How Sumo Failed Its Way To An Eight Figure Internet Bohemoth With Noah Kagan

Welcome to Make More Marbles. My name is Brad Hart, and we're here to interview the game changers, the future makers, the co collaborators and creators who are here to collaborate with one another towards a better future for all of us. Enjoy the show. We've got a great guest coming up for you right now. What's up? Welcome to Make More Marvels. My name is Brad Hart and I am freaking stoked. I'm literally jumping out of my skin right now because I've got man. A legend, a myth. No, not a myth. He's right here with us. His name is Noah Kagan. What is up, Mr. Kagan? Thank you so much for being on the show.

One most excited. Were you in cheer in school?

In cheer? No, I just like to project and be a crazy person.

It's good to bring the energy, man. Definitely. Well, it's like, if you're not feeling excited, like, I've thought about this on stages or when I do some of my podcasts, like, if I come across like I'm feeling tired and bored, I'm like, yeah, of course they're gonna think it's tiring and boring too. Absolutely.

I just came back from UPW to my fourth time walking on fire. So if Tony can't get you going, I don't know what can I do?

Got to ask about upw. How did you stay? So I went to upw. I put out this article how I left after seven hours, and it went viral. It's like hundreds of thousands of visitors. It's actually number six for Tony Robbins if you search on Google.

Wow.

And what was crazy, though, is that it just wasn't for me. And so I think that's kind of fascinating where for other people like yourself, you've gone four times. It seems like you're getting a lot out of it.

And for me, I won 10 events total. Yeah, we just brought 47 people. The last one.

So what is it for you that brings you back?

For Tony, for me, it's, well, never the same man. Never same river. Right. So every time I go, I'm a different person doing different things, and I have different challenges that I get to overcome. And even Tim Ferriss, who's a mutual acquaintance, friend of ours, had the same experience. He's like this Dickens process, where you can associate enough pain and enough pleasure in and really create health for yourself so that you can move and change the things you need to change and really get clear with yourself on what needs to change is transformative. And I love it. And I actually have it on SoundCloud now because I can do it on my own. But you have to be able to and willing to create that pain because once you have enough pain associated what is, and enough pleasure associated with the outcome, you'll be in good shape. I think where most people fall off and this is what I've seen for a lot of people, my friends came, Miguel, Dan, a couple others, they get a sense of who is this loud, brash asshole and why is he telling me the things he's telling me. But you haven't really like, you've seen that part, but you haven't seen the side of Tony, which I really love, which is he's half a billionaire, number one, so he's more successful than most people on this planet. He donated $100 million or I'm sorry, 100 million meals to charity last year because somebody fed his family when he was a kid and that really resonated with him. And then additionally, like he doesn't need to be doing any of this, but he chooses to because he has these peak performance strategies. He allows people to channel and really go after the emotional quality of their lives in a way which is much more fulfilling than just one achievement after another after another. And we were just talking before the show about my particular experience where I had all the money, did all the things, I'm on top of the frickin gains, work, park, hotel with a glass of, I think club. So at that point I quit drinking and I was more. We just did a million dollar a month, million, forty thousand partners and all. And I was more disconnected and more burned out than I'd ever been in my life. And I lost in that moment a sense of purpose. It had been fulfilled and I was looking for a new one. But the gap was so painful that I needed something to push me along. And I think a lot of people have this type of thing when they really like get the thing that they always wanted and it doesn't completely fulfill them. They feel like they failed. And Tony allows you to tap into that emotional juice again that maybe you've lost somewhere along the way. Because we're hyper analytical people. Roy's looking at numbers and data. I know you are. I know I am. And it's hard to. It's hard to be human with a measuring stick that's not a human measuring stick, Right? So you talked about being a hater and you know, stuff like that. Like who are you hurting by doing that?

Right?

By. By denying the fact that our number one competitive advantage as A species is love.

Who are you hurting by being a hater? Well, to stick with the Tony thing, I think one thing that I've been. I went to Israel for a month. So I went and ran Sumo and kind of worked on my podcast, and I lived in Israel for about a month and I traveled for a little bit. And I kind of had some different and interesting realizations where number one, it was that we're all spending so much time looking for hacks and productivity improvements and people to answer our questions. When I think deep down, it's like we all know the right answers. We all do. And, you know, I think with Tony as well as recently, I put up this YouTube video about why Jews are taking over the world. And that's actually a little too extreme. I don't think Jews are taking over the world. We've already taken it over, obviously. But the point being there is that that title was the most downvoted episode I've ever put out on my YouTube channel, ever. And so besides, you know, thinking about productivity in general, it also made me realize. So people are over consumed with that. Part two is that things that you're putting out that are in the middle are gonna get ignored. And so it doesn't mean you should go extreme and put out videos that are like, I'm gonna go kill, you know, I'm gonna go eat a hundred marbles today, or whatever that is. But there was something really interesting. Well, there's two parts of it, but number one was that and anything that's a little bit more edge. So Tony's like, you're marbles. So Tony is like, yo, these are the extreme things I'm gonna recommend fire and this and that. And it gets people to either be like you, where you're like, tony is a godsend. And then there's people like me where I'm like, okay, Tony, you're rich. I get it. You've hung out with Bill Clinton. George Bush calls you when you're on the toilet. But that's at least getting people to talk about it. Where I think a lot of people are like, why isn't anyone paying attention to my business or my stuff? It's like, because you're talking about the middle of the road.

Yeah. You're not polarizing.

No. And the second thing, which was interesting more on a business thing, is that I spent so long making some of this content. Like, maybe it's a podcast, maybe it's a service, maybe it's a product. And some of the times we don't spend the time on the most important thing, which could be the title. And so now I've kind of been pretty obsessed lately with anything we put out, from a blog post to an email to a video to a podcast to even our products. Like, I test the titles pretty extensively. And so we tested, and the title was why Jews are Taking over the World was, like, five times more impactful. And so I just think it was an interesting reminder of, like, you put all this time making a dish, and if you just have a restaurant with a shitty name, you know, it's probably going to impact it or the shitty name of a dish. So just, you know, I think that last. That last lap, that last mile, people should put a little bit more effort into.

I agree. And I know you test and test again. And I'm sure you're using Facebook ads in a variety of different ways.

Yeah.

Maybe even your own list. And you guys have so many people on your app symbol list at least, and so many segments. What are some of the top, like, two or three ways right now that are working to test these headlines for people to have a, you know, a key entrepreneurial takeaway here?

Yeah, I want to. So this is going to be hypocritical. I want to discourage probably most of the listeners from testing.

So it makes sense when you get to a certain size, but not.

Yeah, man, I. You know, let's say you're making $10 million a year. So our businesses do somewhere around that. And I'm not bragging just to give you context. So, like, a 10% improvement in something is a million bucks. Like, that's good. Happens. It's totally worth it. Exactly, man. But as people are starting out, what they do is that they're not making any money or they're making a thousand a month, and then they just get obsessed with all this testing where the changes are really, like, insignificant. So what I do for blog posts is I take $10 and I do it for all of our titles. So for Sumo, we do it on all of our blog posts now. And so what you do is you go to Facebook, you create an ad, you retarget your current audience, and then we've just put it same image and we use five different titles, and then we just see which one gets the highest CTR with the $10 budget. And it's insane. It's like 1.5 CTR versus 0.3. So if you think about it, you're gonna get five times more attention, most likely when you put that out there to the Public. And then you could also secondly, test it with images. So once you find the title, now test it with five different images. And it seems like a lot, but it's like, you know, we spend. We have amazing. I think we have amazing writers on our team, but they're spending a whole week writing one article. And the most important thing, which is your title and then your image, you're like, all right, that sounded good. Let's put that out.

I love it and I love that that's still your modus operandi. That's still the standard operating procedure. Even now that you're doing, doing what you're doing. It's like, let's spend $10 and make sure we got this right. You got Neville on your team. You got all these great people who are doing incredible things. And by the way, Neville has been a copy coach for me and my people as well. I think he's great because he always has the most engaging stories and most engaging titles. And it's not an accident, guys, they do the work and they still do the work. It's not because they woke up one day and said, oh, it's frickin Noah Kagan now. I don't need to do any of that.

It never ends, man. It never ends.

It never ends.

And I will say a lot of things. I meet people and they're like, I'm so data driven and everything in my business is tracked and I test everything and then I, you know, two things for me, it's like, number one, I'm like, well, why isn't your business doing very well? They're talking about it, but they're actually just measuring the wrong stuff or they're doing it incorrectly. And I think part of actually why, you know, our company, you know, AppSumo or Grouponforgeeks or Sumo.com our marketing software. I think why generally do well with our marketing and our product is because we don't actually track a lot of stuff, but we keep it really simple. So with Sumo, here's an easy example. Our blog now with our content, we're at 125,000 visitors a month. And I told the team, I said, hey, I want you to get to half a million visitors a month by the end of the year. How you get it, I don't really care. But every week I'm going to see if you're on track. And if you're on track, I'll leave you alone. If you're not on track, we'll figure it out. To get back on track. And I think the more that people can simplify their business to, like, singular numbers. So that marketing team, Chris and Sarah and Devin, they're now going to be obsessed with that number, and that is all they will think about. And then we've kind of done that with the different marketing groups and then with the overall company. And the more simple it can be, the more likely people will be able to achieve those things.

100%. And you've had extensive experience. If you've never heard of Noah Kagan, let me just tell you about him. So he's number 30 at Facebook. He was number three at Mint, which obviously both of those did. Okay. You know, you've had your. Your shares of successes and failures. You launched AppSumo, which, again, really solved a specific need. I know I've been a customer since the very beginning. And now Sumo, which used to be Sumo me, I've been using on my blog since it started three years ago. We had a literal email exchange about that. So I'm, you know, I'm a huge fan. I'm a lifetime fan. What I really want to know about where you're at in this stage is now that you have the success, you had, the clout, you can basically get anybody answer your phone calls. What is the thing that you'd really love to create next? And what would the legacy you'd like to leave be?

So the legacy, I kind of come to, like, a. I'm not a contrarian, and I don't know how people get even contrarian ideas, but I've started just having this realization that there's no such thing as legacy. And then how would you actually live your life without that? Because that's such a thing that we're, a lot of us, everyone is obsessed with. So I'm gonna have a kid to have a legacy. I'm gonna create this business to have a legacy. And I kind of look at it more about what problems can I really solve to make my own life better? And I also think, well, probably other people have these problems. So that's really what I think about. Not necessarily like, how do I, you know, is it gonna live beyond me? I don't know. And then in terms of what I'm looking forward to next, this is the number, I would say the biggest disease of entrepreneurs. For anyone trying to start a company, the disease is distraction.

Mmm.

It's this. It's a sick disease, and it just spreads like crazy. And there's many ways distraction forms. It's like, oh, I'm gonna start another Idea because that'll help me. Or I am gonna go do have another meeting, or I'm gonna go read this other blog post or buy this other book or buy this other course or listen this other podcast. What in reality, a lot of like, for Sumo. Let me give you a concrete example. You know, we have something working. So I've actually started this year. At the beginning of the year, I said, I'm only gonna do my podcast and help Sumo. And then I started adding a YouTube video, then I bought a Chrome extension, then I built recruiting software, then I built WordPress plugins. And you do them all until they kind of start working, and then you kind of give up or they start working, and you're like, well, you know, it's not doing amazing. It hasn't won overnight. And so the reality of it is two things. One, whatever you're doing that's already working, just figure out how to keep doing that. That's really it. Because we're like, oh, the next thing's gonna solve it. And really, Sumo is working great. People like it. Let's just keep. Make it work better. And the second thing is that this is my secret to success, and it's not even a secret. I'll just. Because if it's a secret, I wouldn't tell you. I hate when people say that. My. My. You know, one of the things why I think I've been successful is just persistence, and so, you know, having a clear outcome you want and then sticking with it. Meaning. So I want to have Sumo become this amount of customers or this amount of helping people or whatever it is for each person. Then honestly, it's just sticking with that and having to say, all right, I'm gonna say no to a lot of things and really focus on the stuff that matters and not everything else. That's what we were talking about a little bit earlier. It's so much easier to add new things and think that's gonna solve it, when in reality, it's just like, let's just go keep doing more what works and say no to everything else.

Yeah. And that's. That's one of the key things I got at Tony is like, I have a high need for variety, and I have to constantly check in with myself. I'm like, am I adding more to my plate or spinning plates or marbles or whatever you want to call it? You know, it shouldn't be, maybe make more marbles, but make enough marbles. And I. This is an argument I have with myself quite often, but I think the Message is really for people who need to get started or need to get a fire layer under their ass, and not so much people who have already got a lot on their plate and need to maybe trim it down. You know, some of the things I.

Think you could try both ways. So I always think of it like directions in a map. So there's many. So where do you live, Brad?

In San Diego, California.

Oh, God, the best burritos in the world. So if I wanted to get to San Diego, I could fly, I could ride a bicycle, I could motorcycle, I could Amtrak. So I'm only telling people what's been working for me. There's a lot of other ways to accomplish getting a San Diego or running a business or liver life. But I would say, you know, if people are interested in saying, is it better to have a lot of things or little things, just try both. So I tried both, and it did okay this year so far. And basically last month when I was in Israel, I said, noah, you're doing all. None of them are doing that great. They're all doing good. Why don't you just pick the things that matter the most and the things that you have the most interested in and stick with that for three months? Just for three months. And then at the end of three months, you can evaluate adding other things. And that's what I did. And, you know, it's funny, now that I'm doing that, things are growing again. And I think for people out there, they're like, well, it's boring. And it's like, yeah, everything, no matter what, your wife is going to get boring. No matter what. Like a TV show eventually will jump the shark. And so I think you have to figure out, how do you keep it interesting for yourself? So with Sumo, it's like, all right, well, what challenges have I not done before? Like, this Facebook title thing that's kind of the new thing, or we're doing some stuff with affiliates or new stuff with Influencer and new stuff with the product. And I'm like, you know, you have to figure out ways to keep it exciting, because everything over time gets boring.

And every once in a while, you get an invite to be on a great podcast, and you say, yeah, of course I'll be on your great podcast. Brad.

Thank you very much. Honestly.

No, my pleasure. No, I've just. I'm always blown away by the quality of people that actually say yes. Guys. Like, yeah, I've been out there meeting the people, shaking the babies, kissing the hands for years, and I've been Doing that for as long as I can remember. But it's amazing what happens when you actually ask. It just is, you know, I've been blown away. We had CEO of Virgin Galactic. I'm gonna have Richard, hopefully, at some point. You know, we had Tucker was just on. We had Brian Stewman. We have all these really great personalities and characters. Noah and guys like, don't be afraid. Just ask. What's the worst that happens?

I think you got to teach them how to ask, though. So one, I'm Jewish, and it's not as a bragging thing whatsoever, but I was in Israel for a month, and people asked for everything there. It's crazy. Like, I remember as a kid, this is like, my dad would always ask for a discount, and then he wouldn't. And some things he wouldn't even just ask. Like, we'd go to Carl's Jr. You know Carl's Jr. Yeah. He literally would buy a hamburger and then go to the salad bar and make it a cheeseburger to save money. And he just, like. He just assumed. He's like, okay, of course I can do this. Until someone says no. And what the problem with this is that most entrepreneurs starting out is that they're like, well, I can't do that. And the whole thing of a business is it's that you think that there's an opportunity that everyone else has said no to. That's what a business is. Because if someone said yes to it, it'd already be done. So what I like to encourage people to do is what I came up with is the coffee challenge. I don't know. Have you ever heard of this? No.

Go for it.

Oh, and I still do the coffee challenge. So when I was. I was teaching people how to start businesses, because people kept bugging me about it. And so we made a course, and I'm not gonna mention it because I don't want more people. And what happened, though, is I said, hey, here's how to start a business. Do these things. This is what I did to start AppSumo and Sumo and my other companies. And people were like, they were starting it, but they were so scared. So I came up with the coffee challenge, which is, you go to Starbucks, or next time, you go buy anything, and you have to commit to doing it ahead of time, because I'll tell you, the guys who are like, I'm the toughest ever, they always whisi out. But you go to Starbucks and you say, next time you buy your latte, you say, hey, can I get 10% off. And they'll say, why? And you say, just because. And that is the beginning of building the ask muscle. And the more that people can actually build that big ass muscle of ask when you know, as you, Brad, are showing, like, hey, I just asked virgin, obviously you have to work and how is it good for them and all the other stuff. But you build it up through small habits of practicing it. And I still do it. I'll go somewhere like, I have 10% off. And I asked, I was talking with this famous restaurant owner in Chicago and he was telling me a story how he bought a cover for his restaurant. And he told me the story and he's like, yeah, I asked for a discount and da, da, da, da, da. And at the end of it, I'm like, dude, you're worth like probably 10 to 50 million. You asked for a discount. And he said, yeah, that's why I'm worth 10 to 50 million. And so the point being just for everyone out there, you know, what I'm saying is like, just think about next time you're doing anything, just ask for discount. It's not about being cheap whatsoever. It's just practicing because business is fundamentally, it's saying, hey, I'm asking for your money in exchange for this product or service. And the more that you can get comfortable asking just for things in general, the more in business it becomes a lot easier.

Yeah. And I think that really belies to your strength as an entrepreneur is like you're willing to grind out what you need to grind out and hustle what you need to hustle to make the thing happen. You know, some people have a more creative, you know, like, I'm going to build something new strategy. It seems to me like you kind of come into situations where it's like, all right, there's a deal to be made here. I can make it better, faster, cheaper. I can extract more value out of what's already here. And that's another part of the wealth creation cycle. So if anybody listening at home hasn't checked out, Roger James Hamilton, he's the wealth coach that's pretty popular now out in Asia. He has this thing called wealth dynamics. He talks about people who are like the creator types and the people types and the timing, you know, kind of like they'll always get the best deal. They're the best negotiators, the most diplomatic. They have realistic viewpoint on every sale, negotiation, trade, investment game. They love to compete, it sounds to me. And again, this is just my hallucination that you might be on that side of the spectrum. And then finally you have, like, the accumulators, the Warren Buffetts, the, you know, the people who kind of create mature industries and really scale up to the billions and trillions of dollars so that Mark Zuckerberg can step in and change the game again.

Right?

He didn't invent social media, invented Facebook.

Well, I mean, I think the two things I think about there is that you have to figure out what you want to be doing. So, like, I would never really want to be Warren Buffett because I don't want to sit around in some town and, like, drink Coke all day and then watch other people do all the work. I like doing work. And that's fine. It's not wrong. I think I criticize him. I love dude. I love Buffett. He's a homie, but his style is to, like, find things, let the people do it, and stay off. I like being in the trenches. The second part, I think people is just understanding themselves. So one thing I've come to the conclusion After 35 years of living is that I'm really good at starting things. I'm a really good kind of initiator of stuff and promoter of stuff, but I'm not a great maintainer, nor do I really want to super organize things. And so what I think everyone has to really do if they want to, you know, create whatever success they want. I found is that whatever you're great at, do that. Everything, like, literally everything you're not great at, go find the best in the world to help you with it. So with Sumo, this guy Chris, you can see him outside. I don't know if you can see him outside the window in the back there. He wrote this article online about Slack, about how they do their marketing, and it was one of the best articles I've ever seen about it. And I reached out to him and I said, hey, why don't we work on an article together? I'll promote the shit out of it. And he's like, okay. So he does this, and literally, I've never seen anyone write a great article and promote, like, this kid ever, ever. And I said, I'm gonna do whatever it takes for you to come work with me because I will help, like, strategize some of the higher level stuff. And you can go crazy on the promotion stuff. And so now he moved from China and he's in our office. He's sleeping in our office running our marketing team. This is like just three weeks. I mean, so the point being is, like, find Things you're great at. I'm not a great writer, but this guy is, and he's a great promoter. So go find the people that are great and put their. Put them around you. I think when people actually experience that, they start learning how much difference it makes to have someone better around you.

Yeah. I don't think you're as much of a hater as you thought, because obviously, you've built amazing companies full of incredible people with beautiful interweaving relationships and varying strengths. So maybe that's just a story and you can let it go. It's cool.

No, I agree with the story. So it's my hating to the people listening up in your earlobes. It's not me hating on the people work at the company. Of course, if you don't like the people who work at the company, either you should quit. Or if you run the company, figure out a way to let them go or make it work. It's. No. I think sometimes I have jealousy, and so the way I, like, live out my jealousy is that I don't want to support these companies or I hate on these people, and I don't verbalize it. I don't go out, be like, this, this guy sucks, and this guy sucks. It's mostly I'm just jealous, and it's probably me reflecting on, like, where I want to be professionally and so forth.

So how does that kind of manifest for you in your life? I'm just curious. I'm not psychoanalyzing. I'm just really actually genuinely curious where this belief stems from. Or do you have a specific story or experience that really led you to believe this, that you need to think about that?

Yeah. No, dude, I've gone to a lot of therapy, so feel free to chime in wherever you want and send me the invoice. No. So there was someone who started a company, and he started the company, and, like, way after I started Sumo, and, like, his company has just accelerated way past us, and he's speaking at this conference I'm going to, and I was like, well, if I'm not going to that conference, I want to be around people like that. And I've actually. The guy is actually a great, great guy. He's like, you meet him, and you're like, you're just a nice dude. And so I don't know what that means for myself. I don't actually feel that bad about it. I think people. I had a guy in the past, my friend Nicholas, and I'm a little bit of the Mindset your competitors. Like, there's some people who are like, oh, namaste. There's. The world is global and love everyone. And I'm like, yo, I hope they die. And when they die and I win their business, then we could be friends. And that's just kind of how I like it. I don't.

Everyone loves you when you're dead. That's Neil Strauss, another one of my favorite people and mentors.

Yeah. So I don't think there's anything. Everyone should live it their way. I'm not. But for me, I'm like that. But Nick said, and it's his style. Nick's style was like, look, I want all my competitors around me. I want to understand what they're doing. I want to be super friendly with them. And I think both can work. This is kind of how it's worked for me. And I like how it is so far.

I love it. Well, at least you're self aware. Right? That's the key point is like, you might be hurting yourself in a way where it's like, oh, I understand that this is a strategy. It's not the only strategy. There are pros and cons to everything. You choose to believe there's consequences to every choice and, you know, being okay with who you are. I think that's really the key. Right. Is if you can get to that place where it's like, I know who I am. I know exactly who I am. I know what it's about. And I love myself and I seem to, you know, operate in integrity in the world and stuff seems to work for me. Then you're in a good place.

I think part of it, the things I'm thinking about as we're discussing this is, number one, the Internet and life is kind of long. So a lot of the people you may hate now, you might want to work with if you're impressed with them. So. So it might be good to actually keep those relations. Like, I've had some people who, like, after they quit that job or stop being at a company, like, we've become friends or we've worked together. The other thing that I'm actually even trying to get better at now is that each week I'm trying to spend time, like, allocate time to reach out to people. So either it's to put them on my podcast or just in general, because I would say almost all of my success with AppSumo.com and Sumo.com and my blog and all these things have just frankly come from relationships. It is Definitely not come from myself because I'm definitely not the smartest guy. I'm bright. I wouldn't say I'm dumb, but it's saying like, alright, who can I meet who's helped me? And not just fully transactional but like who gives me energy? And so committing some time each week to like reaching out to those people. Because I do think it gets harder as you get older. You have wife and kids and husband and you have obligations that some of the things that helped you get to where you are, which for me is relationships, you stop doing. So I've been allocating an hour a week setting up chat. Like today I emailed this designer guy, I'm like, hey, I'm not trying to recruit you whatsoever. I just think your stuff's great, let's just talk. And then this VP of sales guy, yeah, maybe work together, maybe work never, but just build that relationship.

And that's so important because, you know, that's kind of what you touched on with Tony too is like having that emotional energy, right, to expend. And it's attractive, it's an attractive force. And if you can cultivate that, it becomes a huge asset. Because it doesn't matter what's going on in the world. If you have your internal state so well dialed in that you're a generator of positive energy, people want to be around that and you can use that for anything. Whether it's building a company, whether it's, you know, meaning to love your life, whether it's around your kids. Just being able to choose how you feel in any given moment and surround yourself with people who light you up and charge your batteries is a huge skill in and of itself. And at the end of the day, I think no matter how much money have piled up, if you don't have people in your life that you love and care for, what the hell's the.

Point of it all? Right?

Who wants to be on the top of the mountain besides you? Who wants to push people off it? I'm just kidding. Who wants to be on the top of the mountain and there's no around. And I see this like pervasively. But the crazy higher and higher success circles I go, I see people who have everything in the world and are fricking miserable because they miss the point.

I preach on that. I think the two pieces of it, I always do it in twos. I guess I like binary things. Number one, I don't think anyone out there doesn't think that they should have better people around them. I think that's part of the challenge, is everyone knows that. Every single person listening knows, all right? Being around better people is better. But until you actually go and make time for that or around the best people, do you realize, like, how much better it can be when you're around, like, my girlfriend, like, cleaned up the dishes last night, and I was like, man, it's so cool to have a girl that just, like, takes that initiative. I know it seems trivial, but I appreciated it. And so I think that that's really part of it, at least in terms of the binary part. Yeah. So just, like, go and actually try being around different people and see where the energy is, and then go do more of that.

And that's why I love the entrepreneur community, is because you're always around people who are generating, Right. They're creating more than they consume, and they're creating before they consume. And I think if everybody just took on those two little things more than you consume before you consume, the whole world would shift.

But they don't, dude. See, still, I'm gonna challenge because even myself, myself is included, I think. You know, you email people and you say, hey, I want to work with you. AKA just give me money. Hey, I really need your help. AKA just promote my stuff. And it's really hard to try to come, like, let me give you an example of this. I wanted to get on this one guy show. There's a guy who's pretty well known. He has a popular show. And so I was getting. So I wrote this email, actually have a guy who helps me write my emails, and then I send it. So it's not like some machines. Like, he writes it, I edit, I send. And the email was like, hey, let me get on your show. I'll talk about this. I might promote it to my audience. Have a great day. Love, Noah. And we all do that because we want. We want it right away, Even myself, everybody. And so this is actually fascinating. I rewrote the email, and I was like, I think I was on an airplane. I was like, let me just do a 180 on this email. So my email was this, hey, what's an article you want me to send to my audience? I'm gonna promote it to my audience, even if you have a small audience. And that was my whole email. And I even. I think I said, I need to double check. But I said, hey, I was gonna, like, spam you to be on your show, but just ignore that. Just want to promote something your audience. Don't expect anything bad. Like, I'm not expecting, period. What's an article I can send? And that's. That's literally what I sent to this guy. And he wrote back and said, hey, what time would you want to be on my show? Literally, it wasn't my. Like, I genuinely was saying, like, look, I'm just gonna promote your stuff. I'm not expecting. I just thought that'd be more fun. And maybe that's the secret for my success. Like, go out, have a bunch of fun, and generally, things will work out.

And that was day two of Tony Robbins. The secret to living is giving. If you're willing to give first without expectation of reward, life gives back to you in ways that you couldn't even have imagined. And that's really true. If you look back on all the dots and you try to connect all the dots, you couldn't have seen this stuff going forward. If you hadn't done X, it wouldn't have led to Y, wouldn't let. To Z. But if you look back, you say, oh, my God, if I hadn't done X and it wouldn't have led to Y, it wouldn't let the Z. You know, you can see, like, oh, wow, there's actually an effect here. So you have to be able to suspend the belief that, oh, I need to be able to do X and it's got to meet something Z and just do X because it feels good and it helps people, and life will take care of you. I'm living proof of that.

Well, I think people need to keep. They need to go feel it. They need it. Like, you know, it's something to hear, including myself. And you talk about it. But I think if you can actually go, like, today, if you're listening right now, text your first person that comes to mind, like, hey, what's one thing I can help you with today? Or what's one thing you're working on today? And actually go realize that when you help, Holy shit. I feel better. And I do that with Sumo. So what I've been. What I do is that whenever I'm having a day, I just go help one customer, and it literally. It always cheers me up. And even if you're not having a shitty day, helping one customer helps. It makes you feel better. This morning, someone complained to us about Sumo being the devil, and we, like, we screwed him out, and we're, like, putting them on the street. I don't even. I mean, it was a lot of hyperbole, and she left her phone number. I'll just call. You know what?

We're back.

Okay. We had a little bit of a.

Snafu with the tech, but we are back with Noah. No, I can't see you anymore.

I turned off video because I didn't know if you're. I didn't know if you could afford that good WI fi so that we can.

Oh, here it is. Yeah, we got six down and like 30 up. We should be good. It's just the computer literally decided to stb. And for those of you who don't care about explicit lyrics, it means shit to bed. But we're back.

That's all happens, dog.

Yeah.

All right.

So we were in the middle of talking about how you hate everybody, want to kill the world. No, I'm just kidding you. We were talking about your Jesus. Just joking. Just joshing you. Where were we actually before I had.

We were talking a little bit about different things, about accomplishing.

Well, let's just back into it. So you talked about a story about how you got onto somebody's show just by being a good dude.

Oh, and people should practice giving and then call your customers one by one. If you ever.

You were talking about the girl who. She said hyperbolically that you had ruined her life. Obviously, that's not true. But what was the end result of that conversation? She became. She went from a hater to now a lover of appsuma.

Yeah. I mean, it'd be funny if she was still a hater. And I'm. But I think the point, the bigger point is that if you're ever kind of frustrated, and I think if you want to give, get more from above, you have to give more below or to the side, whatever that is. So, like, some of the times people say, I want a mentor, I want someone above me to teach me. And this is what I started doing where I'm like, why are you teaching anyone below you? So I have a few guys every week that I just check in. Not a paid thing whatsoever. Just every Monday, we do check ins. And the same thing with your customers, man. Like, you want to have happy customers, Just go one by one. Everyone's so focused on more of this, more of that. Just one by one. Call them up, say, hi, how you doing? So that's what I did with this lady. She was really shocked. Got to answer her questions and probably going to be a customer for life. And hopefully I can keep helping her out for life.

Absolutely. And you. The most important thing that I got from that story is that you stopped focusing on yourself and your day and you made somebody else's Day brighter.

Yeah, it's really hard. It's really hard. I really love company with my Misery. Like, I love my coffee with some misery.

Would you like us to leave room for coffee? With your 10% discount? Would you like room for misery?

Well, everyone needs to do the coffee challenge. I hope everyone goes and does that. What? Yeah, with misery. You know what I've realized about that? A few things, but one, we love when people join in on our misery. We're like, I'm having a bad day. I hate how, like, Austin, it's hot right now. It's like 100 million degrees.

And people are like, yeah.

And people love complaining to me about it. Maybe because I'm Jewish, they think I'm gonna complain, but I'm not. I'm like, it's hot. Yeah, I get it. Leave if you don't like it. But the thing too, is that what I've noticed for me personally is that I love just being around positive people. And it's. So when you start just being more positive, like, I had dinner with a friend, and he's a new friend, but he's just complaining about his job and everything. And I'm like, dude, shut. Are going to just get even more screwed. Kind of Ayn Rand's manifestation or what she predicted will be happening. So I think the people have to keep figuring out, like, how am I going up the totem pole? How am I educating myself more? How am I, like, surrounding myself with better people? How am I moving up where the robots aren't going to replace me? Because I think people joke about it, like, oh, yeah. And it's like, you will be screwed. And so I think that that's number one. Number two, like, I'm just really excited to kind of focus on the things that I really am interested in. I think people kind of just get too excited about opportunities. Like, oh, bitcoin is gonna be a thing. Let me go do some shit there. And I kind of remind myself, like, what I really love to do is promote things. And so in general, I'm like, well, you know, this is something for everyone. Is like, I want to promote things, but I'm scared of missing out on the future. I'm scared as we're talking about, what's the future? I don't really know, but there's some Asian kid or some kid somewhere weird place that's gonna create it. And so I think what people have to do is stay naive, stay humble, and then go find the people if they're not creating the future themselves, go Find the people creating the future and do whatever it takes to get on their boat. So for me, if I can create some type of platform to help promote these kind of people or just reach out and connect with them and help them in different ways, that's great for me. So I won't miss out. And I'll get to see how the future is going to be created and be a part of it, versus kind of watching from the sidelines.

I love that. And you've done that many times in your life. I mean, you got on the Facebook boat, you got on the mint boat, now your own boat. And you've really lived that principle in a way where like, yeah, you are actually changing the future. You know, these are services that people use all around the world every day.

Would you say it's like Noah's Ark?

It's like Noah's Ark. I like it.

Too cheesy? Too cheesy.

No, that's good.

I mean, I don't think people realize that we live once. I think people live like nothing is ever going to end. And only as you get, like, I'm 35 now, so there's more clarity of death, potentially. I don't think we have to die, but there's this like, oh, my God, this time isn't coming back. So I think people really need to be, like, hyper aggressive about what am I working on, who am I working on with? Is this really how I want to spend my time? And like, literally think about every day as a limited resource, like, this is. I only get, what day are we on? August 1st. Once in my life, this August 1st, 2817 is forever. Once. And so are you really working and being with the people and all the things that matter to you? Are you spending it in the ways that you want? You know, obviously balance that with, if you go rob a bank today to try to get rich and you die, it's not really that cool, but so there's a balance that. But the point is, like, I think people need to be more cognizant about how they're spending their time and be. Just be intentional with it.

We just did a little on site day, 35 people, just small room, you know, made some shifts and taught some stuff. It was really great. But the cool part was that there was this jar of marbles when I first walked in the house. I'm like, I'm in the right place. But the marble story was actually this woman had decided that she had a thousand Saturdays left in her life. That every Saturday she's going to take a marble out of the jar and give it to somebody just to remind her that she has one less Saturday, right? So she's in her 50s, and she might live at 75. She's got about a thousand weeks left to live, and every time she takes a marble at a jar, she has to realize, like, wow, what do I want to create next week? What am I gonna make magic today? How am I gonna help somebody? How am I gonna give this. This message off? So I think it's a really powerful way to look at it. And I'm the Make More Marbles guy, right? I'm talking about competition versus collaboration and what the future might look like and how we can be a part of it. But I think it just starts with us being human and just being good people, right? Or just trying to whatever our approximation of that is, like, how can we help each other? Because in doing so, we are not only lit up, but we create more for everybody. So in that spirit, and since you're here on the Make More Mortals podcast, I want to turn it over to you, Noah. What's a connection, a resource, an opportunity, a person or a system that can help move your mission forward in a meaningful way? And how might we be able to connect you to that?

So I have a personal and professional one that I'll put out there in the universe. Eventually, something might come back. So the personal one is easy. I want to meet Jeff Bezos.

Okay?

So if you're a cousin, brother, uncle, nephew, or if you have some relationship with them. I met him once before, a long, long time ago at Stanford, but not like, formally. It was just like, hey, what's up? What's up, dude? It's very casual. So that's on the personal side. On the professional side, with Sumo.com, where I spend my days, I'm looking for a affiliate or partnership manager. So looking for someone either that's done a bunch of partnerships with a bunch of people like yourself and said, hey, you use Sumo. Let's help you promote it more and work better with it, so. Or someone who's just a young, hungry guy or girl that is interested in doing partnerships, which it's kind of a form of sales, but a little bit more fun.

Does it need to be in Austin?

No, it doesn't.

Okay, got it. So Jeff Bezos is easy. Just jeffamazon.com he's got a rule. He'll either he'll. He'll write you back in 10 minutes or never. And I've written him three times. And I've gotten one response and one forwarded to another member of the team. So he does respond, provided it's an Amazon specific problem. This is the other caveat I don't think he cares about. Not an Amazon specific problem. So unless there's some huge value add there, I mean, he's the richest man in the world, so he does have to prioritize. But, you know, I have had luck just cold emailing him and it's just.

Jeffmazon.Com I have emailed him regarding a product complaint and he did respond on that. It's funny you say that, but when I email him for the podcast, he doesn't respond. You know what, dude? Totally interesting thought. One, I loved your Marvel story because it's very easy for me to visualize that. The thing that I thought about earlier this week that kind of has like been marinating in my brain is like, what do you think he does all day, Jeff Bezos? And what do you think that everyone listening, including you and me as well, can learn from? What do you think how he thinks he spends his time? Not how he thinks how he spends his time. Because I bet if you think like, how is Jeff Bezos in time? I bet you it's doing things very differently than the way a lot of us think about it. Like, he's probably trying to hire people to do more things. He's probably trying to think bigger than most people are thinking. And that's generally how you create something really, really big, assuming that, you know, that's your intention.

Another thing you might want to check out, if you haven't already, I'm sure you have, is the way he does meetings. And it's a very specific formula. And everybody gets a folio. Everybody has to read it before they go to the meeting. And everybody's on the same page. And the way they transact their meetings are really, really effective. So that might be a cool thing.

What is it like the one page thing and then like everyone.

Yeah, I think it's like you have to actually produce a report. And the meeting is very, very specific and consistent the way they do them. There's no room for, you know, stories and kind of tangents, which is great. And it seems to work for them. And, you know, you'll meet people that love working for Amazon and they love that culture and they, they like it. And then you'll meet. People are like, oh, it's horrible. And it was ground me out. But regardless of any of that, you can't argue with results. And if his goal and outcome and is to be the richest retailer on the planet. That's what he's done.

Yeah, and I think that's a great point that you just made and you said it in passing, but I'm just going to reiterate it. A lot of people, look, they say, oh, I want to be like this person, or I think Noah's company and the way they're doing things is great. But one, it's always than you think it's always. And two, everyone really just needs to define what their own success is. That really is what it comes down to. Everyone says this person is success or that it's really. When you're saying that, it's more about what you want for success. That's why I generally don't say, like, that person is really success. I don't generally say it because it's like, maybe that person is not the level of success they want or maybe they're very unhappy. And so we kind of have to let determine our own internal, like, speedometer about, like, our barometer, I guess, like, where our success metric is and are we. How are we tracking against that? So for me, it's, you know, is the podcasting well and is Sumo doing well? And that's really what how I gauge it by.

So I'll add a personal story because it was something we talked about. We'd never. We never grabbed it from earlier that thread. So we both know Tim Ferriss. I spent 10 days in Africa with Tim. I met him in 2009, and at the end of that trip, I thought we were gonna be super cool bros, right? But he very unequivocally said, you know, I don't spend time with people I'm not currently doing business with. I was crushed, right? Because it's my hero and I wanted to, you know, I was super butthurt about it for a long time. Tim Ferriss is jerk. But what I realize now, many years hence, is that to be that successful and to be the thing that Tim Ferriss wants to be, I can't hate that he wants to be successful, because obviously I want that for myself. And I can't, you know, hit the player, hit the game kind of thing. But what was more important is that he was choosing to spend his time in a way where he could have the most and highest impact. And only now, what is this, six, seven years later? Do I really get the lesson. It's like, it wasn't a personal attack. It wasn't. He didn't like me. It's not that we didn't have a good time, it's just, you know, I'm only gonna spend my time in the way where I feel like I can have the highest impact. And now it's a lesson.

Really interesting.

Yeah. And I don't, I don't begrudge him for that. He actually taught me, he gave me a great gift. It's like value your time and value what you know you can do better than anybody else in the world. And for him it's being Tim Ferriss. Right. And I don't need to be Tim Ferriss. I don't want to be Tim Ferriss. And who knows whether you he wants to be. And he's always evolving and who knows, right? I just, I don't presume to know because I'm not living his life, but I do know I could be the best frickin Brad Hart I can be. And you could be the best Noah Kagan you can be. And everybody listening at home, you know, just remind yourself consistently that it's not about being like anybody else, it's about being the best version of yourself.

I think that's interesting. I think that's a great point. People. I want to be this. It's like you probably wouldn't want to be them. And like if you figure out just exactly where you want to be, then you. And you're very clear on that. I've always believed it's like it's so easy to get what you want when you know what you want. And those times we don't know what we want, that's when it gets really hard. You got to take that meditation or the fool need to be doing walking on water or fire, I don't know. And then get that clarity where you want to go and then getting it is really, really easy. Yeah.

And once you're clear on the what and you're clear on the why, the how shows up. And if you keep getting after it and getting really clear, the how will keep showing up.

So God bless America.

That's a great place. Yeah. God bless America. Raise the flag, fly it high. Thank you to everybody who ever didn't get what I wanted and gave me the courage and the value of what I did get because without that contrast, I couldn't be grateful. So I'm grateful and thank you. And on behalf of everybody at the make More Morals community, everybody listening at home all over the world, thank you, Noah for being on the show today. And we hopefully will find you an affiliate manager that would be really great somebody who's really great at relationships could be anywhere in the world. And then finally, hopefully, we'll get you in touch with Jeff. But if he doesn't, don't take it personally. Like I had to learn.

I'll get over it.

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