595: The Million Dollar Weekend / Business Idea Giveaway Show

21:46Yeah. How much time are you spending on something like that? and then you're doing it five times a year? Very little time. So just for call-out, so listen, option transition. This is the easiest way to sell anybody. Listen to their problem. So frankly, the problem isn't very painful to you, right? I'm just guessing, but it doesn't seem like I found something you're like. Like if I give you an option, like, hey, Nick, if you have a system that you could send to all these people, you pay once, you never have to worry how many times you're using it a month, you could use it for life, and it's$99 today.

22:14Is that something you'd want to sign up for today? Yeah, and I think that makes more sense if somebody who's paying 100 bucks a month for something or 50 bucks a month for something. Yeah, totally. So to be clear, I would not try to actually, so I would give you the option, but honestly, I don't even know if I would say, Nick, I don't think this is good for you. I'd probably keep using HelloSign if I was you. But for someone else, like I talked to, I literally was on a chat with a guy named Nick Christensen at AppSumo. He's using DocuSign because of the tool we had at AppSumo wasn't good that we liked that before.

22:41And he's paying 30 bucks a month. And so I would give him an option. Like instead of 30 bucks a month, you want to do$99 today and you'll have it for life. and he says, yes, then you transition. All right. Can you Venmo, PayPal, Stripe, cash, crypto, whatever? Can you pay me that right now as a deposit? And then I'm going to go deliver it to you within the next three months. The idea here is that there's three validation I just give you one, which is pre-sale. My goal is to get$2 ,500 in sales so that I can use that money to pay the developer to build the product and not even build anything. And then people might say, well, how do I know you're going to deliver it?

23:11I'm giving you a promise and I'll deliver your money back. So would you be going like through your inbox, like keyword search, DocuSign from the last 10 years, like everybody who's ever sent you one, be like, well, I know you're a customer of this. So I'm going to start here for these conversations. Exactly. I like calling it a dream 10 list, right? It's from Chet Holmes, who I love from Ultimate Sales Machine. He inspired me. I think he has dream 100, which is too much, but if you only have 48 hours or a short amount of time to validate, get a dream 10. And so I think your idea is great. You can also look up your service providers.

23:41So your accountant, my CPA, my lawyers, anybody. So someone literally, one of the guys on our team just sent me a docusign. I was like, okay, noting that. So I love your idea with searching your Gmail and then coming up a list of 10. And so yeah, this is the pre-sale method. The other two that you can do is one, you can post it on marketplaces. That's a super popular one. Craigslist, Facebook, so forth. And then lastly, you can also try landing page and ads, which is another common one. I don't really like those two because they're more passive and they take time and money. That's what I'm going to be really focusing on more tomorrow is literally just more direct outreach based on people I think I can actually serve and help out.

24:18Okay. And then using those pre-sale funds, if you get them, and if you don't get them, I guess maybe we start there first, like nobody wants this thing or nobody wants it at this price point or how I'm describing it. Then it's kind of back to the idea drawing board, or do you say, I don't know, I still think there's something here. Let me try and tweak it a little bit. Yeah. I don't think you have to give up right away. The two things there, and I'll just give you the exact example. So you weren't interested in this, like what would make you paying$99 for that? A no brainer today, by the way, you can also say nothing, but that's what I would say.

24:47So it sounds like you weren't interested in that. Is there any way to make you be excited? And again, if people are nervous about this stuff, the easiest way to frame it is asking people for feedback. Like, Hey, I just love your feedback on this idea. Like if it was 99 bucks today, what would make it a no brainer for you? Yeah. Okay. No, I'm asking you. Oh, I mean, I'm not in the market for it. So it's not super compelling for me. So two options here. One, you can ask for a referral. So I think that's always a really power move. Like Nick, who's one person that sent you one of these docusigns?

25:17Can you check your inbox right now? Or do you have anyone that's a lawyer or sent you forms? Like who's the person that comes to mind when you think of this product? Okay. So I think I could see how you transition from like, Hey, I get that you're not a fit, but let's not let this die on the vine. Who else you got? You know, how do I tap into my network's network in a way. You have to make the referral easy. Most people do referrals wrong because they say, hey, do you have any referrals? They're like, yeah, I'll get back to you. Instead, it's like, hey, Nick, who's one person that sent you a docusign or who's the first person, this is a specific phrase, that comes to mind?

25:45Who's the first person that comes to mind when I mention this product to you? And then so one, I wouldn't give up right away. I'd go through other people on my dream 10 list. But the second approach then is you were mentioning that you have other products you're paying monthly subscriptions for. Walk me through those. What other ones are you talking about? I wouldn't go jumping around offers, like jumping like, hey, I do this subscription product and I've got this other product. Sure. I would stick with one until you try your 48 hours on one, but then take the feedback of, if I talk to you, Nick, and you said, what's the highest of these different subscriptions you're paying with?

26:14Ahrefs, which one are you paying the most for? The email lists right now, which is currently ActiveCampaign. And how much are you paying a month? I pay annually like seven grand a year. And how much is that email list worth to you? Do you have sales from it? How do you make money from it? Yeah, sending out weekly newsletters, sending out product service offerings. It definitely has an ROI, but it's still painful every time that renewal comes around because it's a big chunk. And when's your next renewal? March 15th. If everything were to be the same, identical to ActiveCampaign, but it was half the price, and everything was moved over for you, would you switch today?

26:47Yeah, probably. Why is it not 100 % no-brainer? Or what's holding you back from it being 100 % no-brainer? Because even the done-for-you transition, because lots of companies will offer that, there's still, because we're talking seven years of SaaS tentacles wrapped around, like the switching costs are non-zero in terms of unraveling hundreds of opt-in forms and everything like that. It'll be a project, time-consuming project. And so you have to weigh like, well, how many hours is this likely to take versus what are the cost savings here? So I think we should stick with this. I think these are good examples for people to learn.

27:20And cost savings are just one reason to contemplate a transition, to contemplate a switch. Like, are there additional features that would help grow the list in the business faster? Are there other things to help you monetize this better? So there's, yeah, I will say not 100 % committed, but have been chopping some alternatives. For the people out there that are looking at side hustles. So with email specifically, it's another interesting one because people have the pain, but the switching cost is higher than the pain. That's the reality. And so I can say, hey, it'll be$100 a month. And you're like, I don't know if I want to do it.

27:56That's the reality. And so just to be clear, people are like, oh, well, I'll just go build the thing and I'll get the landing page. I'm going to do social media and I'm going to get on TikTok. And then in six months, you go to Nick Loper and you say, hey, I got the thing. It's a hundred bucks. I've got this one new feature. You're like, so that's the whole point of all this is like, how do we find out in a very short amount of time without spending a lot of money? if it's something that Nick's like, oh, you had that today? Yeah, I'll sign up right now. Or like, yeah, you'll be able to switch over me.

28:22Sounds great. And that's what I'm trying to get to as we're doing all of our different side hustles. And that would be, if I'm trying to bootstrap this thing, that would be kind of a complicated piece of software to go out and build from the ground up on a limited presale fund basis. But maybe the signing service is less so. And so would you, I mean, maybe there's some cool like no code tools where you could get this done, but what would be the next steps there? Let's do both of them, right? So for the email one, I would do software as a service, which is what a lot of people want. Or you're doing content creation or lawn care.

28:54I like competing with people. If I show up sober and on time, I can easily beat them. But software, there's a lot of really intelligent people competing. With the email one, I would just do the service first and build up clientele and build up expertise while you're doing email marketing. So Nick, do you have an email marketer? Do you do it yourself? I've been doing it myself. Yeah, so I would start with that. Like, hey, Nick, for 10 bucks a month, 20 bucks a month, 50 bucks a month, how about I do all the emails for you and like I can actually get your open rates up I can get your revenue up I can get your click-through up I can get your autoresponders up now you're like oh actually yeah that's kind of cool right and you don't have to move anything like I'm guessing that's probably an easier sell like I can make you 10 % more revenue right yeah you could even do it on a performance basis like for your first few clients put your money where your mouth is kind of a thing of course no-brainer make it no-brainers and there as I build up to you I'm like Nick actually let's move over to this other service it's way cheaper and it's got this other feature that maybe we don't have.

29:42But my point to everyone out there, the earlier point is go do the services and then you can move that over to the software if you're necessary. Or ultimately you can build up an agency and hire a lot of other people to do the work for you at that point, which is sometimes easier sales. Like we spent six months building a Klaviyo competitor and then we went out and tried to sell it and no one wanted it. That was really disappointing. It's called Meet Fam. Don't go to the website. It's not really even functional. But it was something that, oh, we should have definitely pre-sold. We should have done the service instead of trying to build the software first.

30:11And the same thing goes for the signature code. I think there's two approaches for it, or a few different approaches if you're pre-selling. One, try to get the money so you can build it. Look at the Cybertruck. Took six years to come out. Model 3 took 10 years. So you just pre-sold it with a fake thing, the glass broke, everyone knows that. The example is like you're showing them what they're going to get. The other thing you can do for the signature one is you could print out like, hey, give me anything you want to sign and I'll digitize it for you and I'll handle everything. And you could use these third parties, either print it out or digitally.

30:38and you just use other services while you're building it out. Like when I built AppSumo, most of it was actually kind of on a WordPress site with a PayPal button to start. And then as it got going, it was like, yeah, then we hired developers and now we have a team of give or take 25 engineers. But I would try to figure out how do I get the customer first, which is the most important part, not necessarily just have a solution, which I'd say most people start doing when they're building businesses. Yeah, I want to pause on that call to start with services because more side hustle show guests started with a service-based business than any other model.

31:08which is somewhat surprising because it's not super sexy. It's like, well, I was freelancing or I was consulting. It's not as cool as like, well, I have this SaaS product, but it's not necessarily where they ended up. That's where they started because of like low friction, low barrier to entry, really quick to kind of get to that first. Yes, that money milestone. And specifically on the email example, you reminded me of Wes Schaefer, the sales whisper, I think it was his site who was doing this. I will be your marketing automation consultant guy and help you build these email funnels and sequences and do that at scale.

31:39So you can make more money from your business. And along the way, became a reseller or an authorized reseller for Infusionsoft, for HubSpot. What started out as hours for dollars or hours per project consulting business, now all of a sudden he's getting like lifetime referral commissions for signing. Hey, you're using this tool today, but have you heard about HubSpot or have you heard about Infusionsoft? And now he's getting like these lifetime referral commissions for being the guy that signed up this business to those services. And so that was a path to go without building his own software tool.

32:10Like maybe there's more margin in that, but Hey, this was an alternative to say like, Hey, look, here's a better, faster, cheaper alternative and getting a cut of that on a recurring basis. Yeah. I mean, we built sendfox.com. That's our email marketing tool that I use and love because I was tired of paying MailChimp subscriptions. I was like, I'm not emailing all that time, all the time. It doesn't cost you that much to send these emails anymore. The tools out there are pretty commodity, but you're charging me a premium for something I don't think is worth it From that, going out and making sure we had other customers who wanted to use it, we were able to get this business going.

32:38And that became a seven-figure business. We'll be right back with Noah, including some of his most expensive mistakes, how to avoid the freelance trap, if you want to, that is, and a$20 ,000 pain point of his right after this. Did you know there's a disease running rampant amongst side hustlers and new entrepreneurs? It's called superhero syndrome. Symptoms include a feeling like you got to do everything yourself, thinking you're the only one who can do it right, and struggling to let go of certain tasks. Does that sound familiar to anyone? But the good news is there is a cure. Our sponsor Indeed can help you find the best candidates for the roles you need to fill and find them fast.

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33:49Just go to indeed.com slash sidehustleshow right now and support the show by saying you heard about Indeed on this podcast. Indeed.com slash sidehustleshow. Terms and conditions apply. hiring indeed is all you need okay so we've gone through kind of this validation process this pre sales listen option transition process going through trying to get this stuff built on a bootstrap basis anything else to add there for like okay i'm gonna try and build this thing maybe start with the service option and then with that in the back of my mind like i'd love to turn this into a product what i've noticed through putting together million dollar weekend and through youtube and all these things is that most people just don't start most people don't ask and so they've got to practice those things and get better at that so they can feel more confident to like put themselves out on social media.

34:33Maybe it's YouTube or to ask someone to be a customer or to put something out there to see if someone will buy something. So how do you practice starting and how do you practice asking so you can get to this point? Yeah. Because it is a skill that most people don't realize is holding them back from where they want to be. That's definitely part one. And there's challenges. I would have everyone go to right now, ask someone for a dollar on your phone. Just ask. You can do that right now. Everyone can do that today. You can get your first buck. Second thing everyone can do today is they can go ask for a discount.

34:59So one, you could get started right now and you could practice starting. Two, then you practice asking. And as you start doing these different businesses, regardless of what it is, whether it's a content show, whether it's a service show, whether it's software, you just get a lot better at the ask part. And then as you get the business stuff, you kind of keep experimenting until you finally get the thing that works. Because as we talked about, the idea may not work the first time. And then you have to try again. Like I try to, I don't know, four or five ideas before AppSumo even worked. That's after 10 years of all the different ideas I've done.

35:27I can go through some of them. It's kind of funny, but it led me to that point. I think everybody who's been in the game for a while has a graveyard of abandoned domain names, failed projects. It's a badge of honor. Oh my God, man. The reality though, is that I can share all my stories. I can tell you every, I spent a hundred thousand building something for Disney that they didn't end up using it. I spent, I don't know, another 50 ,000 called bettercade.com. No one used that. Meet fam.com. Don't go there. Paul drop.com. Don't go there. Sumo market.com. Don't go there. But all these ideas and swings eventually led me to find something.

36:02And I will say, I've noticed that the most successful people have the most failures and they keep each time getting a little bit better and a little bit better. If you found something that people seem to like, maybe it's creating content, maybe it's a service, maybe it is software. The most important thing is to deliver what you promised. Most people I've seen this recently, this guy named Jake, he wanted to start a golf trip business. He loves golf. Do you golf? Yeah. I don't know how to golf at all. I just like margaritas. Neither do I, but I go out there and hack it up. And so he loves golf and he wants to do these like guys and dads golf trips.

36:30He went on one, he loved it. So we did the million dollar weekend process and he actually got five paying customers for these trips, something he's been sitting on for two years. And a lot of it was he just committed the time to follow the process and to do it versus thinking about it and talking about it. One of the most fascinating things though, is a week later, I was like, hey, have you started planning the trips that you've promised people? just like this docusign alternative the nick sign as we call it he's like oh no someone told me about an app so i'm working on an app now you're like dude you got five people to say yes to you i know we're kind of chuckling about it and i love this guy's a really solid dude super smart good family man but this is very common in the book as well i've talked about law of 100 which is like as you find this thing let's do it so now deliver on your five let's go to six customers seventh customer eighth customer whatever that is just commit to 100 before you start changing to something else because we all like give up too soon or we move away from what's working too soon and i think part of my success frankly has just been having people around me and supporting me thank god to have app sumo keep going for such a long period of time because it immediately worked but only finally did i start getting paid maybe six seven years into it so i would say for these people out there now it's most important to deliver your product and then just keep delivering like the best business is the one that works so for everyone out there who's got a side hustle that's working just go revisit things you were doing to help it get working and do more of that Like even with Nick, with your business, I'm sure there's things in the past like, oh, that worked.

37:52It's like, are you still doing it? And the answer is probably not as much. So I always think that's a huge opportunity for most people. And now it's just to deliver on what you're doing and then keep delivering it until you've really maxed it out, which is a lot more than people realize. So one of the ones you had in your video was becoming a Notion consultant. And we could swap out Notion for fill-in-the-blank software tool. I think piggybacking on the popularity of something that is becoming big, used by a lot of different businesses. like that's a great model in itself. Raise your hand. Hey, I'm an expert in fill in the blank.

38:22Totally. But one of the interesting side notes was like, in addition to doing the service for that is selling the product that layers on top of it. And I don't know if you know Thomas Frank from, you know, used to be college info geek. I think just Thomas Frank on YouTube has sold$2 million worth of Notion templates. It's just, hey, you open it up. It's kind of a blank slate. Hey, there's gotta be some easy button solution for it. Oh yeah, there is. So you go buy Thomas's templates and he's made a ton of money doing that. I'll give you another side hustle idea. There's people doing really well with small audiences.

38:54So even if you have a hundred people, even if you have 10 and we all have, if you, everyone goes on their LinkedIn, they have at least 150 people at least. And when I'm looking for business opportunities, Nick, I'm looking for when people respond. So I put out an email at noakagan.com about my 2024 goals and people like, we're like, this was so good. This is one of the best ways I've seen people have done goal setting. and it's the same systems I've been using. I learned from Zuckerberg and kind of tweaked my own way for the past 15 years, but that's a business, right? Could I sell my 2024 goal template planning process, like the template and the walkthrough?

39:27Yeah. Yeah. And so it's like, oh, that's kind of interesting to think, what are people responding to, whether it's maybe you baking cookies? There's a woman, Jennifer, who's baked cookies in Dallas. Like I bought her cookies and I was like, oh, this is a cool business. Or if it's something that people respond like my yearly goal planning system. Yeah, a friend of ours, Jen, started the custom cookie business in Livermore and I think she went on to sell like some 3D printed cookie cutters or something, you know, based on audience demand. Oh, that's cool. That was a cool transition there. But yeah, I like it.

39:56Yeah, I think what you're highlighting, which is such a good thing, is that when I was getting started in entrepreneurship, I was like, oh, I'm going to create some content, whether it's a blog or YouTube, wherever. I'm going to put affiliate links and then hope. You know, like, oh, vacuums are selling well on Amazon with good margin. Like, I'm going to do that. And I think that's great. It's important to get to reps in and swings in. but I think if it's more if you can get a little bit more active get a little bit more direct to the outcomes like go and do services like go and do the cooking go and provide yearly planning be an accountability coach go mow someone's lawn for them whatever that is it makes that easier to find the thing that people are excited to then give you money for or have you help them yeah that was the one on the one of the early services that I was so I had this like virtual assistant review platform and directory and had a few people reaching out we had a dozen different companies like three stars for this company, five stars for this company.

40:43This one's based in India. This one's based in the US, blah, blah. And had a handful of people just reach out. He's like, it's too many options. Can you just find me somebody? It was like, at that point in my life, it was like, yeah, I'll go, I'll go find somebody here's 400 bucks, 500 bucks. I'll do the recruiting for you. And just completely in response to customer demand. Like it wasn't something that I'd ever thought of offering, but people were asking for it. So you kind of listen to that where it would have been easy to be like, no, that's not my thing. But it was just, We'll say yes to different opportunities there.

41:10I had one. So you mentioned selling the year planning templates. We had a woman on the show, Emily McDermott, had sold, I think, a quarter million dollars worth of financial planning, personal finance spreadsheets, mostly on Etsy and some through her own site. It's like, dang, I love a spreadsheet as much as the next guy. Maybe I need to get into this. This is great. Two comments on that. One, I think Ryan Dice told me this, but it's like there's three stages of selling information, which is like reading it to them, telling them about it and doing it for them. And each of those things have higher price points.

41:41And I always like that mental picture. The other comment, I love what you said about this one with templates is that if you have a small audience or you can just go sell one person, especially if you want to do a course, people are like, how do I do a course? What platform should I use? Like, why have you sold or helped anybody? No, not yet. It's like, well, let's start there. But I would say what these templates are in general, what I've found to be the best way to sell is how do you get closer to very clearly making some more and more money or saving them a lot of money very, very clearly or very, very clearly saving them time.

42:09And the closer you can get to that, the more likely someone will pay you. Yeah. The do-it-yourself version, like low tier, low ticket to the walk alongside or I'll help you with it. And to be completely done for you version of it, like price tiers for the same, same expertise or same underlying idea, same underlying thing. And to be clear, you never have to do the service yourself in the future. It's good to do it. So you understand it, but you can frankly get it going, hire people to do it. Then you can even hire someone to do the marketing. Then you can even hire someone to run the business.

42:36Like most of the wealthiest people on the earth don't have W2s, right? Like at AppSumo.com, I have not gotten a deal on AppSumo.com in 10 years. I haven't done it. You know, I hired the people that hire the people now. And so it's thinking in a different stage. And for people there, just get going with your first customer, your first dollar. That does though, over time, you're going to thank yourself for starting today. In five years, you're like, oh, I'm so glad I got that going today. I stuck with Law of 100 or whatever it is to keep you going. So in five years or 10 years, like your show, Nick, where you've kept going for a long time, you'd be like, oh, I'm just glad I got going so I could live the life I want to live.

43:07Don't have to wonder what if. Let's pause there for a second, because that's, I think, a trap that a lot of beginner freelancers, consultants would fall into that would prevent them from bumping up to kind of the agency model where they've got other people doing like, I'm selling my own expertise as a virtual assistant recruiter, as a meal prep provider, as a notion consultant, as an email copywriter. And like, how do I get out of selling my own expertise to provide this service into being like, well, now it's epic copywriting.com. And, you know, it might not be me doing it. It might be, you know, this other guy that I hired.

43:41That's a common avoidance technique. It's really, if you think it's pretty egotistical, that's like, oh, I'm the greatest and no one ever else could be better than me. And it's like, that's really, you sure about that? Maybe someone could even be better than you. I've seen it. So mybodytutor.com. You know, Adam? No. He bootstrapped. It's like a seven-figure business health accountability coaching, daily healthy coaching calls. He'd kind of got it going as a side hustle while he was an accountant, I think 16 years ago now. I'm really impressed with him. Wow. Okay. And he never thought that any other buddy could coach like him.

44:14And really, it was that he was afraid of growing the business. And so he finally tested it out. And I think one of the absolute values is test and invest. So he tested someone else doing it for him. The client could pay a little bit less, I believe, is what he ended up doing initially because he felt and it's uncomfortable doing it. Client was happy. And now Adam's job is coaching the coaches. This is years later. This is probably about five years ago. He finally had his first coach. But instead of making it all or nothing, or you're the most elite, try it out. And it might take a few times. I've noticed that with people starting businesses, they hire, they try to work with someone else and it doesn't work.

44:45And they're like, well, I tried hiring and I'm the only person who can do it. And it's like, that's not true. And just like dating, you have to go back out and try it again. And you'll eventually find the right person. I think the key thing for most people is finding the areas of a business that you really enjoy and thinking about how you stay most of your days doing that. Like, I love coming and talking to your business ideas and promoting things and things like this. But like doing customer support, like I can do customer support probably about 30 seconds. And I love, like we have Dylan and Andrew and Lauren on the people on the AppSumo team who are amazing and they love it.

45:14I'm like, I don't know how you guys do this for so long. And so really noticing the areas that we thrive in and spending as much of our days in that and then really hiring or using software to reduce the rest of it. Yeah. Well, I've got a couple more ideas to throw out there. Anything else on the donate a business idea front that you think listeners would enjoy or might spark some inspiration for this year? Think about the things that really I'm struggling with. Getting guests on shows, always a problem. Like, especially for the YouTube channel, I'd love to have something where I can connect with billionaires.

45:44Let me just give you an example. I'll pay 15 to 20 ,000. You mean the billionaires don't have the army of PR people trying to reach out and pitch you? No, no, no. I'll pay$15 ,000 minimum. Let's just do 20 ,000. I'll pay$20 ,000 if someone can get me Dave Portnoy from Barstool. Yeah. And so my point here is like, that's a huge problem that I find is like, how do I find certain guests? Right now, visas. So if people are trying to travel, I know there's like a few different companies, Nomad Capitalist. I'd love help. Personally, getting to Spain easier. That's where I'm going to spend half my year.

46:14Christmas lights. I still get excited about Christmas lights. Just like getting good Christmas lights up or holiday lights. Okay. Nanny care. I find there's care.com, but it feels like, I can't tell you how many times I'm in these parent groups now. And it's like, do you know a nanny? Nanny is like the new, like hot stock. Like if you can get a nanny. So it's like, wow, that's such a problem for people. And how do you solve that? Yeah. We had a woman on the show who built like a nanny franchise essentially, because it was a pain point, a pain point for her pain point for other moms and say like, who can I, how do I find somebody I can trust with my kid?

46:47And it's super big. Yeah. Well, I think the other comment I would make, and this is another mistake newer entrepreneurs make, they have an idea like nanny, like this nanny business, for instance, and then they Google or they go on social media and they find that there's this person that you just mentioned. They're like, ah, someone took the idea before I could do it. It's over. It's like, you think so? You didn't even know about their business till like a minute ago. Like that's the opportunity. Yeah. So I would not count yourself out. I wouldn't say it's validated and guaranteed it'll work. That's a whole separate thing that I do think was solved in the book.

47:18But can you go and actually, if they haven't done a good job letting you know about it, that's your chance. to start that. Yeah. Well, I used to be guilty of that too. Like I have this idea for like a blog post and Google it. I don't know why I would do that, but Google it and find you ever Google something and come up with like zero results. Of course, somebody else has already written this topic. And so I go back, well, shoot, I guess I can't write that. I'll have to come up with something else. I was like, no, Debbie, put your own unique spin on it. Your own whatever. And like, sure enough, you carve out a space for yourself on page one.

47:45It took a while to realize that you didn't have to come up with something completely new for it to still be valuable and helpful for people on the internet. A couple that came to mind just in prep for this episode, one was this idea for like pre-proteined coffee. So we'll often mix protein powder or collagen into the coffee in the morning. Like, is there a way to reduce that one step? Like not a huge pain point, but like, Hey, could you just buy it like pre-mixed in? I don't know if that like would mess up the heating it up or running hot water. I'm putting it in hot water anyways. Like maybe this is the thing.

48:18Obviously bulletproof coffee became a huge thing, which started as a content-based business, like start as a blog podcast. Like, I don't know. That's a cool example of a content first business that turned into e-commerce, turned into brick and mortar, like turned into just huge. But that was one that came up. And the other one was kind of inspired by this service called healthy wage, which is they do a booming business around new year's resolutions. Like, Hey, bet on yourself that I'm going to lose 20 pounds by June 1st or something. And I'm going to put down a hundred bucks a month. And if I meet my goal, they're going to pay out everything that I paid them plus some prize on top of that.

48:52So you have this carrot and stick financial incentive for doing it. And it's statistically way more effective than just making a non-monetary New Year's resolution. Is there a pivot to that where you could help people achieve goals in other areas of their life with a similar like betting model, like bet on yourself model and you figure out loss ratios and stuff. But it was kind of inspired by that healthy wage model. I love the idea of how do you look at outside industries for inside inspiration? Like AppSumo came because I looked at a Mac software bundle and I was like, oh, they have Mac software.

49:25What about web software? Yeah. And then one of our biggest growth levers was giveaways, which we still do to this day. And it's because I saw it in a women's blog. I was like on some random women's blog. It was like, what a free trip to Paris. And I was like, huh, we're not really about that. We're about software. What if we gave away Dropbox, but we did it for life and we're still paying this person's Dropbox. 14 years later. And that was the number one growth thing that really exploded AppSumo in our second year. Really? Okay. You're trying to do kind of a viral giveaway thing. Yeah. Which I mean, funny enough, that turned into kingsumo.com, which we now sell for$49 and that's your business.

49:58Yeah, this is, oh, I know, you know, Dan, I always see you guys bike riding from Tropical MBA because he has this rip pivot and jam framework where it's like, how do I take somebody else's business model, blatantly rip it off, but pivot it to a different industry and then jam, like go to town and do the work to build that, to make it a thing. I'd love that. I'd love that. Well, there's been awesome. Milliondollarweekend.com, noahkagan.com. Let's wrap this thing up with your number one tip for Side Hustle Nation. I would say now, not how, especially for the people that have been waiting to get their side hustle going, just do it today, right now.

50:30Like what's the smallest, smidgenest thing, tiniest thing you can get going right today. And the more that you start building up that confidence, the more you feel like your ability will be increased. And so I would just keep repeating that over and over now, not how. And that to me has been a transformational for myself, as well as so many other people that have dreamed of finally having that side hustle or making it a full-time hustle. Just get going right now. Yeah. Now, not how, how do you reduce that friction? How do you give yourself a really near-term deadline, which is the power of the million dollar weekend?

50:59Look, by Sunday night, I got to have something done that I can go to, go to market with. So now, not how. 2017, number one tip for the sake of trivia buffs or longtime Side Hustle Show listeners was write down your most important priorities for tomorrow, tonight, and then wake up and do them. Something that has become definitely a keystone habit for me and for a lot of listeners I know as well. So I appreciate you sharing that. A couple just kind of like wrap up notes. One thing you said was, is there a million dollars in it? And one of my themes for the year, one of the things that I kind of wrote down as New Year's reflections or end of the year reflections was, am I chasing antelopes or am I chasing mice?

51:39Because he said, you're going to spend the same effort doing both. And so you might as well chase that bigger opportunity. And then we talked a ton about different business idea generating frameworks, looking at your own pain points, looking at where you're spending your own money, paying attention to what other people complain to you about. One thing that stood out there was like the idea of piggybacking on something that's already popular and some ideas we didn't even get to was like the growth of short form video. Like, could you develop a skillset around that? Could you build an agency around that?

52:08But like riding a rising tide of interest in a software tool or a marketing channel or whatever it may be, but just rather than trying to create demand from scratch, go where some demand already is. So those are a couple of notes that I had. Noah, I really appreciate you joining me again, whether you're a first time side hustle show listener or a long time fan. I appreciate you spending some time with Noemi in your earbuds today. Another little bit of trivia for you. Did you know that over 6 ,000 side hustle show listeners have already generated their personalized playlist at hustle.show? You can be next.

52:41It's totally free. All you got to do is go to hustle.show, answer a few short multiple choice questions. You can do it on your phone and I'll build you a curated playlist of the episodes I think are going to be most impactful and actionable for you based on your answers. Again, hustle.show for that. Big thanks to Noah for sharing his insight. Thank you for supporting the advertisers that support the show. As always, you can hit up sidehustlenation.com slash deals for all the latest offers from our sponsors in one place. That's it for me. Thanks so much for tuning in. If you're finding value in the show, the greatest compliment is to share it with a friend.

53:11So why not fire off a text message or two telling your friends about this episode? Until next time, let's go out there and make something happen. And I'll catch you in the next edition of the Side Hustle Show. Hustle on.