her social networks and through her own personal network, your zone of influence, just cookies.

27:21And it's easy to discount that like, oh, well, that's simple. It's like, yeah, it should be simple. But she started it now and she asked and she has the business. And the steps in the business, there's a lot in the book that spells it out very clearly. And so in terms of the freedom number for myself, I was working a day job at mint.com, which I just, again, that wasn't my dream. And I realized having this number, which was 3000, if I could get that on my side hustle while my day job is going, then I could finally do the thing I want. And what the counterintuitive thing is, when I got to that number, even though it's small, I was getting paid 100 ,000.

27:53That was my salary. But I was like, if I can just get my freedom number, I can quit and do the thing I really want. And that's led me to making$3 million a year today. That's insane. That's insane. But it's from a small number that helped me empower me to move in a direction doing the thing I actually wanted. And so if I made a lot more, great. And as I've gotten older, yeah, I have different things I want to... The lifestyle I want to live. But it enabled me to get to a place where, okay, yes, eventually I'm now doing AppSuma.com, promoting software deals, which I love, helping partners get customers, helping customers get great deals.

28:23And that's all started from just a small number that everyone can obtain. It's just having it and then getting started moving towards it. Let's get into that a little bit because it sounds like you were practicing a lot of minimalism type principles. You were living on couches. You were living on a floor. I think I heard you tell a story that you had a sleeping bag and you brought a woman over and said, Here's my sleeping bag. You were living pretty Spartan-like, I would say. So talk to me a little bit about the importance of minimalism for you. Was that a big part of it? I mean, it had to have been to some degrees, but I wanted to hear your thoughts on it.

28:58It was just being cheap. It was just being super cheap, Patrick. I've been cheap my whole life. I think, right. And to be clear, I've become a millionaire off a deal site. I've made my money on saving money. And so in this period of life, until I was around 37, I didn't really spend a lot of money on myself, on others, on where I lived, on any of it. I think we're kind of just taught to make money. We're never taught to enjoy the money. So it wasn't necessarily into minimalism. It was just, I didn't feel comfortable enjoying it. And I was scared. I was scared it was going to go away. I mean, my dad lost all of his money to drugs and drinking and it all went away.

29:34And And for me, a similar thing where I was like, okay, just keep making it. And when COVID happened was the first moment I was like, maybe I'm not going to live forever and I should enjoy some of this stuff. And so that's where I started, instead of just going and spending a bunch of money on Ferraris or I'm wearing a Rolex and stuff like this, I just tried it out and saw how it felt. And so to drive a Ferrari today, you can drive one for 300 bucks. This is not some clickbait. You can go on Turo and rent one. And people are like, dude, it's literally 300 bucks. I rented it. I was like, I don't like it.

30:02It makes me too nervous. That's why I have a Miata. But I have a$15 ,000 bike. I have two of them. And people will probably be like, that's crazy. But to me, that's where I tried out nicer bikes and I keep cycling. And over time, I'm like, dude, I would buy another one. I want to buy a nicer bike. There's just nothing nicer today. And so I think when people say minimalism, I think they get it wrong in what they're saying minimalist. It's more just like, what's the lifestyle you want to live and try different lifestyles out, just like figure out different careers and then find the one that suits you best.

30:29For me today, I don't know, I have a very expensive house that costs a lot every month. And the older I'm getting, the more I want less things to deal with in my life. I want my girlfriend and renting. I'd prefer to rent properties now versus owning, which has been a change of my own mentality. And I don't want to make money in all these passive different ways. I want to make a lot of money in one way. That's what I prefer. So I'm getting rid of most of my real estate. I'm consolidating all of my finances into just I think four ETFs, index funds. And I'm simplifying these things versus like, all right, how do I make a few more nickels off this stuff?

31:03So your focus now is the book and AppSumo and everything else is, like you said, I want to get into the real estate a little bit, but you're getting rid of the stuff that's peripheral to your main focus, which seems like your business and book. Yeah. I would say the top things in my life, AppSumo.com, my girlfriend, this book and YouTube. and I feel lucky. And what I would say for anyone who's... It doesn't matter if you're super old, like a thousand, or if you're 10 years old, the two things that I found for myself in terms of figuring it out, which I think we see these people like myself and like, you didn't see the times where I was drinking alone on a couch for a long, long time.

31:42And all the therapy I've gone to and going to India and trying all this different ayahuasca stuff that my mom thinks is crazy, which the two things to figure out your purpose is it's actually simpler than people make it out to be. Number one is just find the thing you want to do for free. Just find that. I love going on podcasts. I love making content. I love promoting things. I like sending out emails. I like marketing. And that is my career. So find the work you want to do for free. The second thing, which was the surprise for me, was find something that's hard. Find something that is going to make you proud of completing it.

32:12I biked this morning and it was really hard. I was like, bro, I'm proud of you. I was like, oh, that's kind of cool. And so I think you have to find a thing that you enjoy and is challenging. And if it's not challenging, guess what? Take your power and make it more challenging. And I think that that has led me in this direction of to where I am today. It reminds me a little bit of, we mentioned Kevin Kelly, I think, before we started recording. And he recommends in your 20s, maybe even early 30s, he calls it just slack, right? Just try a bunch of stuff. You have no clue. We go to college and we're supposed to declare a major and know what we want to do.

32:49but nobody really did. I mean, there's a handful of people that may know exactly what they have wanted to do from a young age, but by and large, people need to experiment. So I like his idea, Kevin Kelly's idea of just Slack and just trying different stuff. And that permission can be hard to give yourself. There's a lot of judgment, I would say, around societal expectations of what people should be doing, like having a stable career and a stable W-2 job and blah, blah, blah. it's hard to maybe experiment like he would recommend. Do you have any thoughts on that? What you would tell somebody in their 20s, how to find the thing that they love?

33:25I have a friend who makes half a million dollars a year in his day job. And so it's very hard for him to do side hustles. It's very hard for him to start his own business. And he's tried because he's like, oh, I make$30 a month here. I made half a million this year. Why am I going to spend time doing it? And this is a surprising thing. I told him, I said, just enjoy the work you're doing. You don't have to be an entrepreneur. I do think everyone should try it. I 100 % think everyone in the world should buy a property, start a business, start a YouTube channel, start all these different things, try it out, and try to learn what parts you actually want to do or not.

34:00I think you learn a lot about yourself. You learn about talking with others. You learn about creating. You feel good about yourself. But it may not be to ultimately how you should make all your money. So I think that that's a separate thing. In terms of Kevin Kelly and experimenting. The book is called Weekend because we all have weekends available to change our lives. I think the main thing I would say is if people want to do entrepreneurship, but I think everyone should try it, grab the book and get it going. The other comment I would make to my friend's point is also if your life is good the way it is, just enjoy it.

34:27If you're like, hey, I enjoy... There's this guy named Rick. Rick worked with me at Intel and I hated my job. I hated working at Intel. I hated going to office. I hated going home. Well, actually, I loved going home because I could work on my own side hustles. Rick was smarter than me. He was probably more ambitious than me in general. He was more capable of me in every way. But he was so happy going to work, leaving at five and going to soccer practice. And it was just a cool reminder that he found what worked for him. And so I like being rich. I think being rich has made me a lot happier. I think everyone should be rich.

34:58I think they should try out being rich. I tried out having a six-pack. I didn't like it. I was like, I want to eat food and drink vermouth or whatever we have out in Spain. But I tried being rich and I'm never going back. Maybe when I'm in the casket, I'll be in an affordable casket. But the point is, for Rick, he found his satisfaction. And I like the ability of ordering whatever I want on the menu or flying first class or flying private or buying multiple things just because I have the ability. It's not brag. It's just that works for me. And I think people should find what works for them. Let's dive into real estate.

35:30You've got a pin tweet right now about your experience in real estate. It sounded like you bought what, three condos and it hasn't maybe gone like you had planned. Dude, it sucks so bad. I just don't think anyone's talking about it. Every time I've... I was an 18-year-old reading these books that was like, buy real estate and you buy one, you leverage it, and guess what? You buy a second one and then you're rich. And I'm like, I want to be rich. I should buy real estate. And then you do some of these online calculators and it's like, well, the down payment's this and the rent is that? I was like, well, sounds like I'll be rich two months later.

36:04And I distinctly remember, I spent like six months buying real estate in Austin. That's where I'm based the rest of the year. And it was six months. And I finally was able to put a bid on a house that I thought was a great deal. And I lost the bid. I said, Noah, this house, the house was$350 ,000. I was like, okay, let's do best case scenario. Cashflow, what could you make? And I was like, okay, this year, if it cashflowed perfectly, I'd make 10 ,000 profit. Assuming nothing breaks, assuming taxes don't change, assuming that I have tenants, all these things, 10 ,000. Okay. Now it appreciates 10 years from now.

36:33How much is it worth? Oh, dude, it could be worth 700 ,000. Okay. So in 10 years, it gets an extra 350 ,000. So$35 ,000 a year in appreciation plus 10 ,000. Okay, cool, cool, cool. AppSumo was making$10 ,000 a day in profit. And I was like, maybe you should focus on the thing that works for you. Now, the caveat here is that my stepfather is an engineer and he had a day job and he never had aspirations for entrepreneurship. They were terrified when I left Intel. They thought I was crazy. And I thought he was crazy for having a job like that. I think entrepreneurship is not risky. You can do it for free.

37:07You could do it on a weekend. You could do it without a huge network, without a YouTube audience, all these things. You can definitely do that. And so for him, over a very long period of time, 20 years, they bought four properties. And now the properties generate$5 ,000 a month for them, and then they can live on that. And that's good. So I think it depends on how you want it to be. What I realized is for myself, so I bought all these condos. So today I have six properties. And I just thought you buy properties and they appreciate any cash flow and you're rich. That's what happens on the Millennial Invest podcast.

37:38That's what all these other people tell you. Now these condos, I'll just tell you exact numbers on one of them. I bought it for$350 10 years ago. I was renting it to myself as our company, which is... By the way, For everyone out there, if you don't have your own LLC, go get one. It is the best thing to do from a tax perspective and as well from just a money perspective. It gets you going on entrepreneurship and you can write off everything. Everyone should have an LLC, not just because of tax, just like getting your mindset moved into entrepreneurship. And so over fast forward 10 years, I barely could find a renter.

38:07It cost me with property tax, HOA, with the mortgage, it cost me like$2 ,000 a month. And I could barely find a renter for$3 ,000. barely. So I make$1 ,000 a month. That's great. That's kind of cool. Until it was empty for a while. Until the HOA said, hey, by the way, you have to pay for a roof. Your fee is$12 ,000. Until the tenant who's there complains about different things. And I was like, that's not in the blog posts. That's not in the book. And I have two other properties that are profitable for now. But I wanted to put out a realistic idea that the upside is actually pretty fixed. And the amount of control to create more income from it is really only about buying more properties.

38:49And the amount of capital around that is, even if you're leveraging it, it's still high. And so for me, I like the idea of business where you can have it be passive. How? Hire people. You can have it be passive. How? Use software. And the thing with the real estate thing that pissed me off ultimately was that I don't have some advantage in this game. What do I have? How could I beat you, Patrick? I can't. I can find some other ways to beat people in areas that there's less competition in areas that I'm more interested in. Now, let me be clear. If you're into real estate and you really love it, if you treat it like a profession, you can make professional income.

39:20I do have friends that are millionaires. Not the house is worth a million. They're actually on equity worth millions, but that's all they do. And I think people want to... If you're like my stepfather, fine, do it for 20 years and maybe you'll have a few thousand dollars a month. But I think there's a much easier ways of getting rich. So that pinned tweet, I think it got over a million impressions. It really struck a chord. Why do you think that was that it generated so many impressions and comments? I'll tell you the fact because I go on Twitter and I see people talk about their storage units, which I think are trash.

39:54I think storage units in general is garbage business. I don't want to encourage people to have more. I think it's stupid. So that's number one. And then you see these Airbnb STR short-term rental people, our duplexes, our apartment buildings. And the majority of them are like, here's a building. I flipped it and I'm rich. And one thing that you have to do is that if people are posting this publicly, what's their incentive? And the incentive ultimately is they're going to sell you something. So either they want capital like Grant Cardone does at a high level for their real estate, and they promise you returns, which may or may not be true.

40:23I've lost money doing that. I've lost money in a lot of ways. I can share a lot of these kinds of stories. And then secondly, they're going to sell you something else. They're going to probably sell you a course. They're going to sell you something that is how they actually make their money. Why do these storage unit guys have courses and all these other business units? Because the thing that they say they do doesn't actually make them as much as you think. And I think the counter example, it's the same reason my Tony Robbins article went viral. It's that it's not that you can't make money in real estate, but there are other sides of it.

40:48And I think there's other ways of making money that people should consider. And so I think the fact that it was like, oh, wow, it doesn't always work. It works when you post something. It works when someone shows a title of how much money they made. I made this much money. It's like, did you? And so I think the fact that I showed... And it's probably more than that number. I said 55 ,000 this year. It's probably more that I'm losing. And people just don't see that. So you're getting rid of all your real estate. You're done with it? I have... So I have six places. Three are work spaces. I'm going to get rid of two of them.

41:19The other two are Airbnbs that for the most part, I don't have to deal with. for the most part. And then my primary residence. But moving forward, I want to reduce these real estate properties, put it in the market, just in the S &P. And then in Spain, most likely rent. Right now I'm living with my girlfriend, but we'll rent a nicer place in the years to come. You mentioned the Tony Robbins article. Talk to me a little bit about that. You walked out on Tony. I did. That article went hyper viral. And what happened again is it was a similar story. I talked to a lot of people before I went to Tony Robbins, I was at a low in my life about what to do for work and what to do in my relationships.

41:57And everyone's like, Tony, I love Tony. Tony's the best ever. Tony's so good. And then you read all these books and Tony's so famous. And I was like, well, it must be true. And I went there and I was like, this sucks. He's trying to sell me supplements. Yeah, there's a whole day dedicated to selling supplements. And then he's trying to... I have to massage another guy. You have to massage your neighbor. And I'm like, okay, yes, I'm out of my comfort zone. I got it. And then it was jumping up and down. And I think his stuff can work for people. And I think there's good messages in there. And he's name dropping like crazy.

42:30I'm like, okay. The problem with the Tony experience is that it works for some, but when you have 14 ,000 different people in a stadium with 14 ,000 different problems, it's hard for him to help everybody. But everyone tells you it's good because they want to reinforce that they made a good decision. They want to think, hey, I went to the event. It was good for me. And so no one was telling anyone that it may not be good. And I felt it was appropriate to... And he was a customer of the business I was running, the software company. And I was like, no, I still feel comfortable. And I think there's a lot of people that have benefited from him.

43:01And I said that, but I personally walked out. And I think when you create content, I've created lots of content over the years. It's what is interesting content and why. And if you're just putting out the same as everyone else, it's not going to get attention. But if you have a different opinion and you could back it up, there's probably a chance that people will pay attention to you. I wanted to get into that a little bit. Your number one tips for producing an interesting YouTube video or producing a great Twitter thread or things like that. Let's start with YouTube. What's your number one for somebody that is just getting started producing content?

43:32What would you tell them? Yeah. Yeah. And we talk about this in the Million Dollar Weekend. And there's resources. If people go there, you can go and join. We have a resource section that if you just go to milliondollarweekend.com, then people will be able to get all this stuff that we're going to talk about. The mediums can change. When I started, blogging was popular, and then Twitter is popular, and then Twitter became not popular, and then Twitter's popular again. Email is popular, then it went away. And so I think the two things I would consider is, what's a channel that you enjoy that you can build an audience?

43:59And then what's a channel that you can communicate with your audience? That's the only two major things. How do you grow your audience? How do you communicate? How you're going to grow it can change based on what world we're in when you're listening to this and what's working. LinkedIn might be for you. LinkedIn by the time in five years might be gone. And so it's just finding the medium that you enjoy that is working. And then secondly, communicating. And the number one thing is email, period. That might change to other mediums, but you have to be able to control it. Now, so that's where I would start.

44:27And I use sendfox.com for email. We built it. It's free. In terms of the organic social content, I think you have to think about where you're spending your time and where you enjoy. I probably watch about maybe six hours a day of YouTube, three to six hours a day on YouTube. Consuming content? Yeah. I watch a lot of poker, squash, my videos. I watch almost no other business videos because I think they're all trash. I don't know. I just, I'm like, I don't believe you. Show me your... None of them have real businesses. They just have YouTube channels. I watch, I don't know, fantasy football people talking.

45:00I watch people do camping. I watch biking videos a lot. I just watch a tremendous... And so for me, making content there is really fun. Because I like the attention. I like being on screen. And to be clear, one of the things that I think is not talked about enough is that if you're excited about a medium, you don't have to be on camera. So you could actually do a lot of... Put up videos or things where you're talking behind. You could be the guy who's doing producing, or you could be filming, or you could be editing. There's a lot of ways of making a lot of money not being on screen. And I think that's a misconception that most people make.

45:28They're like, I don't want to be on camera. You don't have to be. Now, in terms of making content, the mediums change and every medium is different. I was doing initially all of them. And I recognize, okay, if I can only do one, which is the one that's working for me to get an audience, that I like the audience. I hate TikTok audience. I think TikTok is trash. I think all the content is trash. I think most of what they do is trash. And I spend zero time on it. And so I was like, oh, well, I like the audience on YouTube. I like the comments on YouTube. So try them all out and see which one you like the results of it.

45:56And so how do you make something successful? Now, there's a formula that I would think about. And the main thing, the number one thing to think about is how much time are you thinking about what you're writing? This is the part that people miss. People are like, oh, I filmed a video. No one watched it. It's okay. So the two pieces that I would do is number one, how much time? So when we make a video, we probably have about 100 to 1 ,000 ideas per video of what video to make. And we only do two videos a month. And what I'm trying say here is that if you're creating content, just be clear of what you think will do well.

46:23And that's why you saw the real estate tweet that went viral, but I've put out, I don't know, 10 ,000 tweets and 100 have done super well, 1%. And so that tweet, I did spend time writing and I was like, okay, yeah, this is going to do well because it's a different topic. So again, spend a lot of time thinking about the topic. Number two is the law of 100. And so the second most important, it doesn't matter which medium, but commit to doing 100 pieces of content. So the first year of YouTube, which I started with my iPhone, iPhone 12, shirtless in my house. And I just recorded a video that I was like, COVID sucks, but here's what I'm doing.

46:53I feel really good. And then I kept going. I committed. And if you... So you don't... My point is you got to do now, not how. Don't worry. Oh, I don't have a lighting. Just get your phone out and record a video. Put it up. Write the tweet right now. Text someone about a customer that you want to be your customer. Text them right now. Put out a photo on one of the Instagrams or wherever people are using. And then commit to 100 of it. And the law of 100... I gave up on my podcast too soon. That's something I wish I would have stuck. I'm still sticking with it now. But if I would have kept sticking with it from the original days, I mean, it would be a top 10 podcast.

47:26But because I didn't stick with it. And so with YouTube, one, we're very intentional about our topics. And there's a lot of more technical things and more strategy that maybe for the second episode. But the second part is just sticking with it. The first year of YouTube, really, I did 52 videos. No, excuse me. Three videos a week for 52 weeks. And that was started during COVID? Yeah, 150 videos. You can go look, they're all still up. And we found though, it was after doing 150 of them, it was like, huh, only one or two of them really work. Let's just do two really high quality videos a month. But it's because we stuck with the law of 100.

47:58I put out a ton of content and we kept getting better and better and better. And it was like, oh, these work, let's just do more of those. And the two videos that we do are asking millionaires and asking old rich people their wisdom. Let's take a quick break and hear from today's sponsors. Hey, it's Sean O'Malley, just popping in with a quick message. If you like this podcast, well, I've got great news for you. We've got a handful of other shows for you to explore, from learning about Bitcoin to embracing a richer, wiser, happier lifestyle. Just go into your podcast app and type in We Study Billionaires to find our collection of shows.

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51:31All right, back to the show. I wanted to touch on a little bit about, I heard you mention a book that made a big impact on me called The Power of Full Engagement by Tony Schwartz. And one of the ideas that I thought was interesting is not so much about managing your time, but managing your energy. And I heard you talk about that. I wanted to hear how that shows up in your own life about how you think about managing your energy as opposed to managing your time. I believe that time management is dog shit and people are way too focused on productivity and time management. What I have found ultimately what works is find something that you don't have to manage.

52:09Because your book, and I love this book, to be clear, I think there's a lot of good, there's 4 ,000 weeks, there's powerful engagement, there's get things done. The amount of productivity books is actually shocking. And I love productivity. I love mouse speed, computer speed, all these options. I do enjoy it. But what I've ultimately found is just find the thing that you want to spend all your time on. And everything else just trying to ignore. That's pretty much it. And so today, it's my girlfriend, it's AppSumo, and it's this book, and then YouTube, a little bit. And it's not... I don't have to manage my time around it.

52:38I'm like, okay, cool. I get to spend all my day doing this stuff. There's more process and things that I think will help you, but I think people are trying to optimize the wrong parts. Find something that you're just like, yeah, I love spending all day on it and just do that. I found that like, I forget who said this, but it's something like, just notice what gives you energy. Notice like what takes energy away from you or makes you feel depleted, the people, the places, the things, the activities that deplete you versus like what's giving you energy and focus on the stuff that's energizing you and getting you excited about life.

53:07true i also i do think that's tough when you have a day job and you have like you know like similar to you you have a family and you have limited capacity to have agency over your time when you have a boss and you have someone telling you what to do that makes it harder and so the reality there is well it's like you're not going to tell your boss hey you don't give me energy so i'm not going to do this meeting you're not you're not going to but you have your nights available you have your lunches available you have your mornings available you have your weekends available to make that change and the same thing does go for your work week like if you're in a lot of these types of work.

53:36Like my girlfriend has a regular job. She can't really do that, but she can start planting seeds to change her job. She can start planting seeds to start her own business. And the important part is starting that today so that by the time I'm 40, I'm like, oh, I'm really enjoying the fruits of all the labor. I never understood that work, but the fruits of your labor is because you've worked your ass off. And I didn't want to enjoy it at 60. I didn't want to finally go on a yacht at 60. I want to go on a yacht at 40. I wanted to fly private at 40. I didn't want to wait super long, which 40 maybe for some seems long.

54:01But for me, I feel it's about right. I wanted to do the work. I wanted to find hard work. And so in terms of the energy, yeah, just find stuff that you don't sweat the energy. You're just like, I get to do this stuff and this is my job. I like it when my girlfriend's like, yeah, you work a lot. I was like, I really didn't think I was working a lot. Yeah, that's great. It's a good life. It's a great life. I'll give you one other tip on that for most people out there. The simplest, and I do this every single week. I've done it for the past three years. On Fridays, I evaluate my week on three criteria.

54:28Number one, what are the things I said I would do and did I do them one through five? Number two, what's my behavior consistent? And number three, what are the top three things I want to do next week? And what that does is it really focuses me and it really helps me think like, because I have it automatic. I get a notification and it's a Google form. And then I can actually see, did I do the things I said I would do over weeks? Was my behavior consistent? And did I do the things? And it helps me focus in that upcoming week. Here's the three things I'm doing this next week. And that's really kept a lot of clarification and ultimately prioritization to the things that actually matter for me.

54:57Do you see yourself in 10 years from now doing AppSumo, writing books, doing YouTube? Is that something you think you'll continue to do? Writing another book? No. This is everything. I put it all in. Most people's second books suck because they have pressure on themselves and they put everything they have. I think there's a second book in me around how to run a$100 million business. So maybe the second, but I have zero interested in that. The AppSumo stuff I will share is very stressful. You're dealing with 100. We have 70 plus people. I got a bill yesterday,$170 ,000 in taxes. That's just a surprise bill.

55:34And so I want to be a good father. I want to be a good partner to my girlfriend, ideally wife one day. And to do it at this level is stressful. And I don't think it's possible to run a business without some level of stress. You can hire someone else. And it was nice. I hired a CEO in the past. So ultimately, I might get to that. I think I could see that in the next five years, someone taking it over and I'm more of a chairperson. So just kind of overseeing it. I think the YouTube thing as well. Yeah, I wanted... My goal for YouTube is to do it for 10 years. So I only do content that I could do at least again in the next 10 years.

56:05Because it's so easy if you do it once and I'm like, I hated doing it. Yeah, of course you're not going to do it. So my goal is do stuff I'll do for 10 years with content creation. And so with YouTube, it's shifting more. As I have a family, I don't have time to go fly to Monaco or Switzerland to ask people on the street how they got rich. But if I can do interviews like this, talking to people that I want to share their stories or doing maybe some of these challenge videos that are closer to home, some variation of it. But yeah, I think about the 10-year rule with creating the content. So yeah, some variation of all this stuff.

56:33I love my life around this work. I think I want to reduce some of the stress in AppSumo and figure a little more balance so I can save some when I come home at night. Noah, thanks so much for your time. I've really enjoyed this and hope our listeners get a lot from it. The book comes out in January and I'm looking forward to getting it. I know I'm going to buy it myself. So yeah, best of luck with it. Where can our listeners find out about you, learn more about you, learn about the book, things like that? Hell yeah. A lot of things we've talked about, we have a resource section. If you go to milliondollarweekend.com slash podcast, there's a resource section for free.

57:06Give your email and it's got everything in the book and a lot of the different kind of templates and structure that we've talked about today in the show. Cool. I'll put that in the show notes for sure. And once again, thanks, Noah. It's been fun today. Shout out Columbus, Ohio. Thank you, Patrick. Okay, folks, that's all I had for today's episode. I hope you enjoyed the show and I'll see you back here real soon. Thank you for listening to TIP. Make sure to subscribe to We Study Billionaires by the Investors Podcast Network. Every Wednesday, we teach you about Bitcoin and every Saturday, we study billionaires and the financial markets.

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