How to Create a Million Dollar Weekend: Overcoming Fear and Validating Business Ideas | Noah Kagan

22:11All right. So my brother said million dollar weekend, one dollar. He's believing in me. And I got started right away. Thank you, Seth. I'll call you later. Thank you. Love you. But now your brother's always going to send you a dollar. Yeah, that's the whole point in business. By the way, a lot of people out there will be like, that's stupid, that's silly. And yes, business should be silly and fun. And when you're starting businesses, look at who you have in your zone of influence. Who is in your company? What have you worked on? Who do you know? And people are like, no, let me go and start something really hard on myself.

22:40It's like, why? You don't have to. Yeah, no, I like that. James, who are we going to call? Okay. Okay. No, but I feel like I have to tell them that they're on a podcast. Yeah, you say, hey, I'm on a podcast with my buddy Noah. We're doing this thing called the Dollar Challenge. I'm going to probably try to start a business, and I want to see if you would be willing to support me and send me$1 today, right now. I'm waiting for my phone to ring, James. It's better me. It's better be me. No, you can't call Jay your producer. No, I'm going to call this professor at Georgia Tech I know. Oh, God, yes.

23:16Okay, dialing, ringing. How's it going? Good, good. I owe you an update, but I want to tell you, I'm about to put you on speaker because I'm doing a podcast and I just need your help answering a question. I'm going to start a business. I have no idea what. And I'm just wondering if you could send me a dollar right now to get me started on this. Wait, it's you, James? Yeah, me. Okay. And I want to, I need a dollar to start. How am I going to get it to you? Can you Venmo, Jay? I can Venmo Jay. Venmo Jay is our way. You want me to do it now? Yeah. Jay's going to text you his Venmo right now. Jay, are you going to do it right now?

23:55Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Right now, right now. The key is it has to be right now. So, Jay, did you do it? I'm doing it right now, so give me two seconds. Why don't we do this part of it off the air? Why are you doing this on the air? I mean, it was a key that was on the air. Okay. That was crucial to this? Yes. Are we on the air now? We are on the air now. Are you going to tell me any backgrounds? So, by the way, how much do you think you could have asked me for before I said no? That's a good question. How much do you think I could have asked? And by the way, it's a little bit weirder now you've said this.

24:27You want me to send it to Jay. That's different. Only because I don't have Venmo. How about this? You get Venmo, and when you get Venmo, I'll send you a dollar. No, no, you have to send the dollar right now. This is what happens when you raise money from anybody. They create reasons for not sending you the money. You've got to raise money, and the first thing I say is, hey, do you have a one-pager for that? That's true, but I am just asking you for a dollar. That's the key. I know if you don't trust some random, you know, guy from Malaysia. That's not how I think of Jay. I think you're more random than Jay.

25:06All right. Now, I know it doesn't work until Jay gets the dollar, but he'll send a dollar. And so the thing there is a lot of people would like to be a millionaire or a thousandaire or have grocery money. And really, it starts with one. Right. You know, absolutely.com we do. It's crazy about$200 ,000 a day in sales, but it started one day with$12 sale. And, and again, this is how do you get started today? So in a year, five years, 10 years, 20 years, uh, you'll be further along. And it's really a practice. How did you feel doing it? I felt a little awkward, particularly when, so he's a professor, so he's always going to think of 6 ,000 ways to analyze this till it's dead, which is a good thing.

25:47That's what I've learned from him in our long friendship. But it did feel awkward when he was asking questions like, can I send it to you later? Or like, why do you want this? And that felt, it made me feel a little awkward but I kind of did the same thing as the coffee challenge which is you just say, I need a dollar now and you don't say anything else. And then what did you learn about this experience so far? I would say, it's not necessarily what I learned and again, I just did it this one time but I could feel that same kind of muscle of being uncomfortable asking for something. And I could feel, and this is a slightly different muscle.

26:24And I could see how just asking for anything is hard. And money has so much psychology wrapped around it. It's tricky, particularly when you're asking a friend and you're not telling them why. And it doesn't make sense a dollar. So even though it was clearly something fun, and like you said, I was using the podcast to my advantage. so he can't really say no. He still pushed back. And I didn't want to give a reason. I said, you just have to do it now. You can give, to be clear, for everyone out there, give a reason, right? Say, hey, I'm starting a business. Will you be my advisor? Will you be my investor?

26:59Now you tell me. I want to make it harder on you, James, because did you get it, Jay? Yep, just wanted to get an update. I just did send the dollar. Made a dollar. This is for you.

27:14dude hell yeah and look here's the thing a lot of people and uh will be like oh it's so silly and it's like well how come so many people that want to start a side hustle or business haven't started because they haven't gotten started and this is the smallest stupid simplest funnest most fun way that you can do it like hey will you support me and send me a dollar on my business journey and people will be surprised like that once they do it they actually get excited to do it. And then it's like, okay, well now let me get going to my business stuff and then find something I'm excited to actually start selling people.

27:44And that it's all the same exact thing. Yeah. It's interesting. It reminds me of one guy a long time ago, started a Kickstarter where you could buy like a piece of him and anything he makes over a certain amount of time. And, and I think I gave him like$50 or something like, you know, you kind of scale up to what you can asked for. And I, look, I have always had a, you know, I used to run a hedge fund. So you're constantly asking people for money for not really delivering that much more value than they can get much cheaper with a mutual fund, for instance. So it was very hard for me. I was very poor at raising money.

28:22I'm a good salesman, but I'm poor at raising money. Yeah. I mean, I think there's different taboos around sales and there's discomfort in asking in general, right? All of us feel that. And it doesn't go away. Generally, you keep practicing it and you get better at it. And it's something that you can develop over time. And then eventually with business, what gets exciting, James, and I think you know this too, when you had your web design company or when I have this book or we have deals on AppSumo, I'm excited to go tell people, which I guess you could call sales or asking for people to buy things.

28:53But I'm like, I love what it is. So I don't think of selling as a bad thing. And as we started with the whole show with, when I get rejected, which I still get rejected all the time, I'm like, okay, well, I've been rejected. I can keep going. It's fine. Right. It's not such a scary thing. And you know, it's very interesting because people say ideas are a dime a dozen execution is everything. And there's some truth to that, except execution ideas are a subset of ideas. And what you're really describing in this book is good execution versus bad execution. So bad execution might be i'm going to create something that improves docusign i'm going to raise a million dollars of v team funding i'm going to hire a dozen programmers i'm going to create it then i'm going to look for my customers so that's a bad execution idea instead what you did was an excellent execution idea which is call up people you knew were using docusign describing your personal you know solution to the problems they might be having and and then is the muscle that you've been developing with this$1 challenge, uh, ask them for money in advance.

29:59And that's a great execution idea. You validated the market. You validated you'd have customers. You just made a profit before you even start the business and you did everything in reverse and what people usually do. And that actually is the better execution idea. Yeah. I saw a Silicon Valley tech company and I was laughing at them, uh, a week ago. They started a business, which I thought that I think the problem is really interesting. Most people nowadays, everyone's like AI. I'm like, no one cares about your solution. They care about their problem. And the problem they solved, I thought was interesting, which is creating videos of your grandparents before they die.

30:32And I think that's such, I wish I had more videos of my dad before he passed. And so they raised$3 million. They've built this tech. Now they're out buying Google ads and Facebook ads and trying to build a social media following to finally get this business that I could have started in a weekend asking three of my friends, and I always recommend try to get three customers in 48 hours. Hey, can I film your grandparents on my phone? I'll drive over there and film them. It's$100. I could find out on a weekend if someone wants that business versus the approach that they had a pitch deck and they had to get a founder from Google because you have to get someone who said they work at Google.

31:09And that whole business, you could find that people want it or not. And then do all this other stuff that eventually, yeah, today AppSumo, we have almost 100 people to run a pretty significant business. But that's something that you could find out very quickly if people want it. And most people just do the founder-first approach instead of the customer-first approach. And that's a great example. To be honest, someone once pitched me a similar idea and I said, walk me through this. And she's a videographer and she was going to raise$2 million to do something exactly like what you just said. And I said to her, just ask some friends first if you could do it.

31:43I don't know what happened afterwards. So, but again, there's a wide range of execution ideas. It's not just about doing some execution. And that's why that's a classic example is because you can do it manually. So I don't even know if you know this, Noah, like Oracle sells a database, right? The Oracle database. And their first customers back in like the early 80s, their first customers, they would say, we have this database, can we, do you want to buy it? And General Electric or whatever would say, sure, we'll buy it. And then Oracle would say, well, we have to install it. So we have to have some programmers over there and install it.

32:18And then they would send programmers there for six months to sit on site and quote unquote install it. That was how they built the product. They were really performing a service, but disguised as selling a product. And that's how they made their product. Yeah, I think most people are building stuff or looking for solutions and then trying to find problems. I'm trying to find problems and then bring solutions. So even AppSumo, this is a crazy story. I just looked it up recently. Today, literally$80 million business, which blows my mind. And I think there's an underlying key message, which is you have to get started and then you have to stick with these things.

32:49You have to not quit too soon. But the first deal ever on AppSumo, people PayPal'd me money,$12. And I manually emailed them their promotion code to get Imgur at a discount. I manually Gmail, I used Gmail, and I just sent them an email. I was like, hey, here's your code. One person was like, hey, it took a while because I had to literally wait for the people to come in and then I emailed them back. Now, obviously, we have a 20-person engineering team to do an API licensing system that's pretty complex. but it just started with me manually emailing them. And that's the thing I think people are starting to change their perspectives on.

33:24Because I know you and me and a lot of others have done it the way that most people do, which is I got to build it. I might need funding. I got to go do some marketing and then pray that hopefully people want it. I've definitely done that a lot and wasted a lot of money and time. Well, tell the apps, like so AppSumo is a big business. You're the creator of it. And you describe how you started it in the book. You just have a chapter describing how you started. Tell that story because it's really interesting and it involves a lot of the principles that we've been talking about so far. Yeah, I'll give another quick example just to kind of keep hammering it home.

33:57I think people think, what happens though, James, is everyone knows this and they'll hear it, but they're like, but they always say the same thing. My business is unique. And I'm like, you know what business is unique? All of them. And so you can do it your way, fine, go try it out. But then when that works and it may or may not, there's also another way that does work. And maybe it doesn't work the first weekend, but it can work the second or third. Airbnb. You know they started in a weekend and you know how they started? They literally, there was an email thread for a design conference in SF and they said, hey,$150, someone can stay on our couch.

34:27That was the whole business. And that was in a weekend. And someone did it and that led them to now create a company worth$100 billion. And so it's realizing how do you find something that people are really excited to give you money for? It's same with AppSumo. I tried so many different businesses over my 20s and none of them really worked amazingly. and I was like, I just want software deals at a great price and I love marketing and everyone wants more customers. How do I do that? And so in a weekend, I put a PayPal button on a website, spent$12 on AppSumo.com and then I cold emailed a software creator named Alan.

34:58He was a college student. I said, Hey, I'd love to promote your product. I love Imgur. It's normally 24. I'll pay you$7 for everyone I sell and I'll do all this marketing for you. He's like, Sure. There's no cost to him. Then I posted it on Reddit and within the first week, we sold 200 of them. And I manually emailed those codes. And that has led now to a business with significant revenue, employees, or teammates as we like to call them. So wait, I have some questions just about what you said. So they were selling their Imgur Pro for$24, right? Yes. Something like that. And you said, I will pay you, can I sell them for you?

35:36I'll pay you$7 for each thing. So he didn't mind that he wasn't getting$24. So the idea for me with the business is that software is zero marginal cost to distribute it to more customers. There's some software, maybe if you're doing email, where the cost could be higher, but the cost is pretty much zero. So there's not a lot more cost for him to give it out at even$1. That's all profit. So that was one of the insights I observed within software. Now, the acronym I always think about when I'm messaging anyone is WIFT. What's in it for them? So when you're messaging anyone, if you're messaging James, you're messaging Jay, you're messaging me, you're messaging a college student.

36:10What's in it for them? Why the hell should they be excited to reply to you? And how do you make it a no-brainer? And that's literally the same email we send to this day at AppSumo. We email people, we say the same thing, promoting you to X amount of people. Hey, we'd love to pay you. Most people are making$100 ,000 as software creators getting featured on AppSumo. Is that something you're interested in? And I will tell you, we get a very high response rate. And there's a lot of software creators every single month that we're able to promote as software deals to entrepreneurs on AppSumo. And on the other side of that, the crazier part of the story is I did post on Reddit and I did have a PayPal button on a website.

36:43Didn't spend a lot of time, didn't spend a lot of money to find out if people really wanted it. But then I cold emailed the Reddit founders and I said, hey, we have a mutual friend. Can I take you out to breakfast? Pork store cafe in Haight-Ashbury. And I'll take you out to breakfast. I just want to talk to you about this new thing I'm doing with Reddit. Because taking a step back here, business is all three things. It's three W's, I call them. It's the what, which is what problem are you solving that people care about or excited to give you money. Two, who is that person? And three, where are they?

37:10That's it. And I knew that Imgur and that product, there's a lot of customers on Reddit because I was that customer. And the best businesses are the ones where you're your customer. And so I cold emailed this guy, took him out to breakfast and I said, hey, working on this business and love Reddit. Can you give me some free ads because you have an ad system coming out? Now it's a billion dollar business, I believe, or pretty significant. It's just launching. I can use it. I can be a testimonial. I can promote it for you and tell others. He said, sure. So he gave me$10 ,000 worth of free ad space to start.

37:39And all I did was ask. And then I asked for that ad space again six months later. And he was like, do you want to pay cash now, the$10 ,000? I was like, no, because I don't have that much money. But just because they were getting started. And I said, hey, I'll be a testimonial. I'll promote it. I'll tell people about it. It made it easy for them to do that. And so that was another thing that really helped get AppSumo started. And again, this dollar challenge and getting started. The whole point is an$80 million a year business started with a$12 sale. Because I sold it at 12 and I kept five bucks per sale.

38:08Right, so how many did you sell that first weekend? The first week, I think we sold, first week we did 200 in sales of Imgur. And what I recommend for people is as you're validating businesses in your weekend, three customers and at least, if you can,$100 in profit. And if it's that hard to do in a weekend for that, it's only going to get harder. And again, try it a different way. And when that doesn't work, just come back. and I'm still here. The good thing with this style of execution, which is very important, is that if it doesn't work, like let's say you don't sell anything in a week, well, that might mean, yeah, like you just validated the idea without running it by your whole family and then trying to raise money and then trying to talk people into, you know, distributing for you, blah, blah, blah.

38:53Like there's so many bad ways to do a good idea, but also just might be a bad idea. And you could, you could just move on to the next idea.

39:18Let me give you another example. Cause I think, you know, the more examples people can relate to it. There's a guy named Jake, Jake read million dollar weekend. He lives up in Dallas. He's got three kids and a day job and a wife. He's busy, man. But he's had this dream for two years to have a business and have his own hustle. And he's always, he told me, I said, Jake, why do you want a business? He's like, because I don't want to live a what if life. I was like, oh, that's good. That's really good. I don't want to live a what if life. That's almost the title of a book. The what if life, man. Yeah.

39:46He didn't want to live that. And so in a 48 hour period, Jake's a huge golfer. I don't care for golf. I care for margaritas. So that's the only reason I'm on a golf course. Well, you're a Jew. Dude, it takes so long and golf is expensive. I like disc golf, right? It's free. What's disc golf? What's that? What's disc golf? Seriously? Yeah. Oh, disc golf. It's like golf, but you throw a little Frisbee and there's these metal baskets. They have them in Atlanta. They're all over America. All right. Well, that assumes I leave my house. That assumes I ever leave my house. So that's a big assumption.

40:20and yeah, I would agree with that. So Jake is a huge golfer and he's got a lot of golf friends. And so we worked on different business ideas and the one we used a million dollar process on that was like, wow, this is definitely a million dollar opportunity was golf trips. Golf trips more or less for dads. And so Jake, who doesn't have social media, I don't even know if he's on any of these places, contacted and validated within a 48 hour period, five paying customers for a golf trip to, I think called Badlands. I don't even know the golf club. I don't know shit about it. He sold$500 worth of golf trips.

40:54And now, because he has the money, it's easy for him to go plan these golf trips and deliver on it for these people. That was deposits, refundable deposits from people in his network, as well as referrals, to be able to see if that's something people are really excited to do. And guess what? I think you said it really well yourself. If no one wanted it and he called these people, and here's an easy way when you're trying to start a business, ask people for feedback. Just be like, hey, I got this business idea. Can you give me feedback what you think about it? And I'll give you a framework. So you ask them for feedback.

41:23And you say, hey, do you like golf trips? Oh, yeah, great. What are you, when are your next golf trip? Oh, I don't have one. Okay, so you're listening to them. Then you give them an option. Hey, so you haven't had one in a while or you loved your golf trip. I'm actually thinking of that one I told you about. Like, I'm actually thinking I'm going to do it in April. It might be about 5 ,000 bucks, but it'll be this and this and this and this and this. What do you think about that? You give them an option. And then they'll say, oh my God, yes. Or they say no. And if they say no, you ask, how come it isn't exciting to you?

41:49And they explain why. And then you give them that option again with solving their problem. And then you transition them to a deposit or you transition them to a sale. So L-O-T. And I find that to be the most effective way of finding out quickly whether someone has a problem. And guess what? If you can't solve their problem, don't sell them. Don't help them because it's not a problem you can do. And he had already figured out, he didn't even need to really figure out his profit margin on that because they were just putting a deposit. He could then figure out, you know, the whole issue. No. So the one thing I would discourage people from is just going and trying to validate a bunch of ideas without understanding if you have a million dollar opportunity.

42:23And so specifically with Jake, there's two key components. One is the market flat dying or growing. So go on Google trends, just go see, search golfing, golf trips. This is a brilliant idea, by the way. So like it basically, if the number of people searching for golf trips is going up or going down and you could go to Google trends and just see this. Yeah. I'm not going to call my friend out. He's one of my best friends, but he loves choosing industries that are dying. And every time they fail five years later, I'm like, bro, you so for instance, he started a newspaper business. Then he started a COVID mask business.

42:56And it's like, Oh my god, yes, it might be starting for a month. That's great. But you're want to look at over, you know, understand in the long term horizon, at least five years, is that going to be continually grow? And again, all this stuff is super quick and basic. I don't want people spending a lot of time to find out, okay, no one wants it. So again, you're just trying to get indicators. And so golfing, there's a huge golf show. Golfing is definitely at least flat if not rising. And you can also look at it comparatively. So look at golf versus basketball or look at golf versus disc golf.

43:23And maybe disc golf is not doing crap. And golf is crushing it compared to it. And really, the point here is, you're going to work hard either way. So why don't you work on the thing with more opportunity? The second part to your point, James, and before you validate any of this stuff, and there's other ways you can do validation if you're scared to call people, is understanding your business model. So I like to call it the one minute business model because again, I don't want people spending a lot of time on this stuff. Is that how many do I have to sell to make a million dollars profit? How many golf trips does Jake need to sell to make a million dollars profit?

43:53And what you can do is, okay, well, do I need to sell a higher price? Do I need to have more frequency? Do I need to reduce the cost structures of these things? And then it at least gives you an indication of what it needs to take to make a million dollars, which won't happen in a weekend, but it can happen over a few years. And you want to understand that before you rush off in the wrong direction in something that's not a great opportunity. Then I would do validation stuff. That's really interesting. Cause like, let's say he built a thousand dollar margin. Like let's say he told everyone it's five, it's$5 ,000, but he knew he was going to pay$4 ,000 for everything.

44:22Um, then he just selling a thousand doesn't seem like inconceivable in a year. Not at all. I mean, in a year would be a lot. That's three a day, but over a three year period. Yeah. I would be surprised. I'd be surprised if you can do one person a day over three years. And the point here is that if you can validate people want it, then you deliver on it. And then you keep doing the same thing to grow it. Most people would just get so, how do I scale it? It's like, don't even worry about scale. You haven't even sold one customer. Well, let me ask you a question. How would you market it? So at first, obviously he could call his friends.

44:52So that validates that this is something people are willing to pay for. Like particularly if something's$5 ,000, no one's going to just say yes to just because it's their friends. But how would you then market it? Because marketing costs money. Does it? Well, let's even take you for example. How did you get your attention early on? Did you spend money to get your attention for your podcast and your blog? I know one of the things you did. No, zero. I've spent zero money. I thought marketing costs money. What did you do? Well, I don't know how much was required, but I spent years being helpful to people on social media.

45:27That's exactly right. And so what happens when you give is that people ultimately want to figure out a way to give back. And so once you do offer something that has value, that costs something, people are happy to participate in your business because they've benefited so much from other things you've done. So we can even break this down on a more granular level. But for you specifically, I remember seeing you in TechCrunch a lot. And I think that's why - Yeah, I would write for TechCrunch. Yeah. Yeah, and that didn't cost you money. That cost you putting in effort and having some relationships to be able to do that.

45:59So let's take Jake, for instance. One, he's got to deliver the product. And once he's delivered the product, you can just sell to those people again. Hey, you like this trip? Do you want to sign up for the next trip? Now, the other two things that Jake can do without spending any money or even trying to have to figure out how to be a social media influencer is he's only got five people through that. Like, how many other people in his phone book? Most of us have more people wanting us to succeed and wanting and potentially actually being customers than we realize. We're always thinking like, oh, and look, I love marketing.

46:28I've had a lot of success with marketing at Mint and at Facebook and at AppSumo and TidyCow and a lot of these different things. But you have more meat on the bone within your own network than you realize. And so going through literally everyone in your contact list, literally going through every single person on your LinkedIn and realizing there's probably more customers in there than you expect. Now the second part, again, having spent a lot of money at this point is who that you've already helped probably has one person that could be your customer. So when I was doing this DocuSign alternative, I would sell, there's a guy I sold to named Jack.

46:58And Jack, we pay him to do our Facebook ads. And so yeah, I hit up people that I'm paying to see if they need this service. Once Jack bought, I said, Jack, hey, who's one person that's also like you, an agency owner that you think that uses DocuSign or PandaDoc that would want the service? And he introduced me to this guy named Evan. Guess who I'm selling? Evan. And so again, there's really complicated and there's a lot more sophisticated stuff you can be doing, but really just keep doing more of what worked until that stops working. And it's a lot longer than people realize the basics. I suppose also you could, you could, that last one technique, which is who does one, who's one person, you know, that I can call, you could kind of amp that up a little bit by making all your customers affiliates.

47:40So if, if, if Jack, if you say to Jack, Hey, everybody who you refer to me, who buys, I'll give you 20 % of the margin on that. And then the ditto for everybody you bring in. Yes. You know, so then it sounds a little multi-level-ish, but at the same time, you're selling something of value. So who doesn't benefit? You don't even have to make it complicated with someone like Jake, let's take these golf trips. Jake, if you can get two friends to join, I'll give it to you for free. That sounds freaking cool. I think Jake would go, you know, anyone who's committed to going on Jake's trip would definitely go do it.

48:16And then as you get going on these things, yes, I talk about it later in the book, and it's the same playbook I've used over and over in marketing, is all right, what's the process I can use now to start doing other marketing opportunities once you've really maximized and done everything there? And the way you approach it is you have a goal with a timeline. So for Jake, it would say, hey, in 2025 next year, I want to have 30 people go on trips. Okay, so what are all the ways that I can think of to get people to go on trips? I can keep using my network, maybe that's 10. I could do referrals, that's 15.

48:47I could try blog posting or tweeting all day. Maybe that's five. I could try Twitter. I could try YouTube. I could try posting at golf courses. I could ask golf coaches. And you list out all the different options and you predict how many you think you can sell from them within 30 days. And then what I like to do is try them out because it's hard to know what works because what works in one business will not work in another. And once you try it out for a month, and by the way, you can just sort it. Like, all right, sort it top down, which ones you think are going to be the most impactful. Try them out for a month.

49:17do one a week or just do one a month, depending on your time availability. And you will clearly see what works and what does not work. But the important part is you have a business that works because you know people want it. And now the marketing part is like, all right, how do I find more people who want it? Most people say, I have this marketing problem. I don't know. How do I do marketing? I was like, no one wants what you're doing. That's the problem. You're really right. And there's lots of things to try. Like Jake, for instance, could write for any number of golf related blogs, five best golf vacation sites.

49:47And at the bottom, he's not doing any marketing at all. Just at the bottom, you know, Jake runs, you know, golf luxury trips.com, you know, contact him at Jake's at golf luxury trips.com. Yeah. And that's the only marketing gig to do. Yeah. I mean, one of the best people I've almost the best people I've always hired through apps, you want to come as well as through my YouTube, as well as for million dollar weekend have come with something free too. There's so many ways of marketing. So let me give you a specific example. There's a guy named Jay Yang. He's 17, lives at home with his parents. And he knows I'm working on a million dollar weekend.

50:20And so he emailed me a presentation showing me why my social media sucks and my email marketing sucks and the exact things he would change about it. It was a 30 page Google slide. And this guy's in high school. Jay is now making, I can't tell you to share a salary, but he's making more than most high schoolers, if not all of them. And that is because he offered something of value. He didn't just say, hey, can I be your editor? Hey, can I help you with email? No, he showed me. He didn't tell me. He showed me. And that's a marketing example. If you have an agency, which a lot of people are freelancers or agency, don't tell your potential customer, show them.

50:50And once they see it, they're like, oh shit. But I think it's very important too that if he wrote to you and said, hey, no, I'm a big fan. Can I just take you out for coffee? You probably wouldn't respond to that. Instead, he offered you something of value practically for free. and I that the offering something of value is really important like when I was first starting to get involved in finance like this is 24 years ago I wanted or 23 years ago I wanted to start a hedge fund or I I wrote to all my heroes in the finance world and say can I buy you a cup of coffee zero people responded they didn't even say no they just didn't respond but then I would I I came up with ideas for each person for their business and for their lives said to them and And then - Do you remember the things you did?

51:40Yeah, well, like, okay, let's take Jim Cramer. Okay, he is a writer, a big finance writer, and he has the TV show Mad Money. I said, here's 10 ideas for articles that if you write these articles, I definitely would subscribe, and I'm sure a lot of other people would, for thestreet.com. And I always added, no need to get back with me. I just would love to see your viewpoint on these articles. And I knew from my research that these were good topics for articles, at least one of them would be interesting. So he wrote back within five minutes and said, this is great. Why don't you write these articles and start writing for the street.com?

52:14And that's the first time I got paying gigs writing. And then I wrote to another guy. So good. I wrote to another guy and I said, I understand what your, so this guy was a hedge fund manager. I understand what your hedge fund is. I read your PhD thesis. I understand what you do. Here's 10 software packages that I know that I've been trading personally that I wrote the software and they work. And I know it's your style and I'd be happy to explain it to your programmers and stuff, but they'll get it easily and no need to get back with me. And he instantly wrote back and said, this is great. And then, you know, he got to know me a little bit more and he allocated the first, he was the first person to invest with me and I started a hedge fund.

53:00So marketing doesn't always cost money. I, you know, the thing I would say though, is that things evolve. So AppSumo, I think we have a 20, I don't know the exact final number, but it's 25 people. And monthly, we're spending, it varies depending on the month, like Black Friday, November, we spend about a million dollars in marketing. So on ads and affiliate and promotional designs and giveaways. This year, we gave away seven Apple Vision Pros. But we spent almost a million then. And on average, we're spending$350 ,000 to half a million dollars a month. But it started with zero. And so I like people spending no time and no money very quickly before they even have to start getting distracted that they need money to be successful.

53:37That's just not true. But once you do, let's say you start getting profitable and you want to scale and you think marketing would do that. Totally. You could use your techniques. You could A, do something for a very short amount of time. Like, okay, I'm going to make this ad. I'm going to make five different ads for Facebook. And if one of them work, that's the one now you double down on. And then you understand, then you have to figure out some of the math. Like, okay, I spent$50 on Facebook ads over six months. I made$60 from those particular customers who came that way. So it's worth it. So you start small and experiment and then double down.

54:13So a lot of this approach that you're having is how can you do experiments to figure out what to double down on? So the phrase we use internally, it's part of the AppSumo culture is test and then invest. So it's still how we apply things to this day. For example, a year ago, Nick and Erica on the affiliate team, affiliate's been a huge driver for AppSumo, said, hey, why don't we sponsor video creators? And that was inspired as well from our advisor, Moody, who's like, hey, you're doing affiliate, which is cool. But like video content is like really, really rich. And it really, it lives longer potentially for what we're doing.

54:47Why don't we test sponsoring video creators? And so we sponsored a few of them. We paid them like 1000 bucks, and we gave them 15%. And we didn't go build a full ass thing of like, how do we track them? And how do we pay them? Let's just see if it works. And really quickly, these videos are fun for us to watch. And we're able to make our money back very quickly. I believe within a month, we made ROI positive, if not sooner. That is such a great idea. And so once you test it, now there's a team of five people doing video ambassador sponsorships and management. And so it still applies to this day.

55:18But let me be clear. There's other things that we've tried. We tried starting a newsletter called Mind Your Business. That didn't work. Why didn't that work? It was too much a deviation and distraction from just getting people to join the AppSumo newsletter, trying to start a new newsletter. And we didn't probably resource it enough. But it's like, okay, we tried it, didn't work. We tried Instagram, can't get it to work. Twitter, not working. TikTok, not working. And so you can also go see our marketing. We don't put a lot behind it. We double down on just... And this is probably a key nuance, James, that I think people miss out on.

55:48And they think they're special and everyone is special. Everyone is. But they keep doing the things that aren't working. And the power is stopping that and really doubling down with video ambassadorship. Or for us, it's like the deals. Like at absolutely everything is a deal. So let's really double down on the, call them LDRs, but the team that finds deals and the beta links, they test the deals and the account executives and really making sure the operations team. So when we do a deal, we're like, wow, this is a banger of a deal at the end of the day. And so again, it can still apply whether you're starting or whether at a large size, you don't have to risk at all.

56:20Like we have some new ideas we're trying. And so instead of risking it all, how do we test it in a month? find out if it works or doesn't, and then you can go invest a lot more into it. Yeah. And, and, and I, I always love the fact too, that once something works a little, you could start being creative about other ways the same concept could work. So take, take Jake as an example. Let's say he's sold a thousand golf luxury trips. Now you can go to golf clubs and hotels and golf club manufacturers and either sell ad space or, or have a little store where you, you know, for all your people who are going to luxurygolftrips.com, you can have a little store for them.

57:01And then you can say, huh, this worked with the golf vertical. Now what other verticals can this work with? What do people, well, people like older people take history trips. Maybe it's a platform for trips. Like, you know, AppSumo started as bundles of software and that evolved into individual software deals. And that evolved to us having our own course about how to start a business, which led to Million Dollar Weekend, you know? But the biggest point is we got started. And that will lead you on your journey. The other point I've got to highlight for people is the best business, the best is the one that works.

57:31The best business is the one that works. And this is something in my 20s, I was really kept chasing the new thing. And then in my 40s, I'm like, I'm just chasing the thing that works. Okay, what do you mean? Because in my 20s, it was like, oh, this is working. Like with AppSumo even. Let's take AppSumo in my early 30s too. AppSumo is working. Let's start a software business. Software business is working. Let's start a marketplace. And it's like all along, if we just kept focusing on AppSumo, instead of trying to start all these other new things, maybe AppSumo would be even bigger than it is today.

57:59But it would have been, it's a lot more successful and frankly, easier to execute with the thing that's already working versus the brand new stuff. And that's something that I had to learn from experience. That is a really good point. I think too often, people get nervous and try to start many things simultaneously. That could work if you're in the experiment phase where, okay, I'm going to try this for a week and try this for a week. I'm gonna try it. But once you have something that it's like with the ads we were saying before, once you see something that works, that's where you double down.

58:28Well, it's like, yeah, I would just comment there that like, you can't learn to swim putting your toe in. You have to be in the water and you have to give it a shot and then you make the change. The other thing I would say, like, you know, let's not get too into it. But with chess, the way you can get to a 2000 or 2500 rating is sticking with it. And just slowly, one of my new approaches with business is unambitious goals. And this is counterintuitive, but the point that I've recognized that, you know, there's compounded interest in investments. There's compounded business moves. And compounded business moves is do something with very small gradual improvements over a very long period of time will add up to significant success.

59:06And so with AppSumo, our growth rate is 7 % a year. That's what I'm trying to grow, 7%. It's very unambitious. And look, you could sometimes do that with kind of like incremental additions to the business, not new businesses, but like what we're talking about, he could advertise for golf clubs or whatever, or whatever. And you're right with, here's the question. Do you double down? And this is actually an important thing for skill acquisition too. Do you double down what you're good at or do you try to get better at what you're weak at? So same business, but like, let's say, I can't think of an example of business right now.

59:44I can give you an example for AppSumo. Okay. I wasted like at least a million dollars cash and probably more in salaries. So you have to understand most of the most successful businesses are very simple. Like even, let's take YouTube. You upload a video. Yeah. Google, you search. It has some results. Airbnb, you search. It's got an apartment. AppSumo's core is finding a product that will help a solopreneur. Negotiating a price, sending an email. That's it. And in terms of doubling down, well, we thought, hey, we have 600 deals on the site. If we can 10x that, we'll 10x the business. And so our strength, though, was really just finding high quality deals, really, really specifically, super high quality deals that we can get a great deal on.

1:00:32And then we 10x the store from 600 to 13 ,000 products. So our weakness, we thought was, we don't have enough inventory, if we just have tons of stuff in our algorithm, we'll figure things out. and the team hated it the customers hated it the partners were okay with it and then i spent a million dollars on black friday giving it out to people to say hey come list your product on our site and it was a complete failure like our nps of our customer rating went down partners were upset because now their products are getting shown the team was against it and last year was this because they were like shitty deals that were then posting on the site yeah totally it was you know at 13 000 and the quality and what people expect from us wasn't there.

1:01:14And so then we had to literally revert that back to now there's 651 products on AppSumo. And that was trying to double down on a strength that we didn't test. So we could have tested going from 600 to 1 ,000. And very quickly, you can see like, how does customers respond? You can, and by the way, you don't even need data. Have customers on your WhatsApp, have them on your phone number, have them in your Slack group, have them in your Discord and ask them. They'll tell you. I think that's something that I didn't do a good job of, frankly. Besides looking at the numbers, The rest of the numbers didn't make sense.

1:01:42So it's like, you really want to go from strength to strength, meaning what are you strong at? Make that stronger. And how do we find even more great deals and really double down on that? I wonder, and this is just like a side thing. I wonder in which acquisition, like skill acquisition or, or I wonder in which kind of areas of life it's better to find your weaknesses and build those stronger or just to double down on strength. So for instance, you're learning how to play tennis and your forehand's great, but your backhand sucks. Do you spend more time making your forehand even greater because that's the way you win is usually with the forehand or do you try to be all around and make your backhand great?

1:02:23So that's the two approaches right there. And I would say there, maybe focus on your weaknesses. And so I wonder what makes it different from in business. The way I've looked at it in business, I used to feel really self-conscious and embarrassed that I was really good at starting companies. I used to think like, okay, I can move really, really quickly before fear catches up. And I used to be so afraid of that. And then I realized like, why don't I just embrace that? And other people, like let's take Lauren or Anna or Amy, who like doing customer support, do that. And they actually enjoy it. Or finding someone like Sean who loves Excel models and doing strategic analysis, have him do that.

1:03:02I'll stay the hell away from that. And then I'll put myself only in the places that I'm really excellent. and really double down on promotion. You don't think there's more value in you trying to get better at what you're weak at so you can have a more holistic view of the whole business? I think especially when you start a business, if you're the first employee, it's good to understand everything. When I started AppSumo, I was the support person. I was the marketing person. I was the salesperson. I was the developer. I was the operator. I was everything. And I understood it. And the clear caveat I have to make is that I meet a lot of people who say, I'm going to hire a marketer or CEO or salesperson to save me.

1:03:39And that is going to be a huge, huge fail. What you have to do is have an understanding and then you could find the person. It's not most times you're not going to find a miracle in that instance. Now with business, yeah, I don't know in tennis, maybe it can work if you try to get all around. But what if you just had like literally the fastest serve in the planet and maybe your other game is okay, but no one returns your serve? you know i haven't done uh you know i'm not a great tent i'm okay in tennis player but in business i've just found let me understand at least lightly everything but really focus on for me it's marketing and promotion and that's where i'm doubling down on a little bit i would say leadership that's something i've worked on in the past two years but all these other areas like i'm okay being ignorant i want to be around people who are way better than me

1:04:31Thank you.

1:04:39One thing I want to get to is, and you talk about this in the book, and this is an important topic, ideation. like you're talking to a lot of people who already have ideas like i want to set up a golf trips thing and i want to solve a problem on docusign and then you could validate it but what about the person who really does seem to be a little weaker than you know coming up with that initial idea or they're a little anxious about that or or whatever yeah there's there's you know literally the book starts with excuses frequently made ones and everyone's got the same ones and realizing that you're not so unique in it is also empowering to realize that it's solvable right that it's been solved.

1:05:14Like most of these problems have been solved. And so when people say they don't have ideas, it's just they're afraid of starting. And they're afraid of what happens when they actually do get started. And that's why I encourage people to think about what can you do right now? Can you post something on social media for yourself? Can you ask someone to mow their lawn? Can you put something up on Etsy or Craigslist or Facebook Marketplace or wherever you are in the world and do that right away? Those are available businesses instantly. Now, a few things to consider. I have a cousin. He's in the Air Force.

1:05:42And he emailed me some ideas. He has a dream to get the hell out of the Air Force and have a business. And he said, hey, I had this idea and I'll just share it. I think it's fine. He wanted to do baby clothes that can age with the baby. Right? Because right now you buy baby clothes at one month and six months and 12 months and all that stuff. And I'm like, I love it. What can you do right now to find three customers? He's like, oh, there's a parents group. I'm going to message each of these people. Great. in the interim though he googles it and he's like oh someone else already did it i was like oh so you're telling me that just because someone else opened a restaurant there's only going to be one restaurant per city it's like no no no well of course there's more okay well so there there's different types of restaurants or there's maybe your baby is air force baby clothing and our service baby clothing and theirs is for a different type of baby and so there's room for a lot of people how to close the age with the baby i don't know i don't know, dude.

1:06:35He's got to figure that out. I'll tell you, it's much easier to figure out a problem once you know that there's people that want it versus the other way around. That's what a lot of people do is, oh, I figured out a way for baby clothing to grow and then go to people and be like, hey, do you have this problem? They're like, I don't know. I don't care. Let's find out they have it. And guess what? When you have money and customers, it is much easier to be resourceful. And entrepreneurship, a lot of it is how do you be resourceful? Now, let's come back to your original question. How do you come up with ideas?

1:06:59All right, let's just do, I'll give you three ways. Everyone can just go do these right now today. One, call it breakfast, lunch, and dinner. Open up your phone. We'll even do a live experiment here. Breakfast, lunch, and dinner. It's 350 where you are. What is one thing that annoyed you or bothered you in your breakfast today? I didn't eat breakfast today. And do you normally eat breakfast? No, as I get older, the less I eat, the better. Okay. And then, so my encouragement and what I'm helping people think through is like, What in your day, and break it down to morning, afternoon, and night, that you found irritating?

1:07:34So what is something in the morning or afternoon, James, that bothered you or you wish you had or frustrated you? I'm almost a poor person to ask because I don't really do that. I don't really have many problems. I don't really do that many things. So like, I honestly don't know what bothered me today, if anything. Okay. I'm not even trying to be difficult. No, no, it's okay. it's great. I did podcasts that I enjoy all day and I read and I play chess and, and I work on different businesses I'm involved with and it's all good. Okay. So for other people out there, I'll even give myself as an example.

1:08:14So today ran out for lunch. I didn't have lunch because I didn't know what to even order for lunch. And I actually find that to be a real challenge. Oh, that's interesting. Write that one down. Hard to figure out for lunch. Another thing, my grass, it's missing a huge section this morning. I go outside. I'm like, Like, oh man, that's been there for over two weeks. Damn it. So again, if you think of it in what is frustrating you, the best businesses are the problems you have yourself. So that's one way. Just think about it in terms of your day. Number two is, James, you can look at, this is the Tim Ferriss one, which I love, which is look at your credit card bill.

1:08:44Like, what are you spending money on that either is annoying you or is an opportunity? And I think those are one of my, I've definitely started a lot of businesses. I hate paying full price for software. AppSumo.com. I don't like that I have to sign up for HelloSign or DocuSign. guess what i'm going to create an alternative so that is a way to just at least get inspired and recognize that there's a way to create businesses around that then the last thing and james i'll give it let's try one more we'll try one more those are two all right what is something that you what's been on your to-do list or that you've been meaning to do that you have not done for at least a week i haven't written in at least a week and what's held you back from writing because i've been focused on other things like for instance studying chess or i've had a lot more business related meetings lately and is there anything that would have saved you time so you could have had more time for writing which sounds important to you what would have saved you time well i could have stopped playing chess as much and wrote during that time i don't know that's a problem that's not that's a general that's not a general problem different but what i'm recognizing for people out there is that what are you avoiding doing as a business opportunity or if you wish you had more time maybe you need an assistant james or maybe you need better scheduling or maybe you need someone to help you with time management yeah jay my podcast producer is supposed to schedule me he's lousy at it no no but but maybe jay maybe jay needs tidycal.com.

1:10:15That's a tool we created because we hated paying full price for Calendly. And so again, what I'm doing is that these aren't going to be magic bullets where you're going to, oh shit, this is a billion dollar idea. It's ways to come up with ideas, make sure they're million dollar opportunities, and then validate them in a really quick amount of time to see if some people want. And guess what? If it doesn't work, just go back and try it again next weekend. So by me asking those questions, I'm asking them to myself to solve a problem for myself. And that's something you encourage in the book. But I could ask that to other people to find out their pain spots.

1:10:44Like I can go to a dentist and say, what's your pain spot and get it. And it's like, oh, I don't have enough customers. I'm not big on social media. And then that's an idea. Yeah. So two, I actually have a business. I know you'll buy. So now you said you had no business ideas. You're like, I got nothing. All I do is eat and do yoga and meditate and play chess and do business deals. So you're a 2000 chess player. I know we're not gonna talk about chess because I guess we talk about it too much, but it sounds like from what I heard you. I'm a 2200 at heart, but let's... I know, dude. At heart, I'm 25 years old, but my genetic age, I guess, is 41.

1:11:17But let me, again, listen to people. And if they have a problem and you can solve it, that's a business. So you said that you're a 2000-ish chess player. It sounds like if you could get to 2250, it's really important to you. Is that correct? Yeah, because I'm writing a book about this journey. I can't write until I solve this problem. And that's great. And so... Do you, are you see where I'm going to go with this? No. Oh, great. Ooh, even better. And so what's your approach to going from just very briefly, what's your approach from going from 2000 to 2250 high level studying and getting coaches and getting coaches.

1:11:53How do you find these working with coaches? Well, I have one coach that I work with who I like a lot. And how much are you paying him? Uh, it's barter. I help him with business. He helps, he helps my chest. And how long do you planning to, when do you think you'll be a 2250 player?

1:12:12I thought it was going to take six months and I'm already on my second year of this. And so it sounds like it's a very big problem and important to you. What would it be like to actually be a 2250 player? So by the way, here, you sell a little bit of the future. I'm listening, by the way. So listen, option transition. I'm going through the same exact thing. And again, we're finding a business idea. This is the cool part. So James, it sounds like, what would that feel like to be a 2250 player? How would you feel? I would feel that I, for all the people who said I was delusional, that A, I proved I could do it and B, uh, I could start writing this book about the adventures I've been on since starting this.

1:12:49So James, it sounds like if I'm able to help you and I have this brand new way, go from your 2000 to 2250 in six months guaranteed and you get, or you get your money back completely. It sounds like that would be extremely helpful to you. Absolutely. Okay, so I'm not even going to get into the business because I'm not a chess player. Don't sell something you can't sell or you can't actually help the person. But right here, I've identified a key pain point that's actually a business for you, right? That's a business opportunity. So how can you get rapid chess speed development from people who, like yourself, are rich that have money to pay for it?

1:13:24And then you work backwards to see like, okay, that's a business idea. Now can I go see the market, validate it, like I just did potentially, and then move forward with that. So I would say that's a really interesting business, which is like rapid chest development for rich people. Yeah. And the, uh, the issue, okay. And maybe I'm making an excuse here. The issue is like, I'm really, I have an extraordinary advantage on learning. A I've done a lot of studies of learning and meta learning B I've talked to all the best coaches in the world, the best sports psychologists in the world, the best neurologists in the world, the best players in the world, the best coaches and the chess coaches in the world.

1:14:01I have so many access to so many resources and it's almost an impossible task to determine what the best methods are to improve. So two separate pieces. I'm identifying the business idea. Like what's the problem? I get that, yeah. And so I think that's number one. Number two, in terms of how to solve it, you need to either, for me, I'm not a chess expert. You know, I'm a, depending if it's blitz or just classic, like a 1400 rated player, 1300. No, you're better than that. You're better than that. I'm a 1700 on like, I've been playing more three minute games. it depends on like how much I'm practicing and studying.

1:14:34But my point though, is that if you have something that like one identified for yourself, holy shit, maybe there's other people like me and maybe there's not. It sounds like there's not that many. So would I go try to validate that business? Probably not. But that was just one way I showed you that there is a business problem that you have that you probably could have. You could start as a business, but would I recommend it? Probably not. Yeah. Uh, you know, it's, it's interesting because I don't really spend a lot of money on a lot of things. Like I don't, I'm almost not a good, I hear what you're saying because like several businesses that I've started have been because I was good at a skillset and it was a problem that I knew lots of people had.

1:15:12So like building websites or, or, you know, creating good information resources for information, even that I wanted to learn more about. So, uh, but just like right now, I just have, my goals are very simple. So I don't have that many issues. No, you don't have issues, but let me just ask, what's it worth to you for you to go from$2 ,000 to$2 ,250 by the end of the year? Oh, I would pay quite a bit. How much would you pay? Well, just let's say my bartering time, if I add that up, just in terms of compare it to any sort of consulting fee I would charge, I would probably... It's probably worth close to a million dollars to me.

1:15:55so that sounds like a million dollar business you can find one customer that's all you need I was looking at my friend has a company called Howdy.com it's hiring developers in South America for more affordable than hiring American developers and she which is crazy they have 185 placements right and now that sounds like nothing but then each placement they make$2 ,000 on a month You're like, holy shit, that's almost half a million dollars a month that they make. And so just because you only have one customer at a million, that can be a substantial business. How does she compete with Fiverr or something like that?

1:16:36Or freelance.org? The developers work in their offices. So they're the ones actually finding the developer. They work in an office. They have benefits. Versus Fiverr, you're finding individuals that are freelancers. So these are people actually that work for it. So we're evaluating using them at AppSumo. My point though is that you don't need a lot of customers to make a million dollar business. Yeah. I think with your chest one, I think there's something interesting there. If someone's out there, go study it, figure out if there's a way to do it. And then how do you make it a no brainer to test it with someone like James?

1:17:04Yeah. I mean, I guess essentially that's what I'm doing with, of course, I have a coach that I think is the best possible coach for me to have to get better. So we'll see. I mean, chest is a specific thing. I actually beginning to think it's my mindset that's more of a problem than anything else, but that's a whole other story. That's a rabbit hole. Yeah, I mean, your original question was how do you come with business ideas? And it was like, we just found one. Yeah. And then I'm wondering though, if you can go through that same process with other people though, to see what their pain points are to start a business where you know that you might not be interested in dentistry, but you realize that no dentist knows how to make a social media presence.

1:17:44So that becomes a business. And so you survey an area where you think there's a hole and you find the business opportunities there. Yeah, I have to give the caveat. I think in business, it's good to get reps in, right? So just like going to the gym, it's good to practice. But I found for myself and a lot of people that the most successful stuff is the things you actually care about yourself and that you're interested in yourself. I agree. Like there was this period in where I tried, I had like a lot of different ideas for businesses. So I really wanted to make a dating site, but I knew nothing about dating sites.

1:18:18And we made nine of these different types of dating sites and they just all failed. And then the final site that I had come up with was a site to make a social media site about finance and no news, because I hate news and finance because I think that's all bullshit. And my business partner said, we just did nine failures, let's not do this. Let's just try this one other thing. And this is something I knew a lot about. And so we did it in a few weeks. We launched it. And within a month, we had a million unique visitors. And by the way, before we launched, I found a company to put ads on every page.

1:19:01So I had customer eye profits day one. Because again, I knew the industry. So I knew who to talk to. So you're right. Like the thing I was an expert in was the easiest business for me to start. Everyone's one no away from a yes. Everyone's one no away from succeeding. And the fact that you said, all right, I like the idea. Let me keep trying and trying and trying. Eventually you find the thing and then you can make that work a lot more. And most people are giving up too soon. And look, if you like dentistry or you like doing Facebook ads, I would go think about what have I done in the past that either I did for free and I liked or I've gotten paid for in the past.

1:19:34And how do I revisit that? I think for myself, I always felt, hey, I like promoting and marketing. Can I really make a business out of it? And it's like, yeah, just embrace that. I fucking like that. And that's okay. And that's what now my whole career is. It's promoting on YouTube or promoting in the book or promoting AppSumo. Man, I'm so glad you wrote this book because, A, again, now I don't have to spend a lot of time with people who I give advice to about business. Because I can just say, just read this book, The Million Dollar Week. It's exactly what I would advise. And it really is. You really hit the nail on the head on so many just basic issues.

1:20:09I wonder why more entrepreneurial-oriented books don't do this. Why do you think they don't do this? I think a few different reasons. One, a lot of the authors got rich from authoring or from courses. They haven't actually gotten rich from business. So that's one reason I don't, you know, a lot of these guys on YouTube or podcasts that are very popular, I'm like, what's your business? Can I ever see it? Can I ever hear about it? Oh, no, you don't have one? Oh, you tell me you make$100 million, but no one can ever see it? You can't prove shit? No, thank you. So I think most people haven't actually done the real work, and I'm still doing it, right?

1:20:42I'm still running a business. And then the other thing I've noticed from business books, and I read a lot, and just because you read doesn't mean you're a great writer, but I consume this material because I always wish I knew it earlier on. And either A, like Rich Dad, Poor Dad, which is a mega, mega, mega bestseller. I read it and I was like, okay, I want the Rich Dad. What do I do? Guess what? It doesn't tell you shit. It just gets you in the mindset that you should go buy real estate, but that's all it does. Or you have these books that are hyper-focused on recipes. So you have either too far a theory or too far of a recipe, which is, okay, hey, if you want to start a business, you get a landing page and you run some ads and you see if people click on it.

1:21:17And then once you get that, then you start your Shopify. And the reality is it's the blending of the two, which is I found out most people, almost all of them who haven't had success never got started and they were afraid of asking. And so really blending in those skills in a fun way and then leading them into the, I would say recipe portion of the book, which is how do you validate the million dollar opportunity and then move to the scaling part in the end of a book, which I can't believe this is$27 dollars or whatever the price is when it comes out for people to make a million dollars and beyond for a very affordable price.

1:21:50But you know, you're, you're, you're right. It's really interesting because there's one thing your book does that the other two approaches don't do. And I'm, and this has nothing to do with the entrepreneurship aspects of it. So like the first one, you say too much theory and the other one is like too much of a formula. Both sides of that equation don't deal with mindset and psychology. And what a lot of your, whether you realize it or not, what a lot of your techniques do is remove the psychology component, which is good. Like you solve the psychology component. And what I mean is there's a lot of psychology to business.

1:22:22You get rejected all the time. So you feel bad. Maybe you do something for a year and it doesn't work and you feel bad. Maybe there's, like you say, there's the psychology of excuses and failure. And there's even the psychology when you win. Like you have to deal with winning is the whole psychology. I mean, I think two key components, you know, out there to think about is that I've been doing this, like I've started million dollar business over and over and over again. Mark Zuckerberg only did one. And by the way, you were there at the beginning of Facebook. I was at the beginning of Facebook.

1:22:53But the point is, one, I've done it time and time again. So either I'm very lucky or there's something happening where I've figured out things that I can share. the other part you see thousands of businesses in your in the app sumo store or whatever you call store 10 000 people have gone through the course millions of people have read the article in tim ferris which the the post was based on the beta launch team of the book was 1300 people that have gone through the book and i've worked with them individually so it's something i've done over and over and over again that's what's led me to feel literally the expert in the world about teaching this information which for me i was surprised if i could even do it and i was like can i and then the other thing is that in business, you only need one hit to succeed.

1:23:31You only need one time. You only need once, just one dating website or one video. You know, I put out, I talk about the law of 100, which is committing to doing something a hundred times. I put out 98 videos, give or take, until my finally, it's like not working. And I did this video called knocking on millionaires doors and asking them how they got rich. That finally worked. Now it's the first way it's like, oh, now all my videos are kind of like that. By the way, I think that video created a whole genre. Like now you see all over TikTok, hey, what do you, you know, you look rich, what do you do?

1:24:02Yeah, there's a lot of kids doing that now. And now I have to evolve, right? Which is good. I'm cool that they, you know, everything is a copy of something else. So I'm, you know, we were inspired by, you know, Daniel Mack who did it for cars and some of these other guys that didn't before, but they were faking it. And yeah, it's been interesting to see that this book can actually work. And then noticing that, like, I asked people like, why haven't you started? oh, because I don't have enough ideas. Those things all boil down to the same two things, which is they haven't started and they're afraid of asking.

1:24:33I think with all this stuff, how do you make it fun? You don't have to be a millionaire, but I think everyone should be an entrepreneur or at least try to be an entrepreneur. Like me, I got fired. I was like, holy shit. They can take away my job just like that. My livelihood where I was living, I lived in a Facebook house. I got kicked out basically. I had to go move to my friend Johnny's couch. I was like, never again am I going to let someone else control how my future is? And being an entrepreneur, whether you like your day job or not, at least getting started on that will create that option available for you.

1:25:04Yeah. And like, again, like you give these challenges that are fun, that are kind of good ways to practice the actual psychological muscles needed to be an entrepreneur. None of these other books, the theory books or the formula books do that. That's what I, that's what I love here. Cause this is the real advice, how to be an entrepreneur. and it's important. Like you said, a lot of people want to be entrepreneurs, but they look at Mark Zuckerberg and say, oh, I better raise$500 million and learn how to do software. Take that as a great example. Zuckerberg started in a weekend. He didn't even come up with the idea.

1:25:37He copied the Winklevosses. And he had a pay-to. And not only that, but sorry to interrupt. One thing that struck me with his business in recent years is for some reason, he has forgotten how he began. Like he said, he's going to put, you know, billions of dollars into creating a virtual reality metaverse. That's the exact opposite of how he started Facebook. And of course, of course that failed, that whole endeavor on his part. Like it's a complete failure. So it's interesting. Yeah, I mean, he started on a weekend, right? So he saw someone else that worked, which was called Connect You. So I met the Winklevosses and they're interesting.

1:26:17and he copied them and launched it himself after trying two other things, Wirehog and then he had another site, I think called FaceMash that did not work, launched it a weekend, sent an email to his own influence or to his own dorm and that is how it got started. And that's available, that's not just for Zuckerberg, it's for anyone out there that wants to get started. Yeah, no, that's great. And I like how they did start, he did start with just the people he knew. It's like when I launched the finance site I was mentioning earlier, I first thing I did was I wrote to all the finance bloggers that I had been regularly recommending in some of my articles and they all then started recommending it to their readers.

1:26:57So, so that's why I feel like I really resonated with your book because I've had a lot more failures and successes, but the successes all had the elements of your book in it. Whereas the failures did not pay attention to the advice in your book. So, I mean, it also should be a fun experience. I think what happens in business is we create these, you know, we create this like, oh my God, I've got to have a great idea. And it's got to be all this big, scary stuff. And it's like, all right, chill out, have fun. Like, to me, having a day job seemed really shitty and risky. That seems so scary. Like staying at Intel, if I stayed at Intel for 30 years, like I'd probably, I don't know, man, if I would have committed suicide by now.

1:27:33But like that to me seemed like a nightmare versus like the idea that, hey, if I start a business, I could spend half my year in Spain, which is what I do. right or hey if i don't feel like working this week and taking off i can it's not always gonna be like that the other and the other side of it is that you have to assert it but you have to stick with it and that's very tough for people that have families and day jobs is because their day job pays them you know 50k or 200k and then they start a side hustle and they make 50 bucks a first month which is amazing but you got to figure out you know i like law of 100 but whatever it is so that each month you kind of just stick with it and then for me 13 years later thank god you know i get to make really, to me, amazing amounts of money doing what I love.

1:28:10Like, how cool is that? And that's available for everyone. No, I agree. Like having a job again, I don't want to criticize everyone who has a job. There's a lot of reasons people take jobs, but, and I've written about this sport before it's very fragile as opposed to Nassim Taleb's concept of anti-fragile. Like, like you said, you lose your job, you lost your house, you lost your friends, you lost your opportunities to make millions of dollars being an early employee of Facebook. It's depressing. So it's a different experience. You have to deal with people you don't like. If you don't get along with your boss, you still have to deal with them.

1:28:43Oh my God, dude. I can't call it out, but I have a friend every day. She's like, I hate being with my manager. He's always talking so much. He uses foul language and he always talks so long. It's like, huh, well, you can take your power back. it's not going to happen overnight, but by creating your own business, at least you can have that option, whether you want to have this job or not. And by getting started today, you can eventually have that available for you. That's a good point. And you mentioned, but it's worth mentioning, I was a full-time employee when I first started my first business because I had zero dollars in the bank.

1:29:23Like zero. I lived off my paycheck completely every month and that was it. and I stayed at my full-time job for a full 18 months after starting my first business before I made the leap. Hell yeah. Because you want to manage risk a little bit in your life too. You don't want to be, if you jump the first day and you don't have any money, that's scary. I wouldn't be able to sleep at night. That's scary. So I had to work really hard and that's important. The other thing I want to mention too, I just realized a very subtle thing that's very important in your book. With your DocuSign example or Jake's golf trip example, you have to ask for money.

1:30:04Like it's not enough that they say, no matter what they say, they can say a hundred percent chance, I'm going to buy this. Just show me what you got. A hundred percent chance. You got to ask for money. That's the only way to validate the idea. Because there's many examples of people saying, oh yeah, if you made that, I'll buy it. Can I just read again? So this is someone who rejected me from the DocuSign example, but let me just read a little bit. I thought it was so interesting. Because I said, hey, I'm going to start this DocuSign. And she goes, I hate, with a lot of A's, my DocuSign subscription.

1:30:36I just need like 50 cents. I'm so infuriated. I don't use them. I'm so angry about it, right? That's what she sent me. Because I posted in a WhatsApp group, hey, I'm going to start a DocuSign alternative. This is a small group in Austin. Is anyone interested? And she messaged me about this. I said, we're building an alternative. Pay once, no subscriptions. And I said, yes, I hate these things. I hate the same thing on my side. She said, please. And I said, I got you with the flex. And then she sent me hugs. And I did a smiley face. Then I said, hey, I'm trying to get a few beta customers tonight.

1:31:06It's part of a 48-hour build a business challenge. Here's where it gets interesting. She goes, well, I don't need any signatures tonight. But I can fake it if it means I can cancel DocuSign. Ha ha. Cool. Down to deposit,$99 for life. It's 100 % refundable if not delivered. And if you love it, and if not delivered and you love it within two months, meaning it's 100 % refundable. I didn't think you need a signature ASAP. Ha ha. Her. I guess I need to see the feature sets to make sure it'll work for me first. Okay, this is rejection. This is her saying she's like serious, but not actually serious.

1:31:39Even though you've already said within two months of delivery, it's refundable. Yes. And it's actually - So if it doesn't have a feature set. Yeah. And then I said, well, what? So again, this is why we practice the coffee challenge. This is why we practice the dollar challenge. It's not to oversell. It's not to, I'm not trying to teach people, convince people that don't want something that they want it. That's not the point. You want to see if it's a problem, see if you have a solution for them and see if they'll actually give you money. If they don't, try to understand that. And I said, well, it says you need to see what features.

1:32:06Okay, well, what features are critical for you to do a deposit tonight? I'm trying to balance building and be clear. I'm trying to balance building a ton of features and also making sure I'm building something people want. And I said, she said, I want to insert text and signature fields for different people. Sounds great. We can do that. Is there anything else? And she stopped responding. Yeah. And by the way, this is a concept I learned from this professor I was speaking to earlier on the phone who sent me a dollar, Merrick. He's written a book about entrepreneurship that's very good. And he talks about an experience he had where he basically has said to me, there's a lot of reasons why people say yes.

1:32:48They might just want to get you off the phone. They might just want to be nice to you and have a pleasant relationship. You know, they might want to get onto some other tasks. They need to say yes to you first. So, but there's really only one reason why they all say no, which is they simply don't want the product. And that's okay too. That's okay. Great. And for someone like her, there was, I had four no's, but I also had 24 yeses. And so that's why I practice getting rejected. that's why I practice where I'm not scared because I practice it. And when she said no, I said, okay, great. Thank you.

1:33:23Is there any reason? No. Okay, you're not responding. I'll follow up with her once the product's out. I'll sell her again. Sure. I'll try to. But that's also then I went to other people. My neighbor said no to me, even though I went back three times. He said he hates his docusign, but he's like, I just won't be a beta customer. I said, all right. And then other people that said no, I also then say, ask for a referral. Is there someone you know who would refer? He didn't refer anyone. And that's okay too. But at the end of the day, you know, 24 hours later,$3 ,000 in deposits from 24 people. That is great.

1:33:52Well, look, Noah, you live what you preach. And I'm absolutely sure at some point in the past 10 years, I begged you to buy a book, but I cannot remember the specifics of that. The whole book is dedicated to James Altucher. Do you know the dedication's for you? It's not my family. It's not, it's James Altucher, like this book. No, it's not. I'm not saying I convinced you to buy a book. I'm just saying I wanted a book that you would write. So I never felt ready for it. I think that's kind of fascinating. I felt scared and I felt like an imposter. Like, who am I to write a book on this? And it took me many years to feel comfortable and it took me facing the hard parts in our life.

1:34:31For me, this was putting this together and seeing if I could do it and help people. And then now I feel like, hell yeah, I can. And I think that this is a, I would say this is a personal development book wrapped in a business. I think this was personal development for you, writing this book, getting your confidence up on this aspect? A hundred percent. I felt very self-conscious. That's why I hired Tal Raz, so I didn't have to do it. I paid this guy a ton of money so I could avoid facing the hard part. And then when I finally faced it and worked on it with him, and I worked with thousands of people with this specific material after many years, I was like, wow, this works and I can do it.

1:35:04And that's the whole book for everyone. It's what's the thing we're a little bit afraid of that we think might be a little scary. And then we face it, we overcome it and we realize, wow, that was cool. I'm proud of myself. what's next yeah and look by the way tal is a very good whether you call it ghost writer or co-writer like he really captured your voice he captures chris voss's voice and uh don't split the difference never split the difference and uh he just did another book with chris voss which i haven't read yet but i will and uh he seems very talented i i like his stuff he is you know there's a difference between a uh and a writer and an author right and he was very big on how do we make sure there's very powerful stories and there's a very unique message.

1:35:45And if we're going to do it, let's make the best book in the category. And that was definitely a very strong approach versus a lot of people like, I write a book and here's a little recipe and here's another thing. And it's a professional versus an amateur. And I think a lot of aspects, I'm trying to find the people around me. Again, my weakness is writing. I'm not a strong writer, but I have good ideas. I'm a good promoter. Let me go find that person to compliment, going back to what we were saying earlier. Well, that's just it. You have very unique ideas. You have very unique personality. You have lots of stories.

1:36:13And that's why I always wanted to see a book of your stuff. But now I've got it. And look, I look forward to the next time we get together. We'll play chess and ping pong. You know, by the way, I just had a memory. We last played ping pong. We last saw each other in 2016. And it was the oddest thing. We were playing at spin in New York City and I passed out. Do you remember that? Like I've never done that before. Like I literally, I was standing, I was talking to somebody you work with. And then the next thing I know is I'm on the floor and everybody was like looking at me. And I don't know why that happened, but that was like the only time in my life I've ever passed out.

1:36:50Dude, that was wild. But, and then the last time we played chess was in Austin. I was in Austin and we went to your apartment or someone's apartment and played some chess. And you were not, you were not a 1400 player. I would say put you more at like 17, 1800. Can I tell you a crazy story about chess? Uh-huh. Of course. Dude, I played chess with Jamie Foxx. Have you played with Jamie Foxx? No. The most celebrity-like person I played chess with, I played a couple hours with the Jizza from the Wu-Tang Clan. How was that? Oh, he's a good chess player. He's like maybe also like 1700, 1800. Oh, wow.

1:37:24Yeah, Jamie Foxx crushed me actually. No way. A buddy of mine, Richard, was like, hey, you can come to Jamie's house. And oh, he likes to play chess. So I was like, well, I'm going to bring my chess board. And so he had like a party. I think it was his daughter's birthday. people are drinking everyone's partying and at 2 a.m they're like hey jamie's free if you want to play chess with them and i was like yeah so you could actually go on my instagram from i think a year or two ago and see me playing and i think i was like dude i can't believe he's so good oh my god i need to get a rematch on him did you play with a clock or you just played a game yeah with the clock i think we're doing either five minute games or 10 minute games he was so he knew what he was doing yeah jamie fox man respect all right i'm gonna have to figure out how to play him at some point.

1:38:07If you go out to LA, let me know. I can connect you with the guy. I'll help you out. I'm going to LA tomorrow by coincidence. No, I'm just kidding. Oh, okay. Well, no, dude. That's also so funny, by the way. That's my usual technique, by the way. No, but that, by the way, that's so smart. Like when I was doing this business I was telling you about, this one person was like, hey, can you send me an invoice? And I was like, of course I have invoices. I don't know. I haven't sent an invoice in five years, dude. I don't know what an invoice is anymore. So I go Google spreadsheet, look up invoice free template, make one up, put it invoice number 1402, send it to them, send me the money.

1:38:37Or this other person's like, hey, send me a payment link. I was like, what the hell is a payment link? I was like, of course I'll send you a payment link. I Google what's a payment link. And it's like a PayPal thing where they could put their credit card info in. And I just go to my PayPal, get a link, send it to them, got the money. And so I love what you just did right there. I think that's subtle almost, but it's really powerful. Like, okay, solve it. Yeah, that works. That technique works really well. So, well, Noah, look, I really hope we get together sooner rather than later uh and i'm so excited for your book i'm telling everybody about it particularly right here on the podcast telling 100 000 people about it and uh good luck with it but definitely let's get together soon i'll come to austin or i'll go to spain wherever you happen to be and we'll hang out i'd love that man i'd love to hear more about how you're doing

1:39:32You